Perhaps this is patently obvious to everyone except me, but it seems to me that one of the keys of showing a character’s inner workings is by placing him/her in difficult situation and showing how they either solve the problem or extricate themselves from it. After all, this is one of the critical ways we learn about a person’s true nature in real life. The classic example of this of probably all English literature is Hamlet. A more recent example is that of Captain Kirk n the Kobayashi Maru scenario at Starfleet Academy (the simulation was programmed as a no-win scenario to test a cadet’s character, but the night before his test Kirk secretly re-programmed the simulation so that he could win). When I have tried writing this type, I have found it much more difficult than simply getting the character out of a sticky situation by a stroke or luck or something deus ex machina. It becomes a test of my own genius and my own character, because I find I can often much more easily land a character in an impossible situation than I can extricate him from it.
Thoughts? Comments?
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 