Casting Your Characters
As story consumers we have an innate desire to identify a story’s main characters, or stars. This tendency is probably best exemplified by the TV show Friends. The show was developed and written for an ensemble, where none of the Friends—brother and sister Ross and Monica Geller; Monica’s roommate Rachel Green; the two guys in the apartment across the hall, Joey Tribianni and Chandler Bing; and the quirky Phoebe Buffay—were supposed to take top billing. Yet the audience inevitably made Friends Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), the breakout stars.
The same is true in academic writing. Your readers want to know who your main and supporting characters are. Thus it’s incumbent on you to identify your protagonist, or hero; the supporting characters who play important but supplementary roles, perhaps only showing up in one scene but providing a necessary boost, or creating roadblocks along the way; and the ensemble and extras who may have limited or no speaking roles but add richness, filling out the scenes, making them more believable and supporting the action taking place. These characters are not individuals or organizations from your research context, however. Because your story is ultimately a theoretical explanation of some phenomenon, your theoretical constructs are the characters.
Your first challenge, then, is to figure out who to cast as the main, supporting and ensemble characters. If you aren’t clear in your own mind regarding who the story is about, then it’s challenging for readers to ascertain what the story is about. The central constructs you theorize about and measure as the key independent and dependent variables are your main character candidates. Both the independent and dependent constructs are the main characters if the influence of one upon the other is your story’s focus. However, it may be that just one of them is the main character. If your focus is on the outcome—for example, if your primary interest is what leads some founders to be replaced as CEOs but not others—then the dependent construct Founder-CEO replacement is your main character, and the factors that influence it are supporting characters. However, if your interest is in the interplay among human capital and time orientation on decision making, and venture capitalists’ decisions to replace Founder-CEOs is a convenient context to explore these dynamics rather than the major subject of interest, then human capital and time orientation are your main characters, and Founder-CEO replacement is a supporting character.
Supporting characters are also critical to your storytelling. They do not necessarily appear throughout the story, and their backgrounds and motivations may not be as thoroughly developed as the main characters’, but they add interest by shaping the main character’s experience. They may have a direct effect on, or be directly affected by the main characters, as noted above. Or they may act as moderators or mediators, conditioning the relationship between characters, or acting as an intermediary. The ensemble, or “chorus”, if you prefer, are the other actors you acknowledge, and that help round out the story, but don’t play a significant role in your drama. Your control variables typically occupy these roles.
Finally, keep in mind that just because you initially cast a character into a main, supporting or ensemble role, that doesn’t mean they will stay there. As your story evolves, a character you envisioned as the main character may end up serving in a supporting role, and a supporting character may emerge as the main character. On the 80s sitcom Family Ties, the parents Steven and Elyse Keaton were supposed to be the stars, and their children—including son Alex, played by the then unknown Michael J. Fox—were supposed to be supporting characters. However Fox emerged as the breakout star, and his character became the show’s main character. Keep an open mind as you write, and let your characters tell you what the most interesting story is.