Inconsistent Characterization is (Not) a Problem

A character walks into a bar. Okay, no, maybe not like that.​ A character asserts they're good at telling when others lie, but totally misses it in a situation where the readers think it obvious.

Is this a mis-characterization? Something to fix? Is it a plot-hole? What if later in the story, the character does detect somebody lying? What if it's context-dependent? What if it's all bullshit? More importantly, does it matter? Maybe caring about these kinds of inconsistencies matters less than some writers think.

Stories are told by people, and people are hella messy. We're often unreliable and rarely very consistent. Maybe one of the reasons we listen to stories is to be pulled along by the flow of the narrative, and not whether characters are being consistent on every page.

Maybe characters, like people, aren't static entities or beat sheets.

Everybody loves messy characters. Sometimes we write them on purpose. Sometimes, on accident. Discovering a mess doesn't mean you have to clean it up if you didn't do it intentionally. As long as the story's better this way, the rules can go out the window. (As a wise pirate once said, they're more like guidelines anyway). Maybe writers should look at their critique systems and, when it comes to this, reevaluate their usefulness.

A book is not a test. There is no correct set of answers at the appendix telling you how well you scored. It's a shared experience between writer and reader. Since there are more than two people in the world, there are a plethora of interpretations you can reach, debate, and talk about. There's no objective truth here.

What really happened? What happened was it was a good story. Or not. To you, specifically. There are so many great reasons why characters might be portrayed inconsistently. It doesn't all have to make perfect sense. We live messy lives, full of contradiction and self-distortion. Fiction provides a lens to the real, and in doing so, thrives on these imperfections.

Maybe it's time we stop trying to pick apart and understand the correct answers and instead put our smartphone brains down and just enjoy a great tale told well.

Imagine trying to apply this silliness to oral traditions like The Illiad. Of course it's exaggerated and inconsistent. The orator plays to the crowd. The crowds know this and they don't care. They might even find the performance dull if it were otherwise.