Writing Essential Characters

No matter the technology available for practical and digital effects in films or video games, no matter how abstract or how undeveloped the philosophical themes of a story might be, and no matter the medium, the characters of a story can always stand out for the essential roles they play in events.  There are many ways to make characters objectively deep or subjectively interesting, but an integral part of the foundation of a fictional character is whether or not they are truly needed in the story.  Without making characters essential, the objective quality and subjective impact of their role is lessened to some extent.  Making them vital to the story is therefore a key part of storytelling.

The two ways to accomplish this are simple: either make the cast smaller or make characters who are not needed in the story necessary inclusions.  There are plenty of examples of films in particular from the last 10 years that have large main casts, but not always for any reason beyond fitting in as many popular actors and actresses into one movie as they can.  This surplus of characters often results in entire main characters getting reduced to humorous roles if they are not included for one specific but very limited part of the story they are essential for.  In this case, their essential action could very easily be given to another character who is more necessary to the plot, which is a great way to make existing characters essential without changing certain major plot points.

Whether plans for multiple characters are better off consolidated into a smaller number of characters at least in part hinges on the length of the runtime for a show or film (or the length of the story for a video game or book).  In the current culture where even pointless ensemble casts are popular, it is just less likely that every cast of characters across different projects truly is essential in its present form.  Combined with how movie runtimes that often do not match the true potential of a story because they are longer or shorter than what is needed, problems with casting too many characters, which by necessity means that not all of them are vital, can become even more obvious to people looking for them.

Not all characters have to be immensely deep or complex because not all people are deep.  Everyone has the capacity for depth, but few actually embrace this capacity by living for things of depth like knowledge of reason, self-awareness, and justice.  Thus, it would both be unrealistic and less philosophically helpful for every character in every story to be deep, even if that depth is more often rooted in emotional sincerity than in concern for truth.  Despite this, every character can be essential to a story in some way--no matter how deep of a character they are.

If more storytellers took these facts into direct consideration when making fiction, the quality of characterization and general plots would increase.  Needless characters would literally be removed from stories or changed to have a reason for their inclusion.  In turn, characters that better reflect personalities and philosophical ideas could be crafted without the random missing components that hinder their usefulness.  The consequences would span everything from superior dialogue to less money spent on casting to more critical approval from people who actually understand the objectivity of art and are not just interested in having a subjectively good time.  Essential characters are an intrinsic asset to a story artistically and even on a business level.