Flat characters are built around a single idea or quality and can be summed up in one sentence. Round characters are complex enough to surprise the reader and still be believed. E. M. Forster coined both terms in Aspects of the Novel (1927). The memory trick: a flat character fits in a sentence, a round character fits in a surprise. If you can sum someone up in one line and they never step outside it, they're flat. If they can do something unexpected that turns out to be exactly like them, they're round.
Neither is a mark of quality. Flat characters are the ones readers recognize the moment they walk in, which is why comedy runs on them, why Forster defended them warmly, and why most novels have far more flat people than round ones. Neither term says anything about change, either: whether a character changes is a separate scale, static or dynamic.
Forster's definitions, in his words
Forster introduced the terms in the Clark lectures he gave at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927, published that year. The book is now in the public domain in the United States, so here is the passage itself.
We may divide characters into flat and round.
Flat characters were called “humours” in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The really flat character can be expressed in one sentence such as “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” There is Mrs. Micawber—she says she won't desert Mr. Micawber, she doesn't, and there she is.
Mrs. Micawber is from Dickens's David Copperfield (1850). Forster's second example is Caleb Balderstone, the old servant in Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), summed up as “I must conceal, even by subterfuges, the poverty of my master's house.” Caleb, Forster says, has “no existence outside it, no pleasures, none of the private lusts and aches that must complicate the most consistent of servitors.”
The neatest comparison is one Forster sets up himself. The Countess in George Meredith's Evan Harrington is flat, with the formula “Proud as we are of dear papa, we must conceal his memory.” Then he turns to Thackeray:
Becky is round. She, too, is on the make, but she cannot be summed up in a single phrase…
The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way.
Both women want to rise in the world. The same ambition makes a flat character in one novel and a round one in another, because Becky has other sides for it to collide with. Forster adds that Becky “waxes and wanes and has facets like a human being.”
In plain English, the test asks whether a character can do something you didn't see coming that, once it's done, could only have been them. Becky passes it in Chapter 53 of Vanity Fair. Her husband, Rawdon, gets out of a debtors' lock-up, comes home to find her alone with Lord Steyne, the patron her whole position depends on, and knocks the marquis down. Thackeray gives her reaction in two sentences: “She stood there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and victorious.” Nobody summing her up as “on the make” would predict admiration at that moment. Everything Thackeray has shown of her taste for nerve explains it. How to build a character who passes the test is the subject of round characters.
Flat vs round at a glance
| Flat character | Round character | |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | Flat characterOne idea or quality | Round characterSeveral traits that pull against each other |
| Sums up in a sentence? | Flat characterYes, and stays inside it | Round characterNo |
| Surprises the reader? | Flat characterNever | Round characterYes, convincingly |
| Reader recognizes them | Flat characterFrom the first line of each entrance | Round characterGradually, scene by scene |
| Best used for | Flat characterComic figures, walk-ons, single-job roles | Round characterProtagonists, antagonists, anyone the reader must care about |
| Main risk | Flat characterStereotype, or a bore if played seriously | Round character“A flat pretending to be round”: surprise without conviction |
| Forster's examples | Flat characterMrs. Micawber, Caleb Balderstone, the Countess | Round characterBecky Sharp, Madame Bovary, Tom Jones, Lucy Snowe |
What flat characters do well
Forster's chapter is as much a defense of flat characters as a definition of them. He names two advantages:
One great advantage of flat characters is that they are easily recognized whenever they come in—recognized by the reader's emotional eye, not by the visual eye, which merely notes the recurrence of a proper name. […] A second advantage is that they are easily remembered by the reader afterwards.
They are convenient for the author too: they “never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere.” One entrance tells the reader everything. That is why Austen can bring Mrs. Bennet into a scene and get a laugh from her first line, and why she so often pairs her with a round character who plays with the formula:
“You have no compassion on my poor nerves.”
“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”
Mrs. Bennet says her formula. Mr. Bennet turns it into a joke only a man with several sides could make: affectionate, contemptuous and bored at once. Flat characters often do their best work as the surface a round one strikes against.
Forster thought Dickens the great proof that flat can be enough: “Dickens' people are nearly all flat (Pip and David Copperfield attempt roundness, but so diffidently that they seem more like bubbles than solids). Nearly every one can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth.” He also set the limit. Flat characters “are best when they are comic,” and “A serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore.” The other risk is the stereotype: a flat character built from assumptions about a group, not from an idea of one person. The character archetypes guide covers the difference between an archetype, a trope and a stereotype.
Two scales: complexity and change
Flat and round answer one question: how complex is this character? Static and dynamic answer another: does this character change? Forster's own flat characters are mostly static, which is why the pairs blur. He says flat characters “have not to be watched for development,” and that readers remember them as unalterable because “they were not changed by circumstances; they moved through circumstances.” But flat doesn't mean static. The two scales are independent, and every combination exists.
| Static | Dynamic | |
|---|---|---|
| Flat | StaticMrs. Micawber; Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice | DynamicThe prodigal son in Luke's parable, who has one trait and still changes completely |
| Round | StaticMr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, complex and unchanged | DynamicElizabeth Bennet; Emma Woodhouse in Emma |
For the change scale, see static characters and dynamic characters.
