Do Readers Actually Want Character Development?

According to Jack Miles,
even He changes.

This post was inspired by a Reddit thread questioning if Fantasy readers actually liked character development. The original poster, bradbeaulieu, had been on a panel where Patrick Rothfuss had taken the devil's advocate position that Fantasy readers didn't abide much character change. It had to be at least a little capricious given that Rothfuss's famous Kingkiller Chronicle is about a young Mary Sue turning into a broken old man.

To me, it depends greatly on the kind of character, circumstance and length of the novel. Flowers for Algernon without character development is a ridiculous idea. He has to change - the development is the plot, the gimmick, the engine for social criticism and introspection, and for the experiment of the prose. Its fame is largely from readers having strong reactions to the character development, and whether they prefer his rise or fall in intellect, or hopefully, having deeper reactions than just "liking" it.

That extreme example points us toward how good change typically works: being appropriate to the personality and circumstance. I don't want Bilbo Baggins giving into blood lust and singing war songs. He adapts to his circumstances, is forced to assert himself more, grows confident and capable, but is still timid, anxious, and by the end of the The Hobbit, is actually opposed to the greed that stirred him in the beginning. He is a better person for going through this arc, and the novel far much richer for it. If he became a ranty pacifist, it would have gone too far in that direction. If he became just another warrior Thorin could rely on, it would have gone in a less imaginative and compassionate direction and damaged the book. Bilbo goes through changes that we buy and that help the book.

Brad wondered if audiences didn't only like certain kinds of change, specifically positive change. Certainly Bilbo changes towards the heroic or the moral. Yet audiences love Batman and Breaking Bad, which are respectively about an innocent boy becoming destructively consumed with revenge, and a cancer patient becoming a meth tyrant. A frightening number of Breaking Bad fans are still rooting for Walter White in the final season, more attached to him than ever. My brother is one of them.

While I want Walter to fall from disgrace, his development has been superb and worthy of the attention its gotten. Breaking Bad is originally about Walter White's transformations, and the stages of his character are earned. That's what I want. Gandalf can be the same guy all the time for his role and his personality traits, and I won't mind. Lupin the 3rd can always be that lecherous thief. But an affecting novel usually puts its characters through some sort of development, or at least reveals more of who and how they are over time. The notion of readers being opposed to character development scares me more than any change itself.

Five Reasons I’m Glad I Joined Reddit

1. Better Conversation

In my social circles, Reddit has a terrible reputation for being full of trolls and backbiters. This isn’t my experience at all, though more nasties probably lurk in other sub-reddits. I've only registered on forums of interest – r/Fantasy, r/Books, r/Science, r/Anime, r/WorldNews – all of which offer bouquets of content that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen, as well as meeting authors and getting valuable publishing advice. And then there are the conversations.

Some of the best literary chats I had from March-May were among the comments on r/Fantasy, about how Horror and Fantasy can overlap, why Fantasy tends to stall in the first hundred pages, and even reflecting on the works of Gene Wolfe. Jerks tend to get isolated, called out, and most refreshingly, reasoned with until they’re disarmed. It’s actually deeper and nicer than most of conversations I've seen on Facebook walls, though I haven’t visited r/Politics yet.

2. Mary Robinette Kowal is my Editing Pop Idol

People say Seanan McGuire is amazing with her fans on Twitter, and she is, but I’ve never seen anyone interact with their readers like Mary Robinette Kowal did on r/Fantasy.

A reader linked to her article about revising old works to weed out idle prejudices and colonial attitudes, from both wording and plotting. It takes amazing guts to admit your mistakes in public. More amazing: when users questioned her motives or practices, she responded in considerate fashion and was open enough to change her mind on at least one edit. Twitter is too brief, and too easy to read as glib or hostile, for these sorts of exchanges. Here we had an author inviting people into her process and producing work she preferred thanks to the interaction.