Character development
Character development is a part of characterization through which a story teller informs the audience about the character's personality, history, thought processes, etc.—the better the audience knows the character, the better the character development.
Character development may sometimes be confused with the changing of a character's personality; however, this is one type of character development known as dynamic development. Static development refers to a character that is developed but left unchanged: this commonly is done with secondary characters in order to let that character serve as a thematic or plot element.
Character development is very important in character-driven literature, where stories focus not on events, but on individual personalities. Classic examples include War and Peace or David Copperfield. Modern examples include the Harry Potter series. Historically, stories focusing on characters became common as part of the 19th century Romantic movement, and character driven literature rapidly supplanted more "plot-driven" literature that typically utilizes easily identifiable archetypes rather than proper character development.
See also
External links
For definitions of this and other literary terms, see The UVic Writer's Guide (http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LiteraryTermsIndex.html#AlphabetTop)