o In contrast, the kind of surprise we get from a round character
should evoke both shock and the strong feeling of inevitability.
The reader thinks, “Of course! I should have seen that coming.”
When a round character surprises us, we’re delighted or moved
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kindness or cruelty that we didn’t expect but that we believe
the moment we see them. Round characters can also break our
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a lifelike way.o Round characters should be both surprising and inevitable
so that whatever happens to them is probably the only way
things could have turned out—not because of circumstance
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drove them to it.z $VPHQWLRQHGLQDQHDUOLHUOHFWXUH¿FWLRQDOSHRSOHDUHGLIIHUHQWIURP
real people because we can know what they’re thinking, which is
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writer never actually shows us what the character is thinking, as long
as the potential for the writer to show us is present. By the same token,
characters may be round as long as they have the potential to change,
even if they never actually do. Some of the most heartbreaking people in
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or are defeated by circumstance.
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Mrs. Dalloway is round because we are inside her mind at every
moment, listening to her private thoughts. In a series of detective novels
by Denise Mina, we see inside the mind of the main character, Paddy
Meehan, but much of the richness of that character comes from her
circumstances—from Mina’s skillful evocation of the dank, melancholy
world of working-class Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s.