Two Types of Fictional Characters—Alternate Personalities vs. Puppets—distinguished by whether the character has a mind of its own

Puppet Characters

The author remembers creating the puppet type of character, either by copying a real person or choosing and assembling the puppet’s characteristics. The author is aware of giving the puppet character its thoughts, feelings, values, and behavior.

Alternate-Personality Characters

In contrast, although the alternate-personality character may have begun as a copy of a real person or as a manufactured puppet, the author has a sense that at some point, the puppet became a personality with a mind of its own.

Or the author may have experienced the alternate-personality character as never having been copied or manufactured, but as having mysteriously arrived, from who knows where, with a mind of its own (which is the theme of Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger).

Actors

My current hypothesis is that some actors are very adept at pulling their own strings, or allowing their strings to be pulled by the director, while other actors, who have multiple personality, switch to alternate personalities to play their roles.

How would the latter actors do that? First, they might get a brand new alternate personality that fit the script, just as any adult with multiple personality might get a new alternate personality to cope with a new circumstance. Second, they might search among their already established alternate personalities to find one that matched the character in the script. Third, as Sally Field described in her memoir “In Pieces” (see recent post), various established alternate personalities might work together to provide the various aspects of a character in the script.