Profile of a Main Character: Shrek
Hey Story Crafters,
To follow up on 3 Tips for Creating a Memorable Main Character, I’ll do a character breakdown for a main character using the tips discussed in that post. I’ll use Shrek (I’ll be referring to the movie Shrek, since I haven’t read the book) for this character profile.
Main Character: Shrek
Let’s take a quick look at Shrek’s name. At first glance, it seems like a made-up, interesting name to give a main character who happens to be an ogre: one syllable, harsh and odd-sounding, and unique. Once you’ve seen Shrek and gotten a glimpse of his character, there’s no one else who comes to mind when you say “Shrek.”
It’s not a traditional “real” name, but the origins of Shrek can be traced back to the Yiddish word “shreklekh”—which means awful, terrible, horrible in English—and also to the German word “schrecklich,” meaning dreadful.
While it’s not a requirement to create a unique, meaningful name for your main character, you should put some thought into choosing one. If you develop your MC properly, your readers should immediately be able to paint an accurate picture of who your MC is just by reading her name.
Now for the breakdown of Shrek’s character:
1) Know your MC’s core personality.
Shrek’s core personality:
Antisocial loner.
Prefers to be alone because he’s considered to be a monster by others, and would rather skip the pain of rejection and betrayal by pushing people away before they can hurt him.
Has no desire to form relationships with others.
In short, the grumpy old man, get off my lawn type of character.
2) Set your MC’s motivation(s).
Shrek’s main motivations:
Main or primary motivation: Reclaim his swamp and kick out his unwanted guests (the other fairy tale creatures).
Secondary motivation: Talk to Lord Farquaad, who was responsible for the unwanted guests, and get him to relocate the fairy tale creatures elsewhere.
In pursuing this motivation, Farquaad proposes a deal to Shrek: he’ll give Shrek back his swamp if he rescues Princess Fiona and returns to Duloc with her.Third motivation: Rescue Princess Fiona from the dragon-guarded tower and bring her back to Duloc so Farquaad can marry her.
Shrek achieves his main goal of reclaiming his swamp and solitude before the final act of the movie, Fiona’s wedding to Farquaad. He realizes that primary motivation isn’t what he wants after all, and this dissatisfaction—or lack of resolution—creates another motivation:
Fourth motivation: Stop Fiona from marrying Farquaad so he can marry her instead.
3) Your MC’s relationships with other characters.
Here’s how a main character’s relationships with secondary characters can show core personality, motivations, and character transformation (or growth):
Shrek and Donkey.
Donkey is cast in the sidekick role, the nuisance turned bestie—but he’s not just a sidekick. He’s the first character in the movie that forces Shrek out of his comfort zone. At the beginning of the movie, no matter how hard Shrek tries to push Donkey away and scare him off, all of those attempts wash off Donkey’s back and he persistently trails after Shrek.
(Side Note: Part of the reason Donkey is so persistent is because he admires Shrek’s core personality, and since Shrek’s intimidating, antisocial behavior isn’t one Donkey can mimic, he instead wants to stay close to him. The other part is that he’s lonely, and because Shrek is alone too, Donkey thinks Shrek feels the same. But I’m focusing on MCs for now, not secondary characters, so I won’t go further into Donkey’s character here.)
At the beginning of the movie, Donkey’s persistent desire to follow him serves as another motivation for Shrek to get the unwanted fairy tale creatures out of his swamp. Donkey is talkative and social, Shrek’s exact opposite in personality.
In the middle of the movie, Shrek’s developing friendship with Donkey helps his budding romantic relationship with Fiona. This development is also what makes the betrayal Shrek feels while eavesdropping on Fiona and Donkey in the windmill (when he hears the tail end of Fiona’s explanation of her curse to Donkey) all the more painful. It also makes Shrek’s regression to his initial state of being—the antisocial loner—understandable, if disappointing, and he successfully pushes both Fiona and Donkey away. [The misunderstanding between Shrek and Fiona the following morning, where they aren’t on the same page, is equally painful.]
And finally, when Shrek’s moping around his swamp heartbroken and realizing he’s not happy achieving his original motivation (reclaiming his swamp and solitude), Donkey comes back. Donkey, who has a much better handle on his feelings and understands how to make and keep relationships with others, shows Shrek how a true friend behaves. (He does manipulate Shrek with his feelings for Fiona, but the result is the same—Shrek learns how to cultivate relationships better.)
Without Donkey, Shrek wouldn’t have found the courage (or the means of transportation) to crash Fiona’s wedding to Farquaad.
Shrek and Fiona.
To call back to the comparison Shrek makes between ogres and onions, if Shrek’s friendship with Donkey makes it through a few of his emotional walls (or layers), then his romantic relationship with Fiona goes several layers deeper.
