Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic
Aaalaurieaaa 4881

From Distressed Damsel to Action Girl. A lot can change in twenty years.


Cquote1
"You have the opportunity, here and now, to choose. To become something greater and nobler, and more difficult than what you were before. The universe does not offer such chances often, G'kar."
Nameless Narn, Babylon 5 — "Dust to Dust"
Cquote2


Character development is, by definition, the change in characterization of a Dynamic Character, who changes over the course of a narrative. At its core, it shows a character changing. Most narrative fiction in any media will feature some display of this.

While the definition of "good" and "bad" character development is subjective, it's generally agreed upon that good character development is believable and rounds out a well-written character. Bad character development leads to the feeling that someone is manipulating the events to their own whims, or even reduces the character's believability.

There are many sub-tropes that take place due to this trope, some of which include

These are hardly the only examples. The Evil Twin of Character Development is Character Derailment. Beware this trope. To see the opposite of this trope, see Static Character. See also Flat Character and Rounded Character. Compare Hidden Depths, where something is revealed that was true all along, but would not have been visible before, and any trope that begins with "Took A Level In."

The oldest form of this is the moral decay of the Anti-Hero, as in Shakespeare's Macbeth or Coriolanus. In each case the protagonist's growing vices are timidly concealed at first but then openly displayed. A fascinating reversal of this occurs in Schindler's List - at first Schindler claims he is only saving people because he needs them for his business. By the end he is openly losing millions. His inversion of moral decay goes from an intention to get rich by exploiting slave labour, to crying over not saving one more person.

Advertisement