The mark of a good character is not depth. It's making them feel lifelike. Not necessarily in the sense that seem like the kind of people you see in real life, but in the sense that they feel like living creatures with their own independent thought process

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Psychological Depth is a Crutch Anonymous 07/13/23(Thu)04:38:02 No.5119

The mark of a good character is not depth. It's making them feel lifelike. Not necessarily in the sense that seem like the kind of people you see in real life, but in the sense that they feel like living creatures with their own independent thought process. Great writers can do this with only a few lines. Bad writers, on the other hand, cannot so they compensate by adding layers and layers irrelevant "depth" to make them seem lifelike when they're really not. A mustache twirling villain who ties a damsel to railroad track because he has mommy issues is no better than one who does it just because he's evil. It adds nothing to the character or the overall story in any meaningful way.

Anonymous 11/25/23(Sat)16:03:12 No.5417

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>>5119
> Great writers can do this with only a few lines. Bad writers, on the other hand, cannot so they compensate by adding layers and layers irrelevant "depth" to make them seem lifelike when they're really not.
Well, quite often it's but trendy filler or pseudo-intellectual shibboleths. See also Aragorn Never Had an Identity Crisis.
But then, much the same can be said about great many other things. No tool makes good writing on its own. It's just that whatever becomes fashionable ends up the most annoying due to repetition. Which is how things stop being fashionable, of course.

Anonymous 11/30/23(Thu)01:22:36 No.5421

This depends entirely on the story you're trying to tell and the character you're trying to portray. Stories are defined by the conflicts they portray, and the conflict of man vs self doesn't make any sense unless your character does have some depth. LOTR would not be improved by adding depth to Sauron, but Crime and Punishment would be a very confusing story if Raskolnikov didn't have layers and conflicting motivations.