Looking over some of the stuff going on in that topic you linked, I’m surprised just how often people are unable to grasp the concept of character development. They see that and take it to mean that the character has to change somehow, and that’s simply not true. Character development can be accomplished in three ways. One of them is change, aye, but the other two are dramatic conflict and exposition. I’m not taking these out of a book; rather, I make these propositions on my own authority, in my own words. However, those with a rigorous discipline in literature and composition will be quick to understand in official terms what I am explaining qualitatively.
Character development is the conveyance of a personality to an audience. The fundamental relationship between the three vehicles of character development that I have listed is that each conveys personality in a completely exclusive way.
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First, and the most elemental of the three vehicles of character development, is to give the character a dramatic conflict to overcome. It’s a term that I thought kids learned in middle school language arts class, but I never hear anyone mention the concept of conflict in terms of character development. Dramatic conflict conveys personality in terms of stress lines and tension. Whereas the “path of least resistance” can be considered an absence of personality, any deviation from this path implies characteristics that in turn lead to a distinct personality. Because the nature of this type of character development is so often implicit, you might think of it as drawing the outline of a personality, rather than the substance of it.
Second, and the most unappreciated of the three vehicles of character development, is to give the character exposition. This has deep aesthetic value and isn’t used nearly often enough in modern English literature. It is also the most difficult of the three to master, and its absence is the most apparent telltale of an incompetent writer. Exposition conveys personality in terms of flesh, texture, and detail. Imagery is the key word here, provided you understand that I’m not talking about visual imagery so much as the…“image” of a hard disk, let’s say. Exposition is like a parade of imagery, revealing new characteristics that were not previously known, which build up to a distinct personality. If dramatic conflict is the outline of a personality, then exposition is the substance. And although exposition is not really the opposite of dramatic conflict, they do share a complementary relationship, much like nouns and verbs.
Third, and lastly of the three vehicles of character development, is to expose the character to change, per se, whereby the character’s traits are altered. It is therefore the most coarse technique of the three, although for longer stories it becomes exceedingly practicable. Whereas exposition reveals character traits, and conflict tests them, change affects them. It is therefore somewhat different from the first two, because it relies on the richness of existing character development to itself achieve richness. (After all, if you try changing something with no outline and no substance, who’s going to notice? Who’s going to care?) And, so, when people argue that a character must change in order to undergo “character development,” they are actually missing the entire point of the creation of character traits through conflict and exposition. (Yes, it is true that change can also create character traits, but only inasmuch as is provided an answer to, “Change from what?” Some would consider this to be simply a piggyback on one of the other two types of character development.) Thus, the people who make this argument are the same people who often feel compelled to throw their characters into various, contrived situations simply “to give them something to do.” Such folks do not grasp the theory of composition.
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Finally, please note that all three of these vehicles of character development are separable from the plot of a story. Character development and plot do not have to work together. Of course, in the best literature they nearly always do, but I mention it because most people just can’t separate the two concepts in their minds, which gives away their lack of understanding. Often, people will use “plot” and “character development” interchangeably, which is patently incorrect.
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“Exposition” is already a literary term, and it means the same thing I have taken it to mean here, but in a far more limited sense. So, hoping to avoid confusion, and operating on the hunch that few people here know what “exposition” really is in the sense that I intend, I have composed a very short story detailing character development through exposition. (This is loosely based upon a story I did not write.) At the heart of the story is a dramatic conflict, which comes in the form of a spoken question. However, everything else besides the question itself is pure exposition, with no explicit dramatic conflict and no change:
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A very old man, Louis Morgan, leaned back into an old walnut porch swing, eating a juicy peach from the orchard on his plantation. The warmth of the summer and the sweet flesh of the fruit sent him dreaming back to the day so long ago when, on that very same porch, he pondered whether he would ask the woman he loved to marry him…
“Will I or nill I?” the young man asked of himself, biting into the sweet flesh of a peach while anxiety and excitement battled together in his stomach. Because, after all, it is a big decision to ask the person you love to marry you. And as he thought it over, Louis looked about the orchards, and toward the fields beyond…into an endless sea of golden grass. His grandfather had founded this plantation over eighty years ago, in his prime. Built it out of nothing! He had been a legend of a man; no doubt. A few years after starting the plantation, he had gone on an expedition to California and returned with a dozen beautiful peach saplings and a new wife, whose father had given the saplings as a wedding gift. He planted them right outside the house, and went about raising a family.
The times soon called upon him, and he served as a colonel for the South before the war took him away forever. When she got the news, his wife was stricken with grief and suddenly felt very alone, for it was a long way from California and her own family. But by then they had two girls, one of whom would grow up to be Louis’ mother, and she put her heart into raising them. Louis remembered his grandmother as a young boy. She was very fond of those peach trees, and she could do magic with the fruit…peach pie, peach cobbler, peach salad. But on the hottest summer days, when the chores were finished, she would go outside with the young Louis, and they’d sit on the porch swing together and eat plain old ordinary raw peaches, right down to the pit, and they’d get covered in sticky peach juice and make an enormous mess of themselves, usually having a very good time of it.
As he grew up, Louis too began to treasure those peach trees—which by now were actually the descendents of the original trees, much like Louis himself was the descendent of the original Morgan. And so it was, that on this day, as he got to the end of the peach, the very last bite, and was licking the pit, thinking about the woman he loved, he wondered for the last time…“Will I or nill I?” Then he looked at the pit, coarse and brown in his sticky fingers, and waiting with eternal patience to be thrown back to the Earth so that it too could become a tree, someday. The sight of it struck him with a moment of deep clarity, and all at once the excitement and anxiety in his stomach paused, for just an instant, as he made his decision.
The memory faded. Louis found himself a very old man once more, sitting on his porch in the midst of a lovely summer afternoon, looking into the pit of another peach. His granddaughter sat beside him, still working on her own peach, talking in between bites about the sorts of creatures that only kids could see, and it was anyone’s guess if she was getting more of the peach in her mouth or on her dress. He grinned to himself and looked back out into the orchard again. Just apart from the other trees stood one in particular, surrounded by flagstones. It never gave the tastiest fruit, but it was always his favorite. He figured his granddaughter would probably understand, someday. And then Louis Morgan sat back in the swing and murmured half to himself, “I will.”
