Sanderson 2012.4 - Sympathetic Characters

so let's talk about your characters your character are going to drive your book there that and our genre is the most important things you need to make them feel alive you need to make them breathe you need to make them just realistic so let's talk about ways to do that first thing that we'll start to talk about is the concept of a sympathetic character sympathetic characters this is kind of the word that a lot of us use because sympathetic doesn't it is better than saying protagonists and antagonists or heroes and villains because you want generally almost all of your characters be sympathetic for one reason or another okay even your villains the villains that you love are sympathetic for a couple of for some odd reason and we'll talk about that let me throw it you guys first have not taken a class before I'm stressed you know answers as hopefully if you don't um what makes a character's sympathetic to you what makes you light the character when you're reading one a book some similarities you really care okay you hit one of the big three right off the bat okay problems problems are good we or another way to put this is the underdog syndrome we like underdogs totally it's just human nature okay well consistency okay okay I'm gonna make it all okay I like that that's not what I usually put up there that's a very good point um you know characters should act like themselves and you can't get to know someone if they're not consistent in fact characters and bolts actually can be far more consistent than people are in real life this is a this is it in case it's true the stranger to fiction and the book you're going to have to give foreshadowing your reasoning for why a character's acting way if you're acting erratic which they can do that in real life you may never not give you just may be a movie person and your all the place in the book you might have established this is a moody person that you know and this sort of thing all right but I'd say they have kind of depth and their interests okay what they think about yeah that's a good one what else something you aspire to be okay that's the other big three that I usually point out in a lot of ways I view characters like this it's almost like there's there's a bit of continuum between what we call the everyman and Superman or woman um the idea being that these two things are kind of core concepts that make up what attaches us to a character either we see what we are in them or we see what we want to be here them and a lot of times you will have books that this is the growth archetype of the character can you think of one of these Star Wars this is that's a great one what else run go cool ok-ran or basically any one of the hero's journey you know I honestly don't think Frodo counts I think proto stays has never met and that's perfectly plausible any proto space is never meant aragorn space is a Superman and the movie they they move airborne for my here to here but in the books he basically starts here and stays there um you know it's fine to do that but these these kind of in any three of these archetypes can work um I like to put up spider-man here because he basically fits the perfect archetype of the ever man who comes Superman right um and that's why his stories is so compelling that's why it works but you know there are plenty of stories that work with the Superman straight off and we're talking in this we talk about power level which is not always the same way it is there are plenty of books that are about you know the young woman who is not socially adapt adapt to become super socially at and this is the same sort of archetype or stories that start off with somebody being perfectly socially inept I mean Oscar Wilde characters are all basically social supermen right and we like reading about them because they're like wow I wish I could come up with retort that quickly in the middle of a conversation I love this character they still going to have a growth art but their growth art is not going to be an empower level it's going to be in something else but so that's kind of just one way to look at character it's not the only way but it is one way to view your characters what about them you know almost every good character rather than you know they may move along this but almost every character is going to start off with a little smidge of this and a little smidge of that and so we will I will add under this fire to be kind of the same concept but they are an expert something in other words they have they have a superpower and their superpower may not be something we normally think of a great example this is going to be Sam from Lord of the Rings he is super humanly loyal where'd you not saying he has one actually everything else about him is basically kind of you know goofy and befuddled and you know this the in the world of giants and yet he has this one super quality and all of us would love to have and because of that he's consistently imposes that as people's favorite character from Lord of the Rings in fact there's a lot of discussion that he probably is the hero of the whole story is Sam and that is because Sam has this blend down really well yes he's um he's kind of a fool in a lot of ways but he has that one thing that he is just that is defining about him and it's something that when you look and you say yeah I wish I could be Sam for that moment so um expert at something the other one I'm going add up here um is that they are proactive have we talked about proactivity I do anything about this um I think I talked about it like the first week or maybe the second yeah now keep in mind that you don't need to do all of these and there are a few more I'll throw up here these are all tools in your toolbox that you can use to increase the level of sympathetic this is the nature of a given character if you can combine them all great they in fact pretty much everything up here are things that you should try to put it in almost every character but it doesn't mean you can't have one that leaves out one of them or two of them or something like this is just these are the ways that we make people sympathetic a couple of other little ones on there nice nice people are sympathetic there's an old Hollywood adage if you want to show us in 30 seconds who the hero in the villain are have one person pet a puppy and the other person kick that puppy okay it's um we laugh at it it's very simple but if you are aware of these sorts of things you will see people doing essentially that all the time um in films this is how we know they're a bad guy in fact they go overboard they get generic they get bald or some time and it's