ABSTRACT
Aristotle refers to what we call characters as the Agents of the Action, leading to his precept that character is always in service of story, so all choices made about character should be made to facilitate it. Characters have two primary qualities: their moral disposition and their reasoning. Together, these qualities determine a character’s behavior in any given circumstance. What this means is that a character cannot simply appear to be functional, but must seem motivated by their own inner life, leading to the correlative precept that while serving the needs of the story, a character and their actions must always remain believable.
