A while back, in the writing group, I suggested that the secret to character development was to take two or three different people and put them in a situation where they are compelled to talk to each other - say, in a broken elevator - when there is some urgency to be somewhere else. As they talk, as temperatures and frustrations rise, as time runs out, they should give away more and more about themselves.
It seems Jules Verne agreed!
I've been watching the BBC version of Around the World in 80 Days.
Three characters - one escaping a jilted woman (and his past), one desperately seeking her father's approval, and some degree of equal rights in a man's world, and one tormented by postcards sent from abroad by someone he knows but we don't - are flung together into an unlikely, and dangerous, wager.
As the episodes progress, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles are overcome, they (and we) learn more about each other and themselves. They will not reach the end of the journey the same people who began it. And this is character development.
The "elevator", in this instance, is the world. The broken, restrictive, pressurising, aspect of it all? 80 days!
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