so tired of the opening scene where it's like villain is doing something you know he hires somebody to like you know giving this item or it picks it up and then he kills them it's like okay well he's the bad guy you just killed the person who did in his favor we know he's a bad guy um but that's the reason they're doing that is it takes them about 30 seconds to tell you who the bad guy is right um so drone being nice or it out not um and another one is is people like them this is very quick and easy one is if you have a main character who you want to be kind of underdog syndrome there down on themselves for whatever reason but they have friends who talk about how wonderful they are that you can establish that a humble character who's also likable because they have friends who like them a good example of this there's lots of them around but yes this is why we have sidekicks so often for one reason if we talk uh you know Sherlock Holmes and in Watson Sherlock Holmes is very off-putting character um depending on the adaptation um he he goes borderline um sociopathic um but by putting into the book the stories on Watson who likes him and who is his friend it makes us more affectionate instead of looking is this the same person we look at his art is kind of our quirky friend because he's Watson's quirky friend um and so Watson does allotted does a lot of heavy lifting in the in the Sherlock Holmes stories because does that he provides a good means for explanation I mean he provides a foil for Sherlock Holmes in a lot of ways and so he's kind of basically any kind are going to see like the duo you're going to see someone fulfilling the Watson role where one of them is going to be quirky but the other one likes them anyway and it's going to it they like each other it's going to make you like all characters having friends is going to make you like characters it's just a simple fact of life um and in fact a lot of times people characterize villains by giving them friends love interest people who care about them George are Martin's genius at this characters are evil awful people and yet sometimes you really like them simply because of the interaction he shows them going through with people who actually do like them and you say oh you know if this were my brother I could see why you would be affectionate toward this person even though they're awful suddenly this is a character rather than just a cackling villain so um some basic means of making your characters sympathetic it's one of the main things you should in most cases be trying to do I forgot works which we're kind of like that okay so there you go Oh proactivity proactivity is a problem productivity is difficult because I believe I've mentioned this before if the villains generally if the villains do nothing then the main characters have nothing to do you need to get around that by giving them things to do and I guarantee you if you're making the character proactive if they're if you show them doing stuff in the very beginning scene rather than letting other people do stuff then we're going to like them instead of saying you know there's a stamp collector to give them a quirk show them in the opening scene go jumping through all sorts of Hoops working really hard to find this stamp that they love even if the stand has nothing to do with the main plot spending a chapter to show us all of this stuff is going to then show us a character who's willing to sacrifice their time their talents their ethnic their energies in order to achieve their goals which is going to make us immediately like them more how do we start off Indiana Jones going through just all sorts of horrible things in order to get this Isle nothing goes his way he has to react a lot the things going poorly but at the end of this sequence we have this guide that we like because number one is a huge underdog everything goes wrong for him but number two he's been trying so blasted hard that we just love him you'll see this happening a lot in films and stories that you know the introductory scene doesn't necessarily directly relate to the plot so instead they show the character being proactive or show on some of these other things in order to establish them for us okay questions on this now Brandon what if you don't want your character to be sympathetic that's alright but you're going to have a hard time doing it because even show them being evil if you show them being proactive there's going to be something compelling about that character this is why we like villains and it's not a bad thing to have a character who is kind of running down the line that is mostly evil but we like them in fashion a Vitamix they're actually doing things because we have depth because they're consistent because they run into problems and overcome them we're going to like them and this is a good thing to do okay all right okay so um let's talk about kind of the harder ones um the the depth and the quartz okay um these other things are actually a little fairly easy to once you get the mindset of them keep an eye on this one that's the one that people slip on the most okay it's by making their characters not do something this is this is a problem when I mean you want to make them crack if you want to make the problems personal to them you will be you know ya know so this is going to make the character more likeable and is I was getting the care I just story more interesting also okay then that was kind of my question is this going to help involve the reader and yeah it's going to they're going to be more interested if if they feel like they've got a proactive character if they have a character you're standing watching the action the story is going to feel static to them that's not to say you can't do it you can break any of these things you want to be aware of them and this knowing how to do some of these things are especially important if you want to have a character's a little bit unlikable to beginning that had that as a growth character some of you may have tried to write these stories how do I write a character that no one likes at the beginning well you can make them unlikable for whatever reason then do all these other things and they'll still be sympathetic and interesting even though we don't like them a great example of this the the person who's best at doing this I think if you haven't read name of the wind that mentioned before I don't really like quote the main character you know he's not something I really want to hang out with he's kind of a jerk he's got a really bad temper um but he's fascinating to read about because of all of this other stuff okay the problems the provide activity the