Shrek is guarded with Fiona to start with, much as he is with other characters. He enters this relationship with his own biases of how Fiona should and will behave as a princess—which, combined with his grouchy, antisocial personality (in addition to being an ogre) gets them started on the wrong foot. He isn’t even the one who tries to smooth things over and try to find common ground. Fiona does this, after overhearing Shrek confess to Donkey that he’s tried to get along with other people, but ended up hurt instead; so he pushes people away before they can reject him.
While Fiona’s peace offering—making breakfast—doesn’t quite bridge the gap between her and Shrek, her impressive takedown of Monsieur Hood and his Merry Men does. Shrek discovers they have other things in common, like eating habits, lack of etiquette, inflating frogs or snakes into balloons for fun, and slowly becomes more vulnerable as his attraction for Fiona grows.
Because Shrek exposes a deeper, more vulnerable part of himself to Fiona, it makes him more sensitive to her judgement. He is quick to jump to conclusions when he overhears her talk with Donkey in the windmill, and believes she thinks he’s a “hideous beast,” when she’s actually talking about herself.
This misunderstanding causes Shrek to revert to the grumpy, antisocial personality he had at the beginning of the movie, prior to this journey. He pushes Fiona away by having Farquaad pick her up, and he abandons Donkey.
In the final act, after Donkey knocks sense into Shrek, Shrek is willing to expose the vulnerable parts of himself to Fiona and admit that he loves her.
It’s important to note that not all relationships have to be healthy, or have a positive effect on a character. All relationships, good or bad, can drive your main character to change for the better, or for worse.
Shrek and Farquaad.
Farquaad is the antagonist of this story, and he brings out the worst in Shrek. Not just in the sense that he puts Shrek into situations where he’s forced to use violence in self-defense; Farquaad also forces Shrek to put up emotional barriers and fall back into his original grumpy, antisocial personality.
When Farquaad first sees Shrek, his reaction is to have the knights, who are originally meant to compete against each other, attack Shrek instead. He encourages them by saying whoever kills Shrek will win the honor of rescuing Fiona. So Farquaad immediately attacks Shrek’s self-esteem by treating him like a monster—Shrek is, of course, grumpy and antisocial presumably because of some prior trauma related to behavior like Farquaad’s—and places Shrek in a situation where violence is the only action he can take.
After Shrek defeats all the knights, Farquaad decides to take advantage of Shrek’s physical abilities and his desire to get the fairy tale creatures off his swamp instead of killing him. They both intend to use each other for their own selfish desires. Farquaad wants to use Shrek to get his princess bride, and Shrek wants to use Farquaad to reclaim his swamp.
In the final act, when Shrek crashes Farquaad’s wedding to stop Fiona from marrying him, Farquaad acts as a foil to Shrek. Farquaad, who can loosely be considered handsome by traditional societal standards, reveals how ugly he is on the inside by his reaction to Fiona’s curse, while Shrek, considered to be an ugly monster (“a hideous beast”) loves Fiona for who she is on the inside, not because of her appearance.
Bring it all together: the before/after, how it started/how it’s going comparison.
The three tips I’ve suggested to help you create a memorable main character: knowing your MC’s core personality, setting your MC’s motivations, and exploring your MC’s relationships with other characters, help shape your MC’s growth over the course of the story.
Shrek’s overall transformation is this: antisocial loner -> good friend and romantic partner.
The more obstacles and setbacks—either internal or external—your main character faces help raise the stakes, and therefore the tension, of the story as she tries to achieve her main goal (or primary motivation). As you write, your MC should be able to reach a stage of satisfaction, an “Ah-ha!” moment when he or she has reached a successful, earned transformation. Even if it means that by reaching this “post-transformation” stage, your MC may not have achieved the main goal that kicked off the story to begin with.
Shrek, for example, started his journey with the primary motivation of reclaiming his swamp and solitude. He ends up with a swamp inhabited with dozens of magical creatures, a donkey for a best friend, and a beautiful wife. And because we know this emotional transformation of his character is earned, we’re satisfied with the ending, even if Shrek didn’t achieve his primary motivation.
Feel free to share further insights in the comments, or add a main character profile of your own!
Happy writing!
Leah
P.S. I chose Shrek mainly because I was thinking of common fairy tale tropes, and the first I thought of was “damsel in distress.” Which then got me thinking about stories that twist that particular trope. Fiona came to mind, because she’s a princess who is pretending to be in distress; she could easily save herself, but chooses not to because of the preconceived, stereotypical expectations of what a princess is supposed to be capable of, and she desperately wants to fit into that mold… But that’s a different topic. That’s basically how I decided to focus on Shrek for this profile of a main character post.
P.P.S. This post is a lead-in to the free writing resource on relationship mapping, which you get instant access to when you subscribe to this newsletter. I put the major characters of Shrek (Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, and Farquaad) on a relationship map to demonstrate how you can use one with your own characters.