I was talking to a friend recently about writing and mentioned the three things Samuel R. Delany said to put in a story for a well rounded character. "There [are] three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous." ("Characters," Jewel Hinged Jaw p. 157, referring to a passage from Nova.) Of course, I wasn't quite that eloquent on the phone. Here, purposeful actions further the plot, habitual actions can flesh out the context (e.g., society) of the character, and gratuitous actions can provide the leavening—the filling that lets us process the story more easily (e.g., pillow shots in cinema).
Continue reading Blowing Up a Character.