Not All Change is Change

Character Development is something else

Character Development

Walter Mosley is a popular author of mysteries and other tales, and has written an essay on writing published as This Year You Write Your Novel in which he states his belief that all ‘novels, short stories, and plays, and most poems are about human transformation’ (p. 40). He goes on to say that it is the very essence or subject of the novel to show the ‘movement in the personality structure of the main character’ (p. 41).

By this I take it Mr Mosley means that characters change at heart, and a tale tells of how they change and what makes they change.

This is not true.

The Lost Keys

“Yesterday Joe got in his car to go to work, and could not find his keys. Joe went back inside and looked everywhere. He looked in the living room, the hall, the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. Guess where he found them — in a glass in the kitchen sink! God only knows how they got there. Joe rushed to the car and drove to work.”

That was a story. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a problem and a resolution. But did Joe change at heart in the course of this tale?

No. Joe didn’t change in the sense Mr Mosley means.

Joe does change in circumstance and state, though. He is different at the tale’s end in these ways:

• He is half an hour older
• He has his keys in hand
• He goes to work in a rush.

But who would call Joe ‘transformed’ by these events?

Better Isn’t Needful

I think what Mr Mosley has done is to take what many writers, critics, and readers agree is a prime point in what makes a tale good and gone on to claim that is the needful heart of the tale, and that without it the tale is not just dull or weak, but it isn’t a tale at all.

I agree with Mr Mosley that it is better when a tale tells how its hero changes in his ‘personality structure.’ If you give me two tales both the same in all their parts, but in one the hero has a change of heart, and in the other he is the same man at the tale’s end as he was at its start, I will like the tale of the changed hero better. But both are tales — novels if they are so long, or short stories if not, or plays or poems if they are told in the right shape.

Lesson

What do we learn here? We learn that we have to see the line that sets what a tale must be, apart from what a tale ought to have. Just because we like better the tales of human development doesn’t mean that every tale must include it. Just because we like a laugh doesn’t mean every tale need be funny. Just because we like romance doesn’t mean every tale must be about love.

We have to know what we like. We also have to bear in mind what a tale is. In this way we see the things a tale doesn’t need, but that we like, as bonuses, and we can enjoy them more.

(Composed with pen on paper Saturday 2 February 2008)