Many craft books and classes are devoted to the subject; they help build and portray strong, flawed, and realistic characters. The main source of characterization in pop culture comes from writers, actors, directors, and other types of artists that create scripts or skits.
These mediums usually help the actors form the characters seen in plays, movies, TV shows, and other similar mediums. Here are a few examples:. Even Progressive commercials, which use the recurring salesperson Flo, could be said to use this skill. Comedians can be said to use characterization for their stage personalities, because of its intentionally staged format, which details a certain personality.
Comedians like Jeff Dunham actually create multiple characters. Using his ventriloquist skills and characterization, he jokes about different subjects relevant to the character. In the excerpt from the movie, his monologue introduces us to him, his opinions, and his plan of skipping school. Keep in mind that although sometimes real people may seem like fictional characters—for example, rock stars or those on reality television—they are not agents of characterization unless they are being featured in a written work, such as in a magazine article, or a biographical book or film.
Only in this scenario would the artist then use characterization to show personality in a manner which does not detract from the narrative plot itself. These terms are used to criticize characters who are poorly characterized, or poorly developed. For example, the busy housewife could easily be called unidimensional. Coined by Carl Jung, this refers to a set of twelve character types which supposedly exist across cultural boundaries and eras of time.
Characterization is one of the main building blocks of fiction today, no matter what genre or media the story uses.
Anything that teaches the audience about your character is characterization, but the most common methods are through concrete action, dialogue, description, and the actions, thoughts, and words of the other characters in regards to the characterized character. List of Terms Action. Ad Hominem. Alter Ego. The characters are the persons that are involved in the story. Obviously, Harry Potter is the main character. The main character is often called the protagonist.
Look at the character list on Sparknotes — Harry Potter. Which characters would you rank as the most important? How are the characters described? Most novels will have a hero, a good guy. There is no doubt that Harry Potter is the hero and protagonist, and he has a lot of good friends. How do we know that they are good? We have to depend on information about looks, behavior and speech. If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide.
He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets. Description of Hagrid. This point of view was later abandoned by many because, in the 19th century, the dominance of character over plot became clear through petty bourgeois novels.
An author can use two approaches to deliver information about a character and build an image of it. These two types of characterization include:. This kind of characterization takes a direct approach towards building the character. It uses another character, narrator, or the protagonist himself to tell the readers or audience about the subject. This is a more subtle way of introducing the character to the audience.
On stage or in front of the camera, actors usually do not have much time to characterize. For this reason, the character faces the risk of coming across as underdeveloped. In dramaturgy, realists take a different approach, by relying on implied characterization.
This is pivotal to the theme of their character-driven narrative. Classic psychological characterization examples, such as The Seagull , usually build the main character in a more indirect manner. This approach is considered more effective because it slowly discloses the inner turmoil of the character, over the course of the show, and lets the audience connect better. The actors who act in such roles usually work on them profoundly to get an in-depth idea of the personalities of their respective characters.
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