expertise all of this stuff makes him a wonderful character people love to read about it but he's not that likable so if you want to have an arc then where someone goes from having a kind of some unlikable characteristic to going toward um becoming more likeable what you want to do is you want to make sure you're hitting these other things pretty hard so that we have other reasons to identify with them and want to read their story it's actually not that hard if you understand this kind of this balance in this makeup if you don't then you just make it an unlikable character it was not proactive in sitting grumbles about everything it has to be forced to do everything so the big mistake I see people who you want to make kind of the sarcastic young you know like why a protagonist doesn't you know who doesn't want to be on this adventure and stuff like that they make them unlikable and then they take away all these things and the book is just a bore it's like pounding your head against the wall where on the other hand if they make you make them kind of sarcastic and a little bit mean um but you give them all of this other stuff then we're going to love them um you know the dude from from from the Rapunzel movie Tangled is not a likable person to start the first thing you see of him is in backstabbing his buddies okay but he is really good at stuff okay he's really glib and he's um he's he's really funny and he's really good at stealing stuff and so he's also extraordinarily proactive you mix these two things together and add in some problems and we're willing to like the guy as he becomes a better person and the movie this fantastic film for basically these reasons okay so the hardest ones on here I feel to do our depth and quarts which are kind of the same thing this is this is easy too if you remember it it's easy to forget so it becomes harder than it should be even for professional writers let's talk about the depth the depth is basically the stuff that we were talking about last week giving a character at unique view on life okay and you want to when this is really working make them see the world in a very different way from other characters and you want to do it in a way that you're not bombarded us with long boring paragraphs telling us how they see the world when the great arts of writing is the concept is showing instead of telling and then if you heard this before they're not in the class schism yeah you've heard it before I soon show no tell okay don't show me don't telling not there you go Thanks that is post video guy um Jeffie showing not Kelly okay um this isn't a simple adage we talked about in in all types of storytelling that is just really hard to do okay I won't pull punches on you this is really hard to do because it's one of those things you have to be doing all the time and no author is perfect at it and all authors are going to slide because showing tell someone tell me what I mean by this you all know it but let's talk about it tell me what I mean by showing rather huh well when you show something that's kind of like in the moment and action and if you tell someone is just like oh this thing happened so right yes I give your to say blue sage puppies or Bruce cake yeah that's that's that's the the best type of example first hated puppies you will find if you go look at the right and you've done for this class if you stand even one section you will find a line like Bruce hated puppies I guarantee it every one of you in fact if you look at my early drafts you'll find them all over the place I mean look at my leg traps you'll still find them all over the place he's doing this all the time is really hard but doing it well you know moving toward this is something you always want to be doing every draft should be pushing um sorry should be pushing that way should be pushing way like that um should be pushing toward more telling trip more showing you should be taking away the towels and doing the shows so it's okay in a first draft though I would recommend trying to build good habits so you don't do it it's okay in the first draft to say Bruce hated puppies but in the second draft when you run across that line you should say wow how can I show the first hates puppies can I have him kick a puppy no no okay there's no puppies around can I make something sound like the bark of a dog and have to say I hate that neighbor's dog or something like this is there any way you can show hating puppies better than saying I hate puppies and you're going to you're doing this a lot and I've read your writing I know you do it you're doing it a lot and you need to find out how to do more of these shows um now one of the big ways to move something toward um when I put this backwards so move something that way um is to move it toward dialogue a dialogue is inherently more show than it is tough because it's happening in scene rather than abstractly in someone's thoughts the problem is you can still do lots of um lots of telling and a dialogue we call this maiden Butler and I am mo made Butler our early place back in 1800s they would start the play by having the maid in the butler come onto the stage and the maid would say as you know the master has been away for three weeks and the butler says yes I do know that and as you know his wife has been getting very frisky with the gardener and the way that you know that made you say I do know that did you know and they go back and forth things they already both know in order to tell the audience feels very fake to readers when you do this you don't want to have characters discussing things that they both already know um people usually kind of sidestep this by saying you know we've had this argument a hundred times know um which is a little bit of a clever sidestep but usually these still feel a little bit a little fake you want to find good ways to work these in the conversation if you can or show do a show if the if the master has been away start the scene with the maid cleaning the Masters I'm sitting room and everything has been the same way for three weeks because the master has not moved it he's been away that's a show the maid is doing something and we have a description of the room that the kind of shows how pristine it is that also works into what the plot artists and then you know you see that the the gardener walked past by the window humming to himself coming away from the toolshed and then the lady of the house comes out a few minutes later you have a maid wait and look and sure enough she comes out that's enough that's ten times better you've just given us an excellent way of setting the scene by by pulling us in more rather than knocking us out