Direct Vs. Indirect
There are two ways an author can convey information about a character:
- Direct or explicit characterization
- The author literally tells the audience what a character is like. This may be done via the narrator, another character or by the character him- or herself.
- Indirect or implicit characterization
- The audience must infer for themselves what the character is like through the character’s thoughts, actions, speech (choice of words, way of talking), looks and interaction with other characters, including other characters’ reactions to that particular person.
Read more about this topic: Characterization
Famous quotes containing the words direct and/or indirect:
“Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.”
—Rudolf Carnap (18911970)
“If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
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