So, the protagonist of my current work in progress isn’t growing. She’s a competent adult, doing what she’s trained to do. Is this a problem?
*Wags paw*
My first question would be: did the protagonist step onto the stage a la Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, with no room for development or learning curves? If so, you have a Mary Sue/Marty Stu (or E—re— Th-re—, and even that, for all I dislike the book, has found a readership*.) Or a certain Marvel™ movie character that appeared and solved all the problems, because she was perfect, mostly. Yawn. It is a very, very unusual writer who can keep readers interested in that sort of character. Readers want characters that grow, that learn, that they can be interested in and root for (or sometimes against, although that’s harder to do well.)
In the case of the work I’m working on, the character has literally grown and matured over the course of the series. She goes from a pre-teen to a married adult with kids, spouse, and a household to run. Part of her story is trying to juggle a number of different roles. She wants to be a mom and helpmeet for her husband, while living up to the ideals of her faith tradition. She also needs to bring in a small income (kids eat, beasts-of-burden eat and need care, her husband’s work doesn’t pay for all the bills), and help her husband’s career by fulfilling certain social duties. When she’s not getting dragged into politics by circumstances and third parties who don’t take “No, please leave me out of it this time” for an answer. So character development often involves managing the different roles she plays.
This also means that the author has to juggle “which hat is the MC wearing today” and keep track of things. In some ways it is more complicated than a standard Hero’s Journey/character grows plot.
One genre of stories is about just this kind of character. He (almost always he) goes from place to place of job to job, solving problems, then moving on to the next city or job. Character development is done by those around him, and the focus of each story is solving the problem. Think Doc Savage, James Bond, and their ilk. Solomon Kane would be another character like that, although Robert Howard hints at past growth and changes in his Puritan knight errant. Readers like the stories because the character is predictable, but the world around him and the problems he deals with are rich with detail. The reader gets a known in the protagonist, and several unknowns that he watches as the protagonist sorts through and triumphs over. Ideally, there will be some learning by the protagonist, lessons that can be nodded to later in the series, but he doesn’t grow and follow the developmental path of the Hero’s Journey and its variants.
If you are writing a story like that, or series like that, character growth is optional, although it will make for a more interesting protagonist. In the case of my story mentioned above, the character has to tap into some skills she rarely uses, and play a game she does not care to acknowledge, in order to keep her family and others safe. So she’s developing somewhat, just not in ways she’d like.
Sort of like the author at the gym right now. Using muscles in new ways is good for me, I’m sure. I’m just not entirely enjoying the experience.
*The full title is not written out because the author used to pop up and defend the work vehemently. That particular book is not the focus of this article.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “My Character’s Not Growing – Now What?”
I think about this question a lot. (At least I think it’s the same question.) In my mind it comes in the following form. In real life everyone has a story arc from birth to death (and because of my religion the ‘real life’ story arc is about making sure the end goes a particular way). But not all those real life stories are also compelling stories when written down. A steady working out of what you learned will take a lifetime, and can even look like non-growth. Even worse, it would be really boring for anyone else to listen to all the twists and turns, even if for me it’s existential and fascinating. So as a writer I have to choose the parts of life that do form an arc.
Elizabeth Goudge dealt with this in a book called _The Scent of Water_ but she did it by having the protagonist read someone’s diary.
Then there is Nero Wolfe. He doesn’t develop during the stories. We learn more about him as the series progresses, but he is the same Nero Wolfe in “A Family Affair” as he was in “Fer-De-Lance.” Same with Archie Goodwin, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Sergeant Stebbins, Inspector Cramer, and Lilly Rowen. No only don’t they evolve, they do not age. Wolfe is a perpetual mid-50s and Archie a perpetual early 30-something. Rex Stout files off some of the rough edges as the series progresses, but that’s it.
The only characters that evolve seem to be Johnny Keems and Orrie Cather and both of them follow a downward track. Cather in particular devolves from a cocky but reliable operative to a sneak killer. (He is also the only character in the book who gets married over the course of the series. The rest appear to have been married prior to their introduction.)
Yet the series is and remains enormously popular. I have read them all and keep re-reading them. So do millions of others. It may belong to the category of other changing, with the difference that Wolfe never goes from place to place (well, hardly ever) solving problems, the problems come to him.
Slight amendment: the Archie Goodwin of *Fer-de-Lance* is not the Archie Goodwin of the rest of the series. In the first couple-three books, he’s more of a thug, less of a witty clotheshorse. Takes him until about *Too Many Cooks* to become himself. He’s fully himself by *Some Buried Caesar*.
Ah, but is that character development, or the author changing the character?
Take Volstagg the Voluminous, from Thor comics. He was originally a Miles Gloriosus, until the writers decided it was too silly for Thor and the other two of the Warriors Three to put up with him, and changed him to being something of a braggart but a truly formidable warrrior — and it wasn’t a character arc, because the first change was a story told by one of the other Warriors Three, of how he first met him. The letter column was filled with fans scratching their heads and saying they would know where to stop believing the story if Volstagg told it.
In the case of Archie Goodwin, it was the author figuring out who the character should be. Not development, just change.
I found Orson Scott Card’s MICE breakdown incredibly useful. There are really 4 accepted different types of story.
Mileau (Stranger visits a planet/place, sees strange things, returns or stays. See Gulliver’s Travels.)
Idea (revolves around the exploration of a novel idea, usually a short story unless you’re Arthur C. Clarke)
Character (traditional story where character grows and changes)
Event (earth-shattering or smaller location shattering event occurs, and hero fixes or prevents it. Most thrillers and mysteries like James Bond as you note, Jack Reacher, Nero Wolfe, etc.)
The WIP is a bit of Milieu and a bit of Event. Or perhaps two Events, with the milieu linking them. (Hey, I’m an environmental historian. I have to make setting a character every so often!)
TXRed, you are quite right to do so.
I neglected to mention that Card emphasized that making a story’s start and end consistent with any of the 4 types does not mean the other things are excluded or even necessarily minimized. He used it as a guideline to how to start and end a story, so the reader knows how to find it fulfilling.
If they’re not growing then the problem isn’t big enough.
If they have time to devote to family etc. then the problem isn’t big enough. Family and stuff happens off-screen after you win.
Unless they’re my characters [muted swearing and kicking the furniture] who never seem to do anything but kissy-face and lounging around until I release the Guardian of Helheim’s Gates on them. Then they make the damn thing into a pet! And he likes it!
[more swearing and kicking, wandering off in the distance…]