But Heroes must also be unique human beings, rather than stereotypical creatures or tin gods without flaws or unpredictability. Like any effective work of art they need both universality and originality. Nobody wants to see a movie or read a story about abstract qualities in human form. We want stories about real people. A real character, like a real person, is not just a single trait but a unique combination of many qualities and drives, some of them conflicting. And the more conflicting, the better.
THE WRITER’S JOURNEY ~ THIRD EDITION. Christopher Vogler. Published by Michael Wiese Productions
For starters, as usual, I can’t remember “where” it is that I read characters should be predictable or they would not be endearing. Readers love when they know what a character is going to do. Plus, a character that can’t be predictable can’t be made to do what we need them to do. Why? Because they won’t get themselves into trouble the way we writers want. They will be unpredictable and say “no”. No trouble equals to no plot.
On the other side, there are characters that, precisely because they’re predictable; they wreak havoc and create the problems our main characters would wish not to be immersed in. For more details watch Zen.
Hence, unpredictability is something to be discussed. One of the things that make casual to be causal in a story, is the predictability of the character. We expect them to act the way we expect them to act so trouble is the middle name of almost every main character.
The unpredictability is in the little twist. In the way we can make them act exactly like the reader might expect but without it being quite the way they expected it.
Difficult? Have fun making the predictable unpredictable. Pasto kalo.
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