When a flat character turns round
Forster's own example is Lady Bertram in Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), a placid, idle woman whose formula he gives as “I am kindly, but must not be fatigued.” Then Maria's adultery and Julia's elopement bring scandal on the family, and Austen writes that Lady Bertram “saw therefore in all its enormity, what had happened.” For a moment she has a moral view of her own, and Forster's image for it is that “the disk has suddenly extended and become a little globe.”
He adds, “Even Miss Bates has a mind,” and Emma (1815) proves it at Box Hill. Frank Churchill asks the party for one thing very clever, two moderately clever, or three very dull. Miss Bates cheerfully says she can manage three dull things, and Emma can't resist:
“Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.”
“Ah!—well—to be sure. Yes, I see what she means, (turning to Mr. Knightley,) and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.”
For most of the novel Miss Bates is the comic chatterbox. Here she understands the insult, takes the blame on herself and stays polite, and the laugh turns on Emma. The lesson: a flat character can get one moment where the formula doesn't hold, and it carries most weight when it lands on someone round.
Flat or round? A practice set
Decide whether each character is flat or round, and, on the other scale, static or dynamic. The answers follow.
- Mrs. Micawber, David Copperfield (1850)
- Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
- Mr. Collins, Pride and Prejudice
- Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
- Huck, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
- Mr. Woodhouse, Emma (1815)
- Emma Woodhouse, Emma
- Caleb Balderstone, The Bride of Lammermoor (1819)
| Character | Flat or round | Static or dynamic | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character1. Mrs. Micawber | Flat or roundFlat | Static or dynamicStatic | WhyForster's own example: one sentence sums her up, and she never steps outside it |
| Character2. Elizabeth Bennet | Flat or roundRound | Static or dynamicDynamic | WhyWitty, fair and prejudiced at once, and she ends with a new view of herself |
| Character3. Mr. Collins | Flat or roundFlat | Static or dynamicStatic | WhyPompous deference to his patroness, from his first letter to his last |
| Character4. Mr. Bennet | Flat or roundRound | Static or dynamicStatic | WhyWit, affection, neglect and guilt, and the same man at the end |
| Character5. Huck | Flat or roundRound | Static or dynamicDynamic | WhyBreaks with everything he was taught when he tears up the letter about Jim |
| Character6. Mr. Woodhouse | Flat or roundFlat | Static or dynamicStatic | WhyEvery scene finds him worrying about somebody's health |
| Character7. Emma Woodhouse | Flat or roundRound | Static or dynamicDynamic | WhyKind and vain at once, and after Box Hill she sees her own vanity; her father never changes |
| Character8. Caleb Balderstone | Flat or roundFlat | Static or dynamicStatic | WhyForster's purest case: “He is the idea” |
Choosing flat or round characters
- Round: anyone whose choices drive the plot or whose fate the reader must care about, usually the protagonist, the antagonist and the love interest.
- Flat: walk-ons, comic figures and characters with one job. Give each a clear formula.
- In between: supporting characters can stay flat most of the time and turn round in one scene, as Miss Bates does.
- Dana Kowal, 41, runs the family bakery in Pittsburgh, wants to sell it and can't say so. Round: no sentence holds her.
- Irena, her mother, who built the bakery and will fight the sale. Round.
- Gus, the night baker: “Nobody touches my starter.” Flat.
- Mrs. Feeney, every Tuesday at seven: “It was better in 1987.” Flat.
- The developer's agent: “Everyone has a number.” Flat, until the scene where he turns down a bribe.
Gus and Mrs. Feeney get a laugh every time they come in, and the reader never needs reminding who they are. Dana and Irena get the contradictions. The agent's one round moment is the scene readers will remember about him. For the round ones, the character profile template has room for want, need, wound and voice.
Keep the cast list as a table with each name and its Forster sentence, and add a row the moment a new character walks into a scene, while you still know why they're there.
With that list attached, the Strokes Assistant can review the chapters a character appears in and tell you whether their scenes keep repeating the same note. Repetition is fine for Gus and a warning sign for Dana.
Frequently asked questions
Is a flat character bad writing?
No. Forster argued that flat characters are easy to recognize whenever they appear and easy to remember afterwards, and that they work best in comedy. Most of the people in any novel are flat, and should be. A flat character becomes a problem when the story asks them to carry serious emotion or a central role.
What is the difference between a flat and a static character?
Flat is about complexity: the character is built around one idea or quality. Static is about change: the character ends the story as they began. The two often overlap, which is why they get confused, but a flat character can change, like the prodigal son, and a round character can stay the same, like Mr. Bennet.
Can the main character be flat?
Yes, especially in comedy, satire, fables and some adventure series, where the hero's single defining quality is the point. Forster even thought Dickens's Pip and David Copperfield only attempt roundness. In most contemporary novels, though, readers expect the protagonist to be round.
