1 Simple Rule to Write Great Characters

over the last six months I've spent a huge amount of time looking at hundreds of different scenes I've looked at scenes from Masterwork books by the greatest writers of all time and I've looked at hundreds of scenes from the students in our workshops and through all of this I was looking for lots of things but one thing in particular is how do you write compelling characters and so I started comparing the scenes in our workshops that didn't work very well to the scenes from these Masterworks these great books and I found one thing one thing that if you do this you write compelling characters that the reader will empathize with care about and want to keep turning pages to know what happens next so in this video I'm going to share with you that one thing then we're going to do an exercise together and then I'm going to give you the three rules to make sure you put this in your writing so let's jump in and take a look so let's ask this question together how do you write compelling characters what is that one thing that if you have this locked in for your characters it makes them exciting to read and will keep your readers turning Pages it all comes down to one thing your characters must want something inside of story grid we call this the objects of desire and your objects of Desire do several things first of all they're what your characters consciously want so if we pause the scene we pause the story and we ask your characters what do they want they'd be able to tell us this is also what your characters are actively pursuing this is the thing that they want that throughout all of your writing they're trying to get and then finally your objects of Desire are what Drive the conflict and the tension in your story this is what keeps your stories interesting is the objects of Desire of your characters now when we're looking at objects of Desire the first rule is that each character must have a different object of Desire they must have something different about what they want now it can be different in one of three ways so the first one is pretty clearcut they just want something different so if I was going to lunch with a friend and I wanted him to loan me $50,000 and he did not want to loan me $50,000 our objects of Desire are different I want the $50,000 and he doesn't want to give it to me so pretty clear so the antagonist of your character is often just wanting something completely different this is the simplest to write the simplest to wrap your heads around but it can be different in two other ways because you can imagine a scenario where there's a scene with two characters who are on the same side and they want the same thing so how do you have them have different objects of Desire well you can have them want the same thing but for different reasons so they're going about it to get that thing but they want it for different reasons and then the third is how they want the same thing for the same reasons but they're trying to get it a different way so again this is where two characters who even want the same thing in your scenes they could be going about it in completely different ways so let's just look at an example of how this might show up in a scene that you're writing let's say there's a criminal and what he wants is to not confess anything so we're in an inter ation room there's a criminal sitting in that metal chair and he does not want to confess anything and on the other side of that table is a police officer and he's trying to get the criminal to confess so you can see how this is different on that what scale they want different things and they're both not going to be able to get their thing now if we add a third character let's say we add his boss the cop's boss maybe a captain's in there and she wants this same thing she wants to get the criminal to confess but she wants it so that she can get a promotion and that cop wants it to keep the city safe so you can see how this starts creating some tension between even the characters who are on the same side is one wants it for a selfish reason and the other one wants it to keep the city safe more altruistic reason so let's add a fourth character so we have another cop in the room doing the interrogation with that first cop and he wants to get the criminal to confess he also wants to keep the city safe but he's willing to do a little bit of torture maybe some water boarding if he has to when that first cop he wants to play it by the book he doesn't want to do any torture and then of course we look at the captain again she wants to get the criminal to confess to get a promotion and you know any means necessary works for her so this is where if you have multip characters in the scene they have to have something different about their object of desire in order to create the tension between all of the characters if you have two characters who objects of Desire are perfectly aligned there's no reason to have both of those characters in any particular scene because there's not going to be any kind of tension between them so you have to have something that's different about their object of desire in order to create some tension between all of the characters that that are in any given scene or any part of your story so now I want you to give it a try so I'm going to create a character for you a well- behaved rule following 16-year-old girl with a strict religious father so that's character number one and what she wants is to go to a party that will have alcohol now she wants to go to a party and that party just happens to have alcohol the why is she wants to spend time with the boy that that she likes who invited her to go to the party and because she's pretty sure her dad's not going to let her go she wants to do it by sneaking out of the house after bedtime so now this is where I want you to give it a try and down in the comments I want you to do this exercise so walk