


But does their flatness make them inherently uninteresting or irrelevant to the story? Not necessarily. Are Miss Havisham, Mrs Micawber, and Mr Jaggers flat characters? Absolutely - they have few complex characteristics and exist mostly to interact with the main character of their respective stories. And the occasional flat character can even benefit your narrative! Charles Dickens, for instance, was a genius at writing casts that were packed with memorable caricatures. Are flat characters bad?Īgain, having two-dimensional characters never spells automatic death for your book. To learn more about the flip side of the equation, we wrote extensively about what makes a dynamic character here. That means that, generally speaking, all two-dimensional characters are static, but not all static characters are two-dimensional. “Flat” is a referendum on the character's complexity. “Static” (or its inverse, “dynamic”) strictly describes the amount of change that a character undergoes throughout the story.

especially if you're not exactly sure what constitutes one. Sometimes the hardest part is simply identifying when you do have a flat character on your hands.
