There is often a gulf between what a character says is their nature and the actions performed by that character. I am not speaking about plot-required deceptions, such as an agent who poses as a businessperson while traveling through hostile and dangerous territory but rather to gap between how a character perceives themselves and that the character’s actual nature.

In an introductory psychology course, I was exposed to the concept of the Johari Window. Take a square and divide it into four quadrants. One section is what that person knows about themselves that is also known by others, it is their public face and identity. Another sector is what the person knows but it is unknown to others, this is the person’s guarded identity. The third sector is what is unknown by the person but known to others, this is the person’s blind spots, aspects of their personality and identity that they are blind to. And the final sector is those aspects of the person that is unknown to both the person and to others, traits, identity, and personality facets that have yet to be discovered. The sectors are rarely even and their areas vary greatly from person to person. It can be a useful tool in character design to consider how the Johari Window applied to people you may create for any work of fiction.

The tension between what a character may believe about themselves and how thy actually act can be a great source of development and conflict. Consider a character that considers themselves to be a ‘progressive’ supportive of LGBQT rights and for drug legalization but if that character is also wealthy and their political energies are spent on the candidates and initiates to reduce their tax burden then the characters actions are in conflict with not only their expressed ideals but perhaps even their own sense of identity. Such a character may not even be a hypocrite as they may unable to even perceive the contradictions between their stated positions and their actual actions. Never under estimate a person’s ability to self-deceive particularly in order to protect a self-image that may be at odds with reality.

The old adage is that ‘actions speak louder than words,’ and we consider it a truism especially when we need to consider characters who believe that own words and yet defy them with action after action.