more by giving us all this description so one way to make your characters feel life is to learn how to show who they are rather than tell us who they are rather than three sentences of what they like and dislike in the world writing into the scene a way that you can do that this what this does is this gets its hopes in us like I talked about with the pyramid of distraction this stuff moves the story down it all feels like it's in story it gets our hope its hooks in the reader and therefore the reader is more onboard the reader is into the story more the the story becomes real to them as opposed to just you know a scene set before them with fakes furniture and fake um fake plants instead you start to feel like this is a real world with living green and characters because things are going on okay um so trick number one show don't tell um trick number two now I'm going to write that and use your way track of number two for doing this with characters is to make them care about things up in the plot okay ah it'll come to me a lot say breeders our time and my characters feel flat what can I do about this what what does it mean to have a round terrorism well this is one of the big things that work that we talk about one of the ways to have a round character is to have them care about things if a character everything that they they think about everything that they are is focused toward their role in the story it feels fake to us and the characters feel feel flat I had this problem early on in my books I would write characters into roles rather than trying to make them individuals and themselves I didn't know I was doing this I was a brand new writer I think it's very common it's particularly common when you write about the gender opposite of your own because your natural on your natural inclination is going to put them into the book fulfilling a role usually it's going to be the love interest role and so if you're thinking of a character as in love interest rather than as a character they're going to only do things that the love interest does pay attention sometimes your storyteller start watching there are a few sort of quirks that people tend to do when they um when they put some of the opposite gender into a book one is you will notice that they on the the other character often has to like the woman has to play like the straight man like I notice this a lot in comic books or in web comics or in any sort of comic the the gender opposite the person writing it becomes you know kind of like the the solid dependable one that's always kind of rolling their eyes at the antics of the main characters that's because you know rather than thinking of them as a person they are think of them as a role in the plot they become the stoic foil roles this is what I do my um my female characters are always in the book to be the love interest um so one way to get away from this is to start giving people things to care about other the plot slash the main character okay make sure we care about something people do this people have lives people have cares and in whims and they are they shouldn't always be so neat they tie up exactly to what's going on in the plot okay um so something to be aware of we may come back to this one but I want to get on - um - well I want to talk a little bit more about how to do this with a main character - if you main characters basically need to be the ones that um you need to focus on one of the ways you're going to do this is you're going to start thinking about your story and say where is the character when the story starts most people's lives don't begin when the book begins sure portrait the artists a young man has a stream of consciousness being born seen but I don't suggest most people do that um so um your main character should be going about their life when the plot hits them like a freight train and derails it from them then from it and you should be considering what it is they want in life what do they want most if they particularly if the plot had never happened it's okay to intersect the plot with some of these things but particularly if the plot had never happened what do they want most you can you can kind of subset this in a um before plot and B after plot or during T boy okay um or drawing the plot you know we can kind of do this for let's say um Peter Parker before it becomes spider-man go on a date that's one of them but he has more what else does he want call us today that's the big important scientist yeah he wants to learn all these things I mean you know and he has you know he's basic if you read the comics he's got his basic key-keeper to pursue you know he wants to dictate to go to science fiction inventions he wants to collect his comic books you've got all these things you give someone these things that they want to do particularly the couple of big hopes and dreams and then on after plot during the plot you give them other things what does he want after the vlog well defect fight the villains and defeat them but those these other things don't go away and so you've got some nice depth of character because they have powerful different motivations that sometimes run into each other and these things will become a big part of the plot but the idea is before the plot starts they have passions and desires and those don't go away when the plot starts this is going to go a long way toward making your characters have more depth just this one step alone doing this for every one of your characters is going to go a long way toward it you have to be careful not to over emphasize some of these um I'm thinking of you guys seem lost there's this one guy that like lost his son and it became everything that he was I must find my son and it got really annoying because any time one of these things kind of just starts to dominate the problem is everything else fades in the background and you didn't have a character is no longer one-sided you have to have multiple passions and desires and usually they should kind of be conflicting within the character this is going to this is going to round them out quite a bit okay thoughts questions ideas I'll throw a gummy bear at you yeah with it Oh Moomin in the the Wheel of Time series yes you've added on to but like the the last couple of like the six seven eight sort of books for me brand got very you know dimension ones like I am the dragon right Harry maddening remained interesting because they like blacksmithing that had those right the other things illusion like oftentimes they were made interesting yeah something oftentimes people's favorite scene and a lot of The Wheel of Time books is a scene where parent though is you know this this