TnT: need a character?

[pipisafoat]

A final congrats to 1stmate, winner of contest 57! Read the entry & leave comments here.

Love or duty? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the realm of internets to write an entry for contest 58....

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Pick one:

Characters are complex, three-dimensional representations of potentially real human beings.

Characters are simple caricatures that can be easily represented in one formulaic phrase: a(n) [adjective] [noun] who wants to [verb] a(n) [adjective] [noun] but is blocked in this desire by an [adjective] [noun].
this Dinosaur Comics webcomic has some excellent examples: a child prodigy who wants to destroy a space jerk = Star Wars! Hamlet = a problem head of state who wants to unmask a powerful senior!

Where do your characters typically fall? One of these categories or somewhere in the middle? Is there even a middle ground here?

Comments

[leia_solo]

I try to make my characters more three dimensional and to me they are like real people. I'm just now getting into the habit of talking in their voices. Some of my characters are more developed than others, but eventually I intend to give them all their own back story and their own motivations and what not.

[pipisafoat]

I feel that way about (most of) my characters as well, but I still think that some of them can easily be summarized by that sentence above - at least for the space of a couple of stories! It's difficult to overcome the formulaic description in just a short story or two. And having a simple summary could be useful, for readers or writers!