As mentioned last week, I'm going to cover details of four character classifications: static, dynamic, flat and round. The first of the four, static, refers to a character that doesn't change much over the entire story. For example, the character might be the main antagonist, and their objective is to make the protagonist's life as miserable as possible. Over the course of the story, their objective doesn't change much, except maybe they might lessen the punishment by a degree due to circumstances that occur in the story. I generally like to consider these characters as ones who have unyielding goals and won't let situations in the story change their mindset by much if at all.
On the other end is a dynamic character. These are characters that change in a significant manner as a result of actions in the story or an action. For example, a stubborn protagonist who sees things only as black and white might encounter a situation that traumatizes them or exposes them to another side of the world that opens their perspective to a wider coverage of viewpoints; they might notice that there are more grey situations, more right v. right circumstances than right v. wrong ones in the world.
Moving onto flat characters, they are characters with only one or two personality traits. One sentence/phrase can summarize them. In this case, you might have a character that is always mean or happy. Maybe, they feel both emotions, but that's it. As for round characters, they have multiple personality traits; they're complex and cannot be summarized briefly. They feel a wide range of emotions and indicate that they aren't one dimensional.
Also, it's important to note that flat and round characters can also be static or dynamic characters too. A flat character can maintain their one/two defining traits throughout the story, or their traits can switch to two different ones. They can go from being mean and happy to depressed and lifeless, depending on how you want your story to progress. Additionally, a round character, despite their many personality traits, can remain fixed in those traits throughout the text, or they can have a moment where their traits change and they develop a new/changed perspective on things. Anyway, I hope that this helps!
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