Article originally published in Opal Writers' Magazine May/June 2019 edition. As anyone who has ever played the game can tell you, you never truly know a person until you’ve played Monopoly with them. You may have a friend you’ve known for years, weathered all of life’s hardships with, and you think you know everything about them—but put them in front of that board and it’s like you’re seeing them for the first time. |
Whether your character is brand new and you’re just getting to know them, or your character is near and dear but you’ve fallen out of touch, Monopoly can reconnect you with who they really are. You can actually play the game with other authors and act out your characters if you want some extra fun, or you can simply engage in this as a mental exercise...
Ask yourself the following questions:
- How does your character act when they are winning a game of Monopoly?
- How does your character act when they are losing?
- How do they act when they’ve won?
- How do they act when they’ve lost?
- How do they act when the tide of the game turns abruptly for or against them?
- Do they cheat?
It may also be worth asking yourself the above questions (or asking someone else who has played the actual game with you before—let’s be honest, we aren’t great judges of our own Monopoly behaviour). If you find that your answers about your own reactions line up almost exactly with those of your character, you might be projecting yourself on your character too much. There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-insert characters, but if you’re struggling with their characterization and find they line up too much with your own personality unintentionally, or that too many characters line up with each other, you may have a problem with characters not having distinct personalities.
Here’s an example to show you what this might look like.
Protagonist: Grandmother
- Winning: Smiles lovingly, cheats the game secretly so someone else can win, and pauses the game to bake cookies but no one minds.
- Losing: Laughs delightedly and cheers on the winner; says what a good job they are doing and how proud she is of how they’ve turned out.
- Won: Is shocked. How did this happen? She was sure she threw the game! Very embarrassed. Cleans the game up quickly and brushes it off. Makes extra cookies for everyone.
- Loses: Very pleased with the winner—pinches their cheeks and praises them. More cookies! Assures everyone they did their best and all that matters is they had fun.
- Turning tide: Is confused with the rules of the game. Why can’t they play gin rummy instead? Shakes head and serves cookies. Laughs it off and is determined to throw game anyway.
- Cheating: Yes, but in favour of others.
Antagonist: Devil
- Winning: Of course he’s winning. He always wins. They shall all bow at his mastery of this mortal game! He mocks them relentlessly.
- Losing: He fumes. This is a stupid mortal game. He throws insults at each player and plots their deaths. They shall burn for this.
- Wins: Beaming pride! Subjugation of the other players. This is the greatest game ever invented and he is the master of all games. Bow, mortals!
- Loses: Table flip. Game pieces scattered everywhere. Heads roll. House goes up in flames. Screams pierce the night. Blinding rage.
- Turning tides: Fits of rage and prideful outbursts. Cheats by stealing from the bank. Items spontaneously catch fire with his mood. As soon as he gets ahead again the whole table sighs with relief.
- Cheating: Definitely—in own favour.
Did your characters cheat? Both characters here did, but in opposite ways. Were your characters emotional? Angry, prideful, magnanimous, playful, resentful, bored, rude? Were they trusted to be the bankers? Do they play the whole game or give up? Do they take the game way too seriously? Knowing some of these answers can help you know your character on a fundamental level.
What you’re really asking is: how do they handle success, failure and change (on the journey to it and at the conclusion)? And what is their true morality? (Would they break a rule to help someone/themselves or always uphold the rules?)
Ideally, your characters’ personalities should be so strong that you could plop them into any world, under any circumstances, and know exactly how they would react. That’s one of the things we tend to love about memorable characters in fiction—their personalities are so clear that we feel like we could predict their reactions to any situation. I’m sure you could fairly confidently predict how Sherlock Holmes would react if he lost a game of Monopoly? Well, he’d never lose, would he? Or how the Hulk might react? SMASH. It gives readers a sense of ownership and attachment to know a character that well, but when characters react differently than their personalities lead us to expect without enough just cause from the plot or well-earned character development to warrant it, a distance and loss of trust is formed between the character and the reader. The character ceases to be the same one they’ve come to love. That’s why internal consistency of characterization is so important.
After performing this exercise, if you didn’t identify any issues or struggles and you were able to answer the questions confidently, that’s fantastic! Knowing how your characters react to success, failure and change (and their morality) will give you a roadmap for how they’ll react in any situation in your story. So next time you’re struggling with consistency of characterization or you just want to know your characters better, play Monopoly with them! |