[Link] The Character as Text: On Being Read and Misread

by Matthew Hand

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

Matthew Hand: Neither Tidy Nor Meant To Be

Matthew Hand grew up around the Southeast. He writes stories about people under pressure—moral, spiritual, familial, sometimes all at once. The characters are often trying to make sense of something bigger than them: grief, memory, belief, God, or the silence that follows when none of those things show up the way they expect. But he doesn’t write to explain. He writes to document what happens when there’s no clear rescue and no one left to blame. The stories aren’t tidy. They aren't meant to be.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

I just finished a story called Disqualified. It’s a horror narrative that starts like a typical cabin slasher, but the protagonist knows the rules — she knows she’s supposed to die — and goes anyway. It’s really about choice and consequence, turning the genre’s moral code into something theological and personal.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I think most of my work tends to revolve around people confronting their own grief - personal, familial, institutional. That sounds dark and depressing, but I think my approach is cleansing: here’s a mess, let’s organize it.