character has been on all this questions and like it's in book four I think it is the start or maybe it's an yeah I think it's before um you know it's become something big larger than he was he's become a friend the wolves he has learned these super powers and things and in the beginning of this book he goes and remembers being a blacksmith and spends the chapter just making door latches on it's often picked as one of the people's favorite chapters and all of the books because he feels so real and genuine in those moments because he has a blacksmith and he likes making things and sure saving the world is important but simply sitting down and making some nice standing up standing up and you know making some door latches or nails or whatever it is is so humanizing to him and show someone who has a passion other than the main plot that that scene gets keeps getting chosen as one of the people's favorite scenes um likewise one of people's favorite Star Trek episodes tends to be the one where Picard is trapped inside the alien probe and lives an entire life learning how to play the flute and having a family generally tops the next generation list is the best episode by uh by people watching of all time this is not a fight against the board scene this is not a as you know this is not what you would pick is the most dynamic but it is so humanizing because it's on it shows him being passionate about different things and conflict and those different things that people love it you mentioned having characters interest conflicts yes what's going on how do you do that without making it seem contrived um you make everything in a Bolton is going to feel contrived to a little bit because they're really coincidental your job as a novelist is to learn how to work like a stage magician to make people forget about that because books are filled with coincidences there's no getting around it and so what you do is you make it rational enough I mean we can bring in Peter Parker the fact that you know scientists would not necessarily have to conflict with being a superhero but in the second um spider-man film they were able to believably convince us that he would work himself so hard doing one that he couldn't do the other and it kind of became that dichotomy between him can i I can't do both of these things it becomes a big conflict to him putting the things in conflict like that worked very well so what you're going to have to do is just make them passionate about both and make them interfere with each other making it not contrived to me can be terrible um a PR can be difficult I mean the terrible examples of this are things like when you know we get into sort of oh the love interest won't let me pursue my goals in life because they you know she's scared of wizards or something like that this becomes a very field very contrived unless you can world build it to the point that the love interest you know he comes from a world around where you know where people can use magic you're executed on site and you know his father was killed by a rope wizard and then he you know makes that the main character who is you know a magic user and that's a real conflict hey I just don't like them is not a real conflict so how a lot of these things work is through proper foreshadowing and world building and and you know making sure that the depth is there the backstory is there to make it believable you can you see how both oh you could do that the wrong way in the right way the wrong way being with you know you just use end up meeting the guy she lives at meeting the guy and he's like oh you're a wizard that's yucky I'm not going to be with you norms excuses versus actual systemic things that are part of the world you always expect as the reader is yes exactly yeah yeah the reader could say oh no that's going to be a problem before the characters realize it that's a good thing okay all right um yes so with the love interest you see with a lot of why a novels yes there's always a love interest there is and if you are writing my a novel and you just don't feel like it's appropriate then what other relationship can you put in there that would draw the same the same well nothing's going to be the same person but um there are lots of other interesting relationship mentor and student works very well and in particularly in yaa but also you know um best friends who start not as best friends um my wife's making you watch what's a Camelot 902 Whannell the new Merlin shop um she really likes its the BBC where Linda I I call it Camelot not Matua no it's it's quite sappy but I can you can see that they've got Merlin and Arthur and they hate each other at the start it's going to be I'm I'm anticipating hey these two are going to be best buddies by season three or something like that and that's that's perfectly acceptable - um and a lot of a lot of why a fantasy will do that with the unmatched the strange creature um you know I have the the dragon that I have met that I must tame and you know become the dragon Whisperer or whatever and then you know things like that um that's that's a perfectly reasonable conflict but you've got to understand teens are interested in romantic relationships there have just started to really get interested in them it is one of the main things that draws them to books that doesn't mean you have to have characters getting married by the end but if you write a character who is a boy who was you know sixteen and is not sizing up most girls he meets you're probably writing him wrong he's at least going to acknowledge which ones are pretty and which ones aren't because that's how teenage boys of that age think unless you've got a very unique character that you're building that in as part of who they are girls I assume do the same thing not having been one I don't know um let's do a character building exercise I did this last year and I think it worked really well the idea is start showing you rather than telling you how to go about building a character who has who is not one-dimensional okay and so we're going to build rental for characters up here and one of the main things we're going to focus on is not doing the expected okay um and that's I should have written out gone but that's the other thing that's kind of like the last time I list there I've wasted up ways to give depth to characters building the character things that are unanticipated um Dave Wolverton had a great way of talking about this he said um come up with your characters and then cast them in each other's roles if you're building you know your fantasy and you've got your wise mentor and your young plucky um you know princess and your your um your kid from