What Makes The Identification Of A Character Should Start At Their Character construction—as A Writer,

What makes the identification of a character should start at their character construction—as a writer, this is when you’re determining the existence of this character, the motivation that drives their agency and purpose in the story (or even that of the story itself), etc. If this is layered [depth], only then would I personally say they’re a “complex character”.

What flows through that and becomes a part of the character’s “dynamic range”, like their personality and the range of elements attached to their character that is shown in different situations—like the, “this character acted this way here”, and “they showed this there”, “they have this significant item to represent this”, etc. This can easily be synonymous to that construction, or it can really just be it’s own thing if written that way. This in of itself can be interesting and “layered” in the sense that there is variety, hence the “dynamic range” terminology, but the understanding of that is different than what is for the sake of describing a character’s depth for identification. I would argue this is defined at the construction stage as opposed to in the counted showings of dynamic range, that otherwise, doesn’t have to be dependent upon what’s established in the construction. If you can see the flow in the range, chances are it started at the construction either way. A character’s growth is also NOT what defines their complexity, but that too can be synonymous to the construction and flow through for better storytelling. If their purpose is what changes and adds layers, depths—the WHY to what their purpose is, the it definitely applies. In most cases, you’d hope it does, but of course, you can have character’s undergo change for a specific element (or just learn something, becoming better on that front), but what sets their purpose is still 1 layer. Basically, the “lesson learned” could be an isolated thing that doesn’t really interact with their purpose as a character.

And to make it clear, whether a character is “complex” or not DOES NOT determine if they’re a good/poorly written character. I will never not stop fighting that as the art of simplicity or “less is more” is literally a thing that translates in a lot of different things. A simple character can absolutely be fine.

This is really primarily in the perspective of how we identify characters and really why—at least on this level of identification (things like complex, simple, protagonist, antagonist, etc.), the construction level makes more sense than the conditional moments alone. And it can be important as to not create a misleading, if inefficient label on the character. You can’t just identify a character as a “fan-service character” because the author wrote a few moments like that (which is typically more about their style than it is about the character), or if to go even more general, to be like, this is a “video game character” for a character that originated and immediate source material is that of a “anime or manga”. Like, the type of answer you’d give if you’re answering “who is this?” Of course, complex vs simple is a weird answer to give, but if for the sake of identifying FOR a character’s existence, then the logic still applies.

Some examples I’d look at are three well known shonen protags of Naruto, Goku, and Luffy.

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