As the story progresses, the audience either learns new facts or experiences new personality trait which make that character appear in a different light. That means a 'deep' character is a character with hidden depths. If your ogres are like onions, they do indeed have depth.

Depth: How the audience's perception of the character changes the better said character is known.

The amount of different traits that define them and how well these interact.

Breadth: Variation within a character.One or two of these traits is most often enough for a 'character' to be considered such. Height: The most outward traits of a character.The TVTropes article on Character Depth describes the three dimensions a character can have as follows: answer provides another definition, but doesn't explain why it is different from the two featured in my question: which definition, if any, is correct? What is the original definition? What definition is given by the most authoritative sources? My question, and confusion, is caused by the contradictions of the multiple definitions. In fact, in stories where the flat arc belongs the MC, they are often representative of an idea, yet whilst also being three-dimensional, naturally.

This feature however, only requires their arc being flat.

However, he also said that a flat character represents an idea, by being unchanging, almost like a force of nature. Forster said a flat character is someone who is both two-dimensional and has a flat character arc. That means that according to Britannica, E. I forgot to mention these further confuddling details. Other times, I hear flat character explained as a character that has a flat arc, but one that's not necessarily two-dimensional.įrom this Britannica definition, who defines the term in the first way, I suspect that maybe this is a case of these terms originally being well-defined, but after misuse, are now ambiguous? However, sometimes, I hear two-dimensional character explained flat character. Here, a two-dimensional character is character that shows a little, and not very complex, emotions and/or traits. The way I understand it, the term flat character is used for a character that is both two-dimensional and has a flat character arc.

Flat characters definition literature