a farm and you know your best friend thief put them in each other's roles and say okay you know the girl has to be the wise mentor for some reason and you know that the main character is the plucky thief and you know that you swap the roles or another way of approaching this is saying all right I'm having a hair I built this world I built this plot why can't my game character be the hero of this plot what is preventing them from being hero of this plot if you're going to tell a sports story about a football star making one arm instead you know how the one-armed of the one-armed quarterback how is that going to work you know things like that where you build into it inherently problems with the main character being in the role that they are that is separate from giving the passions okay you guys still give them passions that are not this sort of thing you can kind of make them not fit the role make them a square peg in a round hole and you will immediately start to make them more interesting all right so we're going to do um we're going to do some characters give me um someone give me an age and a gender where we go already seventeen seventeen year old female okay okay how old's our guy in the next for column 52 52 year old guy okay another woman 28 28 female okay and another guy a six year old boy okay let's give what is the seventeen-year-old female passionate about okay for okay let me give give me other ones I'll go with croquet all right new video et te s that is for okay take a literally QE QE pick up lost a letter via Charlie Crowe KQ u EP okay cuckoo it's a fantasy version all right one second zero two year old guy passionate about toys coins I'll let it go man what's that let's deb bull wishing life okay we're in a science fiction fantasy pot let's set some of these in science fiction roles or fantasy worlds dead easy getting into wizarding string theory okay he's your guy string theory alright 20 year old female what could she be interested in um more of a fantasy world okay she's uh she's weaponsmith okay six-year-old boys minor earrings okay actually legs to make it a passion rather than a quark yet her boss's wife in herbology herbology okay all right um interest number two I want a different interest something else that they're passionate about cooking cooking ah now do you know 17 okay now what's he fashion about Jamie so number man city government for dancing what's that never busy necromancy and croquet is going okay I'm gonna put her in modern setting okay so she's modern in the UK Lisbon UK lives in the 21st century UK okay degree uh what else is guy passionate about he wants to get into Wizarding school um drink there he's in the science fiction world I'm the state with science fiction but um so we're I'm gonna say this is the year 2400 same Gardens okay we're gonna bring in gochang Gardens so things that are against the main plotline okay um 28 year old female weaponsmith what else you see passionate about hobbies you got a little too weird I think on this one um remember these things don't have to be quite so weird um let's let's let me just throw one up here she's um she's writing guardian of her family she's got she's got younger siblings she's got siblings um and you know her father's like has Alzheimer's and she's just basically all about being the in charge of her family says you know her mother's not around and father has also octamer she's got younger siblings passionate about passionate about family remember we don't have to make these all the reason I'm throwing this one up here a lot of these are kind of quirky you don't have to push toward quirks all the time with these sometimes the most basic and most fundamental passions have that every main attribute to them that are going to make the character much more sympathetic and since we already have a 20 year old 8 year old female weaponsmith in a fantasy world which is a little bit I want to push this one towards something a little more normal all right six-year-old neurologist superheroes color red all right all right - I three year old is passionate about the color red everything has to be red okay okay color Rises all right all right so now we're going to add some more depth here um we are going to let's see we are going to add a secret in each one of these people's past that they don't want other people to know about all right our odd crow quick a plain necromancer shall we say that she's um and permanency qualifies yeah a necromancer probably is but what did she do with the necromancer she did something she's sacrificing after Easter croquets being with an interesting round shaped up she may I she had a ritual from a person I have one back okay maybe okay loved one died I'm kind of like the loved one died loved one died she's trying to use necromancy the oldest raising them from the bed and failed at raising it from the dead into a zombie okay okay okay okay I'm actually liking this one um the reason for this thing but then it's not just she lost somebody which is actually a good one you'll see blocks of authors using this it's very common they lost someone they passed it's kind of shaped through there it's part of you know it's Batman right um but I'm taking it one step further and say she got it in necromancy because of her loved one died she tried to raise them in failed and now there are horrible consequences this is actually a pretty good way to start a story she's got like you know her her father locked in the dungeon in the basement as you know this powerful lives on me that has like the soul of the demon in him and she like failed and raising him and now what do I do and you know I go to my evil patriarch demon father for advice sometimes but I'm really just trying to find a way to to get my father's soul back in there you've got great little kind of weird thing going on here they could be completely separate from the main plot or at least only sideways step off part of it that now she's got a lot more dec 2015 hero guy string theories and Gardens on what is his job I'm are we going to call him an easy a theoretical physicist trash I so we've got to have you want to be a trash man yes okay okay trash man okay we're gonna make him a trash man um in the future future trash man um and so how is this gonna kind of houses character connect more tie together what boys caught sort of secret does he have his pass let's get you guys at over here been doing a good job give me some he takes four people's trash to create his own garden swing okay Zen trash Gardens is pretty cool didn't like the ghost man cousin are so conspiracy was involved in the government so now he's ghost in being trapped and stable okay