A round character is a complex character: someone with several traits that pull against each other, an inner life the reader can sense, and the capacity to act in ways that surprise but still make sense. E. M. Forster coined the term in Aspects of the Novel (1927), and his test is still the one teachers and critics use: a round character is “capable of surprising in a convincing way.” The opposite is a flat character, built around a single idea and summed up in a sentence.
Round describes depth, not change: a round character may change completely over a book, or not at all. This page is about building that depth, with five signs of it, ten examples and six steps. For Forster's two categories side by side, and what flat characters are good for, see flat vs round characters.
Forster's definition of a round character
Forster gave the Clark lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927 and published them that year as Aspects of the Novel. In the chapter “People (continued)” he divides characters into flat and round, and gives one test for the second kind.
The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it—life within the pages of a book.
Both halves matter. A character who never surprises is flat. A character who surprises without convincing, doing things the book hasn't prepared, is a flat pretending to be round. A real surprise turns out, on reflection, to be exactly like the person.
Forster's own examples were “All the principal characters in War and Peace, all the Dostoevsky characters,” several of Proust's, Madame Bovary, Thackeray's Becky Sharp, Fielding's Tom Jones and Parson Adams, and Charlotte Brontë's Lucy Snowe. He also wrote that “All the Jane Austen characters are ready for an extended life,” meaning a life beyond what the plot needs from them.
Five signs of a round character
Traits that pull against each other
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
In one line she is witty, honest about her wounded vanity, and already prejudiced: three traits the rest of the novel sets against each other. A flat character has one quality. A round one has several, and they argue.
Two things they want at once
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?
She believes he is about to marry someone else and send her away. In the speech that follows she all but confesses that she loves him, and demands to be treated as his equal. Love and self-respect are both in the line, and the book's central choice comes from the fact that she can't always have both.
A self-image that's partly wrong
I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning.
Two daughters have just turned him out into the storm, so it is true. It is also how he avoids seeing his own part, and the rest of the play makes him face what he did to Cordelia. A round character's opinion of themselves is evidence, not a verdict. Flat characters are exactly what they think they are.
Different with different people
Mr. Bennet is affectionate and confiding with Elizabeth, coolly sarcastic with his wife, and stricken with guilt when Lydia runs off with Wickham. Each version is true. Round characters adjust to the person in front of them, the way people do, and the reader assembles the whole from the pieces.
Surprises that were planted
Elizabeth's change of mind about Wickham is the great surprise of Pride and Prejudice, and Austen plants it chapters ahead. In Chapter 16, at their first long talk, Wickham tells Elizabeth he has no reason to avoid Darcy: if Darcy wants to avoid him, Darcy must go. Two chapters later he stays away from the Netherfield ball, and Elizabeth blames Darcy. When she rereads Darcy's letter in Chapter 36, she does the reader's work for them.
She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Darcy—that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week.
The evidence was on the page all along, and so was the trait that lets her use it: the honesty about her own vanity she showed in Chapter 5. The surprise convinces because it is built from details the reader already had, and because it hurts exactly where she is proudest, in her judgment.
The planting can also sit in the same chapter as the surprise. As Becky Sharp leaves Miss Pinkerton's academy at the start of Vanity Fair, Miss Jemima hands her a parting copy of Johnson's Dictionary, and Becky, in Thackeray's words, “put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden.” It shocks the school and the reader, and it convinces because Thackeray has just shown her position there: an “articled pupil” who paid for her keep by talking French with the younger girls.
Round character examples
| Character | What pulls against what | A convincing surprise |
|---|---|---|
| CharacterElizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice (1813) | What pulls against whatWit and fairness against quick judgment | A convincing surpriseShe rereads Darcy's letter and admits she has misjudged him and Wickham |
| CharacterJane Eyre, Jane Eyre (1847) | What pulls against whatPassion against self-respect | A convincing surpriseShe slips out of Thornfield before dawn, though she loves Rochester |
| CharacterBecky Sharp, Vanity Fair (1847–48) | What pulls against whatCharm against ruthlessness | A convincing surpriseShe throws the farewell dictionary out of the carriage |
| CharacterEmma Woodhouse, Emma (1815) | What pulls against whatKindness against vanity | A convincing surpriseShe mocks Miss Bates at Box Hill, then cries most of the way home |
| CharacterMr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice | What pulls against whatWit against neglect | A convincing surpriseHe blames himself for Lydia, then predicts the feeling will pass |
| CharacterHamlet, Hamlet (c. 1600) | What pulls against whatThought against action | A convincing surpriseAfter sparing Claudius at prayer, he stabs Polonius through a curtain on impulse |
| CharacterFalstaff, Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1597) | What pulls against whatCowardice against wit and warmth | A convincing surpriseHe plays dead at Shrewsbury, then claims he killed Hotspur |
| CharacterLong John Silver, Treasure Island (1883) | What pulls against whatCharm against treachery | A convincing surpriseHe murders an honest sailor, then shields Jim from the other pirates |
| CharacterRaskolnikov, Crime and Punishment (1866) | What pulls against whatGenerosity against cold theory | A convincing surpriseSoon after the murder, he gives all his money to the widow of a drunk he met in a tavern, for the funeral |
| CharacterDorothea Brooke, Middlemarch (1871–72) | What pulls against whatIdealism against self-deception | A convincing surpriseShe marries the dry scholar Casaubon, sure he is a great mind |
Notice that none of these characters is round because the author describes them at length. Each is round because they do something that a one-sentence summary wouldn't predict, and then the reader sees it should have been predictable all along.
Round vs dynamic characters
Round and flat measure complexity. Dynamic and static measure change, and the two scales are independent. Elizabeth Bennet is round and ends the novel with a new view of herself. Her father is just as round and exactly the same at the end. For change itself, see dynamic characters and static characters; the flat vs round guide sets out all four combinations.
Which characters should be round
Roundness takes page space, so spend it where the reader's attention goes. Forster's rule of thumb: “It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time.” Anyone the reader must care about across a whole book needs it: the protagonist, a tragic hero, the love interest, and usually the antagonist, since a villain the reader can sum up in a sentence has fewer ways to surprise the hero (see how to write a villain).
Walk-ons, comic figures and characters who appear in two scenes can stay flat. Forster thought a complex novel often needs flat people as well as round, and the reason is practical: a book where every waiter has a secret sorrow has no foreground. A foil can be either, as long as the contrast is clear.
How to write a round character
- Pick two traits that disagree
Start with a core trait and add one that pulls against it: a generous man who keeps score, a brave woman who can't bear to be laughed at. The character traits list has hundreds to choose from.
- Give them two wants
Make one want public and one private, and arrange the plot so both can't be had. Jane wants Rochester and wants to respect herself.
- Write a scene nobody needs
Draft the character on a day the plot doesn't touch: what they do alone on a Sunday, what they read, who they phone. You may never use it, but it gives them the extended life Forster saw in Austen's people.
- Let them misjudge themselves
Give them a belief about who they are that the reader can test against what they do, as Lear's “more sinn'd against than sinning” invites the reader to.
- Plan one surprise and plant it twice
Decide the moment the character will do something unexpected, then go back and show the trait behind it twice, small, before it matters. That is what makes a surprise convince.
- Let other characters disagree about them
If everyone in the book describes the character the same way, the reader will too. Let a sister, an employer and an enemy each see a different person.
Walter split every restaurant bill to the cent, kept the receipts in a shoebox labeled by year, and had once lent his own brother bus fare against a signed IOU. So when the bursar's office called Lena to say her spring tuition had been paid in full, she phoned everyone she knew before she thought of him.
“It's a loan,” he said. “Interest-free. I've written it up.” He had: two pages, signed, with a repayment schedule that began in 2051. “Your grandmother would have wanted terms,” he said, and hung up before she could thank him.
The surprise, the tight-fisted grandfather paying, convinces because it arrives in his own form: a contract, a schedule, a joke about terms. The trait didn't vanish. It found a use. The shoebox and the IOU are the two plants, and the reader should remember them when the contract appears.
Common mistakes with round characters
- Random isn't round. Contradictions with no logic behind them are Forster's “flat pretending to be round.” The reader should be able to explain the surprise afterward.
- Backstory isn't depth. A tragic past delivered in Chapter 2 is an info dump, not a personality. Depth shows in present choices.
- Quirks aren't depth. A love of jazz, a limp and a cat add color. They make a character round only if they pull against something.
- Dark isn't deep. A cruel streak is one more trait. It adds roundness only when it collides with another.
- Every character round. The cast crowds the protagonist, and the book loses its foreground.
A character goes flat when every scene asks the same thing of them. Keep the two traits and the two wants on the character's profile; the character profile template has fields for both.
Once the chapters exist, ask the Strokes Assistant to list each choice the character makes in them. Twelve choices that all express the same trait are a flat character on paper, however much you know about them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a round and a dynamic character?
Round is about complexity: the character has contradictions and can surprise. Dynamic is about change: the character ends the story as a different person. Most protagonists are both, but the scales are separate. Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is round and never changes; the prodigal son changes without being complex.
Can a minor character be round?
Yes, if the book has room. A minor character becomes round when they do one thing a summary wouldn't predict and the reader believes it. Forster pointed to Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park, a lazy, placid figure who for one moment of family crisis sees clearly. One such scene can be enough.
How do you make a flat character round?
Give them a second trait that pulls against the first, a want of their own, and one choice that surprises but fits. Plant the trait behind that choice earlier, in a small way. Don't add backstory or quirks and expect depth: roundness shows in what the character does when the story leans on them.
