Character Development Strategies

noun A word that represents a person, place, thing, or idea.

preposition A word that shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence.

• The actor's performance in the drama was a departure from his usual roles, as he played a comedic character against type.
• I was surprised to see her cast as the villain in the movie, it's totally against type for her.
• He really went out of his comfort zone by taking on that role, it's so against type for him.
• The politician's decision to support the controversial policy was seen as going against type for him.

noun A novel in which real people or events appear with invented names.

preposition The hyphen in 'roman-à-clef' connects the two words together to form a compound noun.

• The author used a roman-à-clef to tell a story based on real-life events but with fictionalized characters.
• Have you heard of that novel that's a roman-à-clef? It's supposed to be really juicy!
• That book is basically a roman-à-clef of all the drama that went down in our friend group last summer.
• The painting was like a roman-à-clef of the artist's inner thoughts and emotions.