Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

"Transformations" The author begins this chapter with the contention that people and their behavior change, often in ways that others cannot understand and, on some level, are often fearful of. This, he adds, is an important reason fiction exists (see "Quotes", p. 120)—to provide meaning and justification for some changes so that readers will perhaps feel less uncomfortable as the result of others. He goes on to say, however, that characters in fiction do not have to change, "no matter how much a reader might wish they might ... if they [do], it's because [the reader] didn't understand them in the first place." He then suggests ways in which a writer can develop stories about unchanging individuals—characters who are who they are consistently and who perhaps want to change but cannot, characters who seem to change but reveal a...