Why characters must be predictable

The Flight of The Condor: The Sunday Strips, week 78

Hey,

This is our hero’s favorite way of solving conflicts. The popular way, of course: he dives into chaos.

Does he know what he’s doing? Who cares, man.

Probably not.

The thing is, a character does what he’s supposed to do. Then, after a while, once you know him, he can surprise you. But for someone to surprise you, first you have to feel that you know them.

Even if you don’t.

It doesn’t matter how much you think you know a character, or a family member, or a famous person. They surprise you when you expect them to do one thing and they end up doing something else. No one will ever surprise you if you have no expectations at all.

For example, you’d be surprised if your aunt Gladys went to the Moon in a single leap. That’s because you think you know your aunt Gladys, and until that moment you were pretty sure she was just a regular human being.

But if you take The Condor, or a superhero you just created, and make them jump to the Moon in one leap, why would anyone be surprised? Okay, so it’s a character who can jump to the Moon. You never expected them not to be able to do that, because you didn’t know them yet.

Of course, once you draw a character and make them look human, people will start making asssumptions. But in the context of a superhero story, no one will be shocked that they can leap to the Moon.

What I’m saying is this: a character is, in a way, a collection of habits that make them predictable, plus a few hidden things that may surprise you. But those things only surprise you once the creator has shown you enough of those habits.

In this strip, our hero tries to escape and only ends up making things easier for his captor. If you’ve been reading these strips for a while, you might already know whether that’s one of his habits.

Or something you didn’t expect.

And if you’re new, you can read a collection of more than sixty strips, on paper, here, and make up your own mind.

Enjoy.