okay he used to be string theorists but like he designed something and like his family died in an accident okay let's stay away from family dying because we've kind of got to two things but I like the rest of them okay he created something really dangerous what did he create immortality a bomb bomb how many like to mortality raise your hands coming like bomb okay key now did you like you hear those nuts in there like you created an alternate time loop because with string theory to you right right yeah yeah okay okay have alternate time with each angel evil okay I like this time woods he brought his evil filmand and so he did something with a weird time loop and now he's in hiding I can do I can dig that um that's kind of working all right weapons Smith um what she got in her past hey what's that yeah she does have to support the siblings that's not that's already since you got more we've got lesbian over here as a suggestion it might be going back to the death of a family member but maybe she was somehow responsible for the absent mother okay let's again stay away from the family member thing just so we are leaning on normally if you're writing the story it's a go for that but we already have one here I want to always one story what we quit the good night okay they cut me now they can't be because unless the string theory loop Erica you can actually you can actually string theory to tie what about a forbidden love interest she's trying to take care of her family but let's say that she wants to be with somebody else but her okay I mean Glacia her blacksmith and to say go ahead with that one except for one thing I want to push you away from assuming that the woman's of passions and plot have to be about a love interest this is a what's that okay okay that could be that could be something on the dish throw out a few more to force you guys think do you see why I stopped that by the way it would be just fine to do that but a lot of people it's just part of our natural thing is to assume you know you didn't throw out for the 50-year old guy love interest you threw it out for the 20 year old theme 28 year old female because we're going to assume that a twenty-something females the book that they're there and that their main focus is going to be on a love interest and I want to push you away from doing that just because it's going to be what's expected you guys heard the betcha Tessa eventual test you guys know what it is you should you should look it up um there's a there's a feminist web to NIST who noticed that I'm fairly common in in stories particularly in films there will be one female character and a whole bunch of guys and the woman will never talk to other women except about romantic interests and then the only scenes of a woman talking to another woman so she they they started called The Bachelor test um does this book that or our movie patch The Bachelor test are there more than one one is there more than one woman in the book does that woman talk to another woman about something other than a man um and you will be surprised at how often this comes up uh very frequently you know you should study a little feminist theory but very frequently and storytelling people will you know we're aware of not trying to you know make a single weak female and so right writers particularly male writers will write into it one super strong super female lead who there's nothing wrong with remember this over here nothing wrong with her she's kind of perfect and you know the guys will be you know will be de funneled all the time he'll be making mistakes but the girl is like super piano she she always has the right answer and things like this um honestly okay don't get that let the skin around but um the the the missionary guide did this do you guys you guys are they aren't old enough for discussions they're like this tape that went along with the discussions your your laughing uses you listen to these tapes yeah it's like the elders come on and they do a horrible job and then the other elders come on and do another job and then the end is let's see how the sisters doing and then they come on feel perfectly um which is actually overreacting to piecing this you see this actually with um with minority characters to watch how often nowadays in a video game of movie there will be one black character and they will be super awesome they they would be like that the most awesome person around but they aren't allowed to be the main character they're either like general or they're you know they're like you know they're they're whatever their God um in the Bruce Almighty movies they are they are this awesome minority character um maybe the magical Negro you can read about that one um but they're the super character today the only one they're alone in this world a sea of white males there's like one minority and one woman and neither of them have any real problems with them and they will probably save everybody a couple times but the story their story is going to be about them um this is kind of the modern level of how how kind of Italy well we can't really against you know we're being PC we're making sure to make sure we're including minorities but they don't ever get to be the leads I just going back to the tween you know why couldn't she have a burning passion desire to do to map the world she's in but because she's stuck taking care of her siblings Oh her only option to get to be able to hear about the outside world is through the weaponry that she sells to people who are actually I like that travel travel that's not a secret but that's another passion but I'm liking this one as a conflict you can she can actually make this a secret if you want to she's not telling her family that she feels really tied down by them but nice try um no she secretly has a desire to travel I'm keeping this one a little bit more normal because the others who get a little weird this is a really cool one this is a really good start to a character okay um so yeah maybe she made a someone something similar maybe she made a weapon for a war that she was inside of a warrior she doesn't like the way that yeah yeah yeah or you know she maybe she's gotten the opportunity now to go and visit one of these um these battles and she sees what she's been doing she's like you know Tony Stark holy cow um you know yeah I'm installed in the building iron it's I don't know all right let's go onto this one over here oh you got one guys go I just have a question yeah you create characters to battle is to kind of I often will I often will to add flavor I would start asking myself kind of harder questions about this I'll go deeper than this we don't have time