Every character I have ever written or portrayed on stage has never belonged to me. That’s the secret. We build from scraps, molding habits, memories, desires into something new. And then hand them over to strangers who will decide, confidently, what they mean.
A character is always read twice: once by the author, and again by everyone else. The first creates, the second dissects. Somewhere in between those two readings the truth gets smudged - sometimes valiantly, other times blasphemously.
Reading is a Talent
The moment someone engages with a text, they interpret character. That is a kind of ownership. We don’t mean to, but we do it constantly.
We say: She’s selfish.
We say: He’s in love.
We say: They’re just lost.
Each declaration flattens something that once breathed. Interpretation feels generous, but is often a form of control. When we name a thing, we fix it in place. The character can’t move anymore - we align them with our own categorical narratives.
In life, we do this too. We read people the way we read stories. We assume subtext when there’s only exhaustion, irony when there’s fear, desire when there’s confusion. The act of reading becomes a way of keeping our world neat, comprehensible.
It’s how we quietly distort each other.
The Seduction of Certainty
There’s something addictive about believing we’ve “figured out’ a character. The addiction to certainty is numbing because it spares us the discomfort of not knowing. The impulse is everywhere: the YA dystopian novel that insists a protagonist is about capitalism or trauma or redemption. The friend who insists, “I know why you did that.” If you require a frame of reference, I suggest you observe political interactions on social media.
We crave clarity because it makes emotion manageable. But people, and the characters who resemble them, aren’t created for clarity. They’re created for contradiction. The moment a character stops being slightly unknowable, they stop feeling alive.
It’s why the best stories leave a residue of confusion. You finish the last page still turning them over in your mind, still wondering who they were trying to be. The story keeps happening because you haven’t decided yet.
Read the full article: https://www.southernmelancholic.com/post/the-character-as-text-on-being-read-and-misread
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