I don't care for character development in novels. When reading a novel, I prefer not to be subjected to the development of characters. Do not inflict character development on me, I'll bristle. This might be because I have never known exactly what the term means and I am more comfortable being the target of strategies I understand. I read about character development so often as a self-evident virtue of good fiction (and good movies too) that it makes me suspicious. If everyone agrees then it must be complete nonsense. I imagine beginning writers are always encouraged to pay attention to character development. They are probably told that it's one of the most important aspects of good fiction, perhaps even the most important! The creation of "well-rounded characters," perhaps inspired, just a little, by people they know.

I've been told I'm a character. "You're such a character, Ronnie." Am I sufficiently developed? Am I deftly realized? Or am I thinly drawn, two-dimensional? Even more confusing is when I'm told I'm a real character. How can I be a real character? I'm either one or the other. I think I'm the other.

People complain that a book or a movie contained no "sympathetic" characters or "likable" characters. I could find no one in the novel to root for. There is, apparently, a common searching that takes place, within the text of a novel, for sympathetic characters with whom one can identify, even root for, to cheer on, to receive one's sympathies. This strikes me as a little childish, even infantile. I don't demand much from characters. A name is nice, if there are a number of characters, to keep them straight. A few attributes (lethargy, intolerance of nieces), maybe a fact or two (lupus, nieces), the rest of it can be left murky and unknowable. I don't like it when they grow, or learn from their mistakes, or evolve, or understand what they're doing, or overcome things, or have realizations, or correctly assess the motivations of others, or quietly accept certain grim facts, or are so compelling that I feel I know them. It's verisimilitude I want!