Heya folks, long rant, if you want the long story short, scroll right to the bottom.

This isn't political, religious, or anything 'drama' like. It's an essay of sorts, about characters, stories and plots.

A Characters Importance: The Association of Consequence and Deus Ex Machina

Part One: The Intent of a Character


Part Two: The Cause of the Character


Part Two: The Impact And Consequence


Reiterating such a simply stated thesis in other words, this will be a personal observation on the effect of characters on other people, plots and story settings based upon personal experience. Their measure of importance in relevance to events, realism and other characters. All of which is subjective and relative to the situation and bias of the individual making the observation, so I will try to make it as objective as possible, if you don't mind following my train of thought.

Part One: The Intent of a Character

A character should always have a purpose, for a character without a purpose is nothing more then an out of place prop. For most characters, the purpose is quite simply, existential, that is to say, day to day life and what it brings forth. The more interesting and involving characters, tend to exhibit supernatural purpose. That is to say, the more interesting characters, usually have a more interesting and unusual story.

Regardless of context, there will always be a story behind a meaningful character. Wether this character is a hero or villain, they are rarely of significance to anyone if they are random, disposable and of no importance. The intent of any well intended character, is to bring forth a story, and the involved details, to the focus of attention.

Characters of fiction, are reflections of real life. Sometimes warped and distorted beyond recognition, sometimes merely shown in a different light, but still as true as an honest reflection in a perfect mirror. At base, they are the purpose of a story, the intent of a character, is at heart, to tell a story.

Part Two: The Cause of the Character

With room for arguement and definition, a character is an entity of defined intention. Someone who has an idea of what is happening, wether they are blissfully ignorant, or fully aware, same as they have a choice in the outcome of matters, through the effect of inconsequential action, consequential action, or mere inaction. The character will get involved.

What I would argue, makes a difference, is how a character's actions, impact the progress of a plot or storyline, and how those actions are made available to the character. Be it as rational thoughts, logical reactions, or available tools. In the real world, no one has a utility belt, most people don't know extraneous tidbits of information under duress. These same exhibited traits, define the interesting characters, from simple existential characters.

It can be done believably, realistically, and conscionably. However, it can be a tad common to see such outcomes that favor the main character, regardless of odds, by virtue of the character's importance to a storyline. This is hotly debatable, as any good story, needs a good character, and what moves a good story forward to a better conclusion, is impossible to clearly define.

To provide an example, where a story presents a hero triumphing against improbable odds time and time again without fail. While it may endear romantic notions of invulnerability and supernatural capability, and in some situations this is the obvious intent. When that hero triumphs, simply because he is important, more then likely through Deus Ex Machina (the perfect solution being available at the right time, or no plausible solution being available, but the hero triumping regardless) ie resolutions and trials with no relevant purpose, other then to simply showcase a character's importance.

A character is generally, to provide a body and face to a story, not be mounted as a trophy of importance in a particular scenario. Characters rise and fall in popularity with time, but without a meaningful story, and with trivial expositions to inflate importance, they fail as a character.

Part Three: The Impact And Consequence

Any story can be presented with any character. What you will oft encounter with happenstance characters and partially thought out plots, is that they lack substance and consistency. You may find romantic tales of fairy tale like endings, this may very well be what you enjoy.

As an artist and aspiring writer, I find myself striving to fully flesh out not just the strengths and weaknesses of a character. I find myself striving to fully explore a character's reasons, availablities, limits and purposes. Some of the greatest stories available, exhibit characters in situations that stress, and sometimes break the limits of their characters, redefine their reasons and purposes, and that, is a story well told.

It is a story where the story still comes across, and yet the character has been made important by the story. The story was not made to glorify a character's importance.

Long story short: Characters that win just because they're important (which is of relative definition) and not because of merits, tend to suck :D In my humble over worded opinion anyways.