through this exercise with me and put your answer down in the comments I'm going to read every single one of them character number two is her mother and her mother finds out about this plan and now I want you to put the what the why and the how if they're different so number one put number one she wants something different so if the mother wants something different what is her object of Desire so it's different only on that first scale the what scale but now put number two and let's say the mother wants the same thing she wants the daughter to go to the party but she wants it for a different reason so the daughter wants to go so she can spend time with the boy she likes the mom wants her to go for a different reason so write that reason down and then the third put number three she wants the same thing she wants the daughter to go to the party and she wants it for the same reason she wants the daughter to be able to spend time with this boy she likes but she wants her daughter to go about it in a different way so what is that different way that the mother wants and imagine how on each of these scales it's going to create conflict and tension between the characters in this scene it's going to create conflict if the mom just doesn't want her to go it's going to create conflict if she wants her to go but she wants her to go for a different reason and it's definitely going to create conflict if she wants her to go to spend time with a boy for the same reason but she wants to go about it in a different way she doesn't want the daughter to sneak out of the house so down in the comments put down number one number two number three and put the object of Desire at each of those levels these would be different objects of desire for different types of scenes so I come back to this question how do you write compelling characters and we know it comes down to making sure your characters want something but I've got three rules that will help you put this in place in all of your writing rule number one every active character in your scene must have a clear concrete object of Desire that they are actively pursuing so throughout the entire scene throughout the entire book your each active character has to have a clear object of desire and they're actively pursuing that object of Desire rule number two every active character must have a different object of Desire if you have multiple characters with the exact same object of Desire on all three of those scales you either need to cut one of the characters or change their objects of desire and finally rule number three every action or line of dialogue your characters do and say must be in pursuit of their object of Desire this is a big one one this is where you cut out shoe leather you cut out boring Parts this is a lot of times where I see writers that just kind of have random stuff happening in their scene and their scenes are just kind of going all over the place for no reason it's because their character is not actively pursuing anything so if I took your scene and I cut out all of the exposition and all of the action and dialogue of the other characters and I just read through the action and lines of dialogue of this particular character would it be extremely clear what they want and are they actively pursuing that object of desire in each of the line I am telling you if you follow these three rules in writing your scenes your scene writing is going to get so much better it's going to be so much more interesting to read there's going to be so much more conflict in tension and this works across all types of books so I've looked at Society books and romance books and action books and thrillers in every single scene these things are working so make these changes to your scene and watch how your scene writing levels up immediately you're going to be writing much more compelling and interesting characters which means your scenes are going to be much more compelling and interesting and your entire book is going to become much more compelling and interesting and it's going to make your readers constantly want to know what happens next so before you write your next scene I want you to grab a Post-It note or a scrap piece of paper write down each of the active characters in your scene and then write down their object of desire and write it down on each of those three levels and make sure that each of your characters want something different they either need to want something different on the what why or how scale so write that down before you write your scene and then as you're writing make sure that every action every piece of dialogue is your characters actively pursuing their object of Desire now if you want to keep going with how to write a great scene I have a video for that that's going to pop up on your screen shortly it's also down in the description it's how I plan and write great scenes now if you're wondering who I am my name is Tim Gro I'm the CEO of story grid I'm the author of the threshing running down a dream in your first 1,000 copies my partner Sean coin is the Creator and founder of story grid and he's a writer and editor with over 30 years of experience everything in this video and everything we do as story grid is based on his extent Ive research and editing experience if you want to know more about story grid go to story grid.com check out all of the free resources we have available make sure you sign up for the newsletter that's where we send out the latest and greatest stuff and as always if this video helped you at all make sure you click that like button subscribe to the channel hit the Bell so you get notified of every video we come out with in the future but as always thanks for being a writer thanks for being a part of our community here at story grid and I'll see you next time

Channel: Story Grid

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Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024