What is a Character

I recently saw a post by Taiyo Matsumoto on X.
He was asked about the difference between adults and children through some kind of Q&A tool,
and he replied, 'I feel that people who can remain uncertain without having conviction are cool adults, regardless of their age.'
I realized, 'That is so true!'
'Remaining uncertain without having conviction'
might be a necessary condition in creative work as well.
That attitude is also about living irrationally.
It is an attitude of not categorizing the costs in human relationships as mere costs, and not jumping to conclusions about others when facing them.
That is also a tendency in how one approaches characters.
Recently, when thinking about characters, I was so afraid of failure that I was desperate to work backward from the attributes necessary for the structure.
Well, the character just wouldn't come into view at all.
In scenarios, there are deductive and inductive methods,

and deduction is a method of deriving the concrete from abstract principles. In storytelling, it's the idea of 'this role is necessary, so let's make them this personality.'

On the other hand, induction is a method of extracting commonalities from diverse concrete examples. You observe real people, abstract their characteristics, and elevate them into a character.

However, both deduction and induction are methods that deal with a known world.

In the end, you cannot create a character you haven't seen yet using either of those alone.

Perhaps people and characters alike begin to exceed the author's expectations by maintaining a state of suspension—a 'not yet understood' state—rather than a moment of 'I get it now.'
This is very similar to understanding human beings.

The desire to understand others quickly carries the danger of fixing them in place.
It's like labeling or categorizing.
On the other hand, if you continue a relationship while accepting that you don't understand them, people will continue to show you new facets each time.

I think creative work is the same.

I believe that an unknown character cannot be met through deduction or induction, but only through the process of going back and forth between the two, while still being unable to fully decide on anything and wandering about.

The state of 'I don't know' is not an imperfection.

It is a margin where the unknown appears, a mass of possibilities.