are convincing and rich in character with flaws and qualities.

appear human, with multiple aspects to their personalities.

As readers, we invest more emotion in round characters and may well feel disappointed when we no longer have them in our lives, once we finish reading their stories. The term “round” refers to characters sufficiently complex “to be able to surprise the reader without losing credibility,” as William Harmon and Hugh Holman state in their classic work, A Handbook to Literature. When a flat character takes on multiple aspects and a realistic character defects, the flat persona curves towards the rounded character.

are easily recognizable by readers and remembered for these very characteristics.īesides Miss Havisham, other well-known examples of flat characters include Sykes from Oliver Twist, Benvolio in “Romeo and Juliet,” and sitcom characters such as the clueless Dad or Mom in “The Goldbergs” or Newman in “Seinfeld.”.

predictable in terms of their behavior.

help create atmosphere, mood, or comedy.

maintain the characteristics or familiar traits of a stereotype, e.g., Miss Havisham as the jilted bride.Many stories and novels in fact feature flat characters as main characters, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson for example, as well as the characters in various stories such as the “Twilight” series. support the main character, or other characters.For example, Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations, is a flat character who seeks only revenge for being abandoned on her wedding day. Those true to life he considered to be “round,” while “flat” characters served only one purpose in the story.Īuthors create flat characters to represent a specific idea or quality.įlat characters are “immediately recognizable and can usually be represented by a single sentence,” or characteristic. Forster, in his 1927 Aspects of the Novel, applied the terms “flat” and “round” to describe fictional characters (pp.

What is round and flat character