Character Personality – Whats it all about?

Does a characters personality traits and the way they interact with other characters affect the tone and plot of a story?

Giving a character a personality is one of the biggest joys for me when writing. I love to bring the my characters to life, making them relatable or detestable. The more personality that you can give to a character helps bring that story to life (I find anyway). So aside from giving your lead relatable personality traits, like compassion, empathy,  a good moral compass,

how does this affect the overall tone and plot of the story?

The more I write the more I find that the overall tone of a piece changes the more detail and character points I give them. I think its really important to make your characters 3 dimensional and give them a variety of traits that will enrich that character and give them a full and worth while personality.

This can be difficult at times and is often hard to balance say a villains personality into something that isn’t 2 dimensional as they tend to behave in a certain way, however I find adding in a deeper motivation for those villains makes them more relatable and understood, even though their motives are highly questionable.

Does the tone of a piece change based on a characters personality?

I think so, I think a characters personality can really change the mood and tone of a piece. If you have a character that is always happy, full of joy and love and bounces from place to place, the tone is going to be very happy. If a character is reserved, has a deep motivation for their actions, shows empathy but also slightly blinded by revenge or rage, this will have a huge effect on the tone.

Does this affect the plot?

Again I really think so. I think a plot is driven by the motivation of the characters moving from Point A to Point B. If that character behaves in a certain way based on their personality, this will have an impact on how they make those transitions from point to point and will hugely affect the plot based on that.

What do you think, does a characters personality traits really affect a story that much?

Would love to hear what you think so leave a comment below