Highs And Lows

Now let’s discuss HIGH STATUS and LOW STATUS

A person who is HIGH STATUS, handles themselves well, physically and intellectually. They are capable, smart, incisive, and able to tackle almost anything.

LOW STATUS individuals are timid, clumsy, and unsure of themselves and their abilities.

Of course, there is a whole range of levels of competency between the two extremes. When I teach improv, I often take a deck of cards and let each performer in a scene draw one card. A KING represents the highest possible status, and an ACE the lowest. The actors then improvise a scene in which they play the status of the card they drew. 

Working with a king or an ace is pretty easy, because you can go deep into high or low status. A 5 card or a 7 is much harder because it’s more subtle, but it’s also more like a real person. Try to include a wide range of status in your character roster.

Both Superman, and Lex Luthor are very HIGH STATUS people. One is evil, and one is good, but they both have pretty high opinions of themselves, and are both very capable and highly intelligent. Superman, in order to appear more likeable to the reader is certainly more modest than Lex, but he still feels himself to be highly adept and effective. Being super strong and nearly indestructible can sometimes foster that impression.

However, as Clark Kent, Superman puts forward a LOW STATUSfront to help conceal his true self. Check out Kill Bill part 2 for an interesting take on this particular conundrum of status.

A good writer will include characters with many levels of status in his story. It’s also interesting to put characters into situations which may cause a change in their status.

In Frank Miller’s Daredevil story arc BORN AGAIN, the character of reporter Ben Urich is a medium status character. When threatened by the Kingpin’s goons, he at first gives in to their threats, lowering his status. However, after continued attacks against himself and his family, he fights back, raising his status, but leaving him questioning his own violent actions. This makes for a very compelling character arc!