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sage-nebula · 7 years

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Oh shoot I didn't see that you answered until today. Uh well, my weird question was: At what point in the storyline of something does a character's actions go from development to being OOC? I remember that you've written a lot about how characters are OOC in the later Yugio chapters and illustrations, so I was wondering how, as a reader, one can distinguish when that occurs in a narrative. Sorry if this makes no sense, haha

Oh, okay. This is fine. It’s not a weird question at all, haha.

Essentially, a character becomes OoC when they’re doing something that isn’t in line with how they would believably behave at that point in the narrative. Characters can develop and change; they, just like real people, can and should grow, and this can include anything from changing their opinion on something to modifying their behavior. For instance, on The Office Pam comes out of her shell over the course of the show, to the point where she’s able to stand up for herself, speak her mind, and go after what she wants about midway through the series, whereas that would have been unthinkable for her in the first couple of seasons. This doesn’t mean that Pam is OoC; it means that Pam has made some changes in her life that have given her new confidence along with her newfound happiness, and so she’s able to make a stand and say what she’s feeling without backing down. Moreover, there are times in later seasons where she still behaves passive-aggressively or doesn’t necessarily say what she’s feeling, which goes to show that Pam, like anyone, still has brief moments of faltering or believable “regression.” It’s a process, not a bullet list.

However, sometimes “development” can come out of nowhere, or be forced for the sake of the narrative. In other words, rather than the characters dictating the narrative, the narrative dictates the characters. Using the same show as an example, Andy Bernard’s character is pretty inconsistent over the course of the series. At first it seemed as if they were going to move him along a believable character development track; he started out as a high-strung, over-ambitious Yes Man with anger problems, went to anger management, and came back a better, much friendlier individual. He still showed shades of being a Yes Man and desperate to be liked, but it was also clear that his time in anger management had helped him. He was doing better, and his development was believable.

As the seasons went on, however, it became clear that they were changing Andy’s writing on a dime in order to fit whatever narrative they needed for him. They made him an ultra sympathetic nice person in order to better set him up to be with Erin, but then later made him into an insensitive, emotionally manipulative jerkass so that they could have a reason to break the two of them up and put her with a new character named Pete instead. They showed him as being able to tolerate people not necessarily liking him when he was a salesman, but then made him into a Michael Clone once Michael left the show in an effort to fill the gaping hole that Michael left (and then zigzagged that yet again by taking the company away from Robert California and giving it back to David Wallace). And so on and so forth; Andy’s writing was all over the map, but since his character wasn’t one that was meant to be an unpredictable enigma (unlike Robert California), it came off as very OoC at various points. It wasn’t believable development; it was the narrative twisting his character to be whatever suited the plot, to the point where no amount of Connect the Dots could explain it. (Contrast this with Jim, who many said was OoC for his intense focus on his job in Philadelphia at the temporary expense of his marriage. This was actually not OoC for Jim, who Pam tells us all the way back in season two, “When Jim gets excited about something, he gets really into it […] The problem is he works here, so that hardly ever happens.” Jim’s hard focus on Athlead was not OoC. Nor was his realization at what it was costing him, and his decision to then quit that in order to recommit himself to his family, considering that he once gave up a serious promotion at Dunder-Mifflin in order to go back to Scranton and ask Pam on a date. Both of these things were very in-line with Jim’s character.)

Essentially, what you have to do is you have to look at who the character is, and look at how their experiences in the narrative have shaped them. If you can connect the dots and see how they got from Point A to Point H—and if you can explain it with examples if necessary—then you’re fine, and they’re developing naturally. But if you can’t, and they’re behaving a certain way to make the plot work, or to make a ship you like work, then you need to scrap and start over. Remember, the characters are how the plot happens. The characters are how relationships happen. The narrative should be modified to suit the characters, not the other way around. Your plot can be very interesting, but if your characters can’t sell it to the audience, it’s no good. You’ll have to go back to the drawing board.

I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any other questions. =)

#chinonshou

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