The passage in which Forster suggests that Lady Bertram is transformed from a flat into a round character is explicable, however, in terms other than those the English novelist proposes.

(Phillip Lopate, “Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character.In Aspects of the Novel, E.M Forster makes a distinction between round and flat characters that has achieved a certain celebrity. It means you have achieved sufficient distance to begin to see yourself in the round: a necessary precondition to transcending the ego-or at least writing personal essays that can touch other people.” But rather a potential release from narcissism. I would further maintain that this process of turning oneself into a character is not self-absorbed navel-gazing. The need thus exists to make oneself into a character, whether the essay uses a first- or third-person narrative voice.

The point is to begin to take inventory of yourself so that you can present that self to the reader as a specific, legible character.The art of characterization comes down to establishing a pattern of habits and actions for the person you are writing about and introducing variations into the system. Forster, in ‘Aspects of a Novel,’ drew a famous distinction between ‘flat’ and ‘round’ characters-between those fictional personages seen from the outside who acted with the predictable consistency of caricatures, and those whose complexities or teeming inner lives we come to know. And I use the word character much the same way the fiction writer does.

“, the writer needs to build herself into a character.

Narrator as a Character in the Personal Essay

Literature definition of flat character