Writing about character is one of the most common tasks in A-Level English Literature — and one of the most commonly done in a way that earns lower marks than it should. The fundamental shift required at A-Level is from writing about characters as if they’re real people (“Hamlet is indecisive because he’s afraid”) to writing about characters as literary constructs (“Shakespeare constructs Hamlet’s indecision through a series of soliloquies that enact the process of paralysed self-scrutiny”).
Characters Are Not Real People
This sounds obvious but its implications are significant. Every detail of a character — their speech, their actions, their appearance, what other characters say about them — is a choice made by the author for literary purposes. Analytical writing about character traces those choices: why has the author made this character speak in this way? What does the character’s function in the plot reveal about the text’s themes? How does the character change, and what does that arc mean?
The language of analysis reflects this: “Shakespeare presents”, “Fitzgerald constructs”, “Austen uses Elizabeth Bennet to explore” — the author is always the agent. Not “Hamlet decides” but “Shakespeare presents Hamlet as someone who…”
Focus on Method
The question “how does the writer present character X?” is asking about method — the specific language, structural, and literary techniques through which character is constructed. The methods to look for:
- Direct characterisation: What the narrator tells us directly about the character
- Indirect characterisation: What the character’s actions, speech, and thoughts reveal without being stated
- Other characters’ responses: How other characters react to or describe this character (remembering that these responses may be unreliable)
- Language of speech: Vocabulary, register, syntax in dialogue — all of these reveal character
- Narrative perspective: How close we are to the character’s consciousness, and how reliable the narration is
Connect Character to Theme
Top-band A-Level responses don’t write about character in isolation — they connect character to the text’s broader concerns. A character isn’t just “ambitious”; their ambition functions in the text as an exploration of what ambition does to people, or as a critique of a particular social system, or as a lens through which the reader is invited to examine their own values. Ask not just “what is this character like?” but “what does this character mean — in this text, in this context?”
At Thorogood English, we teach students to write about character analytically from the start — building the habit of author-centred analysis that distinguishes top-band responses. Join the waiting list for January 2027.
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