[The Art] Contradictions Create Characters

How "opposite" descriptions bring characters to life.

How do you bring a character to life?

Modern writing teaches us to think of characters as constant figures: we give them qualities, which dictate a direction, and like toy soldiers they march in that direction from the beginning of the story to the end.

But one of the reasons I love Russian literature is because Russian writers from the 1800s & 1900s had a miraculous way of creating characters who took on lives of their own. These authors didn’t just give their characters “qualities” (like dark hair, or brown eyes, or worn clothes, etc.), and they didn’t just give them “direction” (this character wanted to find love, that character wanted to escape town, etc.). Instead, these Russian writers made their characters contradictions: personality quirks, backstories, and desires that made them unpredictable.

And as I wrote about in Door—Magic Carpet—Door, unpredictability & surprise is what keeps readers engaged.

For example: