Stock Characters and Their Eternal Popularity

I have been pondering writing quite frequently lately, and have found myself returning again and again to the same question: how on earth does Dickens do it? He wrote stories about characters that have endured long past his lifetime, yet if you read his books he is culpable for one of the most horrific errors a writer could make: many of his characters are what we now call “stock characters.” 

You might not recognize the stock characters in Dickens at first read, primarily because you will inevitably be overwhelmed by the vast amount of narrative exposition which occurs (the other so-called error that Dickens could be accused of is a heavy authorial presence throughout all of his books, except maybe David Copperfield, which was written in first person and was an autobiography of sorts and therefore the authorial presence was part of the story anyway). The reason you wouldn’t recognize these stock characters at first is because they are so different now. Think about the last movie you saw. Did it have a slightly whiny side character that was the first to get killed off because he was wasting his time complaining instead of paying attention? If it was a comedy, did it have the slightly weird side kick that was really way funnier than his prince-charming of a best friend, but too funny-looking to get the girl? These are the travesties that our society calls "stock characters."

We don’t value stock characters; we are usually offended by them. Good authors don’t use them and good movies don’t have them. The AMC channel touts that “characters are welcome” on their channel, which is why they played a John Wayne marathon, possibly one of the greatest characters ever, the cranky old womanizing cowboy who always wins in the end…oh wait. I’m pretty sure that a very similar character is in every western ever made. Or written. 

Maybe the characters that we love are more common than we think they are. Harry Potter is a good guy who is fighting evil despite great personal loss in his life and he is certainly not the first to do so in a novel. Voldemort is the bad guy that chooses power and evil over love and goodness... wonderful characters, but hardly original once we peel back their layers.They may not necessarily be stock characters - which is quite a negative term - but they are definitely archetypal characters, and that is essentially a more positive take on the same idea.

Maybe it is impossible to write a new character at all. Maybe they have all been written already and all the writers in the world should either give up or just write sequels to other people's books.

Not surprisingly, things worked out so that after thinking about all of this, sometimes intently and sometimes just in the back of my mind like a running commentary, I stumbled upon a blog written by my friend. This blog was not about stock characters, it was about friends and meeting together and about great authors, but my friend quoted G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I am pasting the quote here, it is long, but worth the read:

“All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork.
People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.
This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death.
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.
Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.”

Maybe this is why stock characters will forever endure and forever be loved. Because repetition is not lifelessness, it is not a lack of creativity, it is an encore of creativity. It is the essence of life to repeat and repeat and repeat…after all, there is nothing new under the sun.


And so Dickens, I tip my hat to you in honor of your love for human nature, your love for the characters you wrote and the characters you played, and to the vast wisdom that you showed when you created story after story filled with young innocents, evil old villains, crotchety misers, and benevolent benefactors. One day, maybe I will have the honor of following in your footsteps and so may stretch the very laws of proper grammar and how many commas can be fit into one sentence in my supreme delight at contributing to the world’s vast collection of stock characters.