I have always believed that a good story is one with the best characters. The characters drive the story, not the other way round. But the best characters are never perfect — they are human. Their flaws, their insecurities, their irrational fears, their ideas, their morals, and their perception about life — their baggage whether good or bad is what molds them into a person. The most brilliant plots have used these minor details into a turning point in a plot.
All the characters have a backstory — a past — which explains why they are the way they are?
This simple idea is the core of human behavior. Sure, there might be days we act out of instinct. However, even if all of us don’t live in the past, it is our experiences that shape our decisions and dreams.
One important factor which molds the characters in every story is their upbringing. How they were brought up, what they longed for, what their teachers scolded them for, how they behaved around their siblings, etc — all details add up to the person they have become today. It shapes their opinions, the way they express themselves, their dreams, etc.
Therefore, I am stunned when a person in a TV series or a book is completely different from his parents. A few days back I read a book titled ‘The Silent Patient’ by Alex Michaelides. A page-turner, this psychological thriller builds the suspense not by dramatic turns and twists, but by peeling the layers of its characters more and more with every chapter. The narrator — a psychotherapist, in the process of treating his patient — Alicia — uncovers dark truths about himself, too. During the whole process of understanding why the patient refuses to speak, he analyzes and explores her mediums of expression — her art, her parents, her acquaintances. And in the end, he is able to find the knot to uncoil her — at her childhood home. He finds it in a long-forgotten conversation in time with the patient’s younger self.
In the TV series Suits, Harvey Specter has grown to be a rich and successful person. Yet, throughout the show, we see him making choices -the root of which lies in his past. In the later seasons, when he sees a therapist we understand why loyalty is the most important thing he values in a person. We also uncover how every character in the show is the way they are. There has been some event in their lives that has shaped them to be that particular way they are.
In Jo Nesbo’s books, all characters drive the story with immense personal baggage. The protagonist Harry Hole himself has the characteristics of a traditional villain more than a hero. He is an alcoholic, rude and unlike most protagonists, he somehow ends up disappointing people. Sure, he is a rebel. But contrary to the usual heroes, he does not have that heroical charm and his acts piss people more than they do him any good. He has his own ideas of why he prefers calls over texts. Aren’t we the same? Some of us prefer texts over calls for the silliest reasons. This detail -apparently unimportant- shapes up an important scene in one of the books. The stories have human characters — each with their choices, preferences, and pasts. The story compels us to look into the minds and past of serial killers which would explain the reason for then to be the way that they are.
In one of the best stories in Mythology — the Mahabharata every character has a solid backstory for them to choose their actions. They make their decisions — which in turn form the complex web of stories. In this web of stories, every character has a choice and a personality that could shape the story in a different way. Almost everyone has his reason to be involved in the battle. But their complex set of decisions given the other person’s complex set of decisions is what moves the story to be what it is.
When we live in this world, we socialize and interact with people. We may be living our own lives, but our decisions are always to an extent are affected by the people around us. Our lives are entangled with others who are themselves living their lives in a beautiful complicated mess. There is a term for the realization of how every person has an individual world as complicated as our own. It is called SONDER.
“n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”
And what makes up great stories, if not this?