for a lot of this I'll tell you some of the other questions we're going to ask in fact maybe we'll do this guy's secret passion then I'll do like one different question for each person so once the six year olds secret I don't think a Sakura can have a lot of Secrets let's not do the six year old happy to think dark secret not everybody needs one um I liked what they said before making him so he can read people's minds already turner boy cool alright um okay so what where would I go deeper in this um how I would start to go deeper as I would start to build other characters into their lives that they create the creates friction with them or I would start to look at setting elements that would create friction with them um I would start trying to add depth to them by you know like this for the the girl croquet Claire I'm like all right do we have political leanings are we gonna what kind of personality type we're going to look for and you're going to use the color test I don't always use espen occasionally okay we're gonna make her red or whatever you know that color thing or I'll use this or I'll use that or just something to say okay I'm going to give a personality archetype to this person so let's give her a personality rfn what kind of personality is she what's that introvert okay what kind of introvert there's lots of effects scholarly introvert shy introvert um doesn't really notice the world around them introvert obsessive introvert yeah okay okay obsessed I like obsessive obsessive inter okay so there you go that does do we get a personality after that that's going to help right there so 52 year old guy let's add um an unusual political or religious philosophy to him that does not melt that well with everything else you hold storms Catholic okay he's racist he's racist against Saint hailing species now xenophobic for that too much hay racist is better it's more realistic well not realistic Baltimore listen but if he has a certain alien race that he really doesn't like with it yours you well thank you if he has to start an alien race that he just hates that's going to be add some interesting things now that now this is getting the point we've got a lot of things for this guy to focus on so I would back off from kind of personality quirks at this point I've kind of got a built and I have to start working on plot sort of things on because you don't want every characters that you want to have a mix of different things you don't want them to feel like that everything but the kitchen sink and this guy's feeling pretty schizophrenic to me right now and so really I would start looking at ways to tie this all in um we we don't want to go too far afield you know it's good and passion about things not relating the plot but if we just have a list of random things you're going to forget about it as you're writing it's gonna be very hard to be consistent and so I start trying to tie a few of these deals that will be my next step here alright 20 year old 8 year old female um what else can we what else can we do for her um we're gonna I'm gonna start with her with a plot hook um let's say what happens to her she's got her life with all this and what happens that just that changes and shakes up for entire life right to begin ok brides her family I still dwell point that's right sibling that she's trying to take care of runs away oh hey that's a pretty good one we've got a little bit of a bride Prejudice staying there yeah along with that so I'm just mentioned with a weapon maybe she got a special commission to build a special weapon and his first time magic implementing into it and it's assembling takes a yeah there you go now that's a great one okay her younger sister steals the magic store okay I like that a lot um that this is this is that's going to be great with her um so she's got to chase her younger sibling you know maybe her imma whatever you want to come up with you have to then build the younger sibling to make sure they're not they're not flat but you've got in a nice ordered story there why would she run off with a magic sword our character has to chase her into the middle like a battlefield where the girls can like sell the prototype to the wrong side or any side or something like that plus she's getting chased by the person who commissioned this but thinks she stole it you got a great story happening there okay six-year-old um how are you going to make the six-year-old proactive that's a big challenge he tries to affect the world around him on the things that he hears in people's minds okay okay these guys he's got Superman complex this is gonna be one of his parents is the bad guy so um you guys know Superman complex studying your kind of deviant psychological behavior will be really useful for you guys this is the kind of a and personality quirk that is you feel like you've got to rescue everybody it's almost it's borderline codependent um where you know you feel like everything your your job is to make everyone happy um and if you aren't you know you don't focus on yourself you focus on everyone to the extreme that could be a really interesting thing to try and work through the six-year-old who's got this amazing power and feels like you should be able to fix everything it could be a good story your next step and I we have to end but so we won't actually do this but your next step would be if you really wanted to um you know go do this sort of thing with your friends or just take these characters and the way the practices have each of these characters kind of walk through the same scene and have them notice different things have them describe it in different ways you know the female this are necromancer's like you know um where the ley lines in this city that I that I first come to and I feel the power you know are there any powerful necromancy they'll notice like you know the Gothic architecture and say wow that's a warning against this sort of thing or you know she may notice the boards or the you know because she's the croquet person or whatever you know you got a you know I would actually probably make her a sports star I mean I use croquet and I use something else his Kirk ace a little bit porky because never be honest I don't use I probably won't but yeah if I were going to do I probably change it something like polo um so that it would be there would be more of a reason for it a tour and things like this but you know string theory guy he walks through the stereo city what he's he gonna see did he have like you know he's got a really a scholarly background so is he going to know you know the different types of architecture is he gonna see the old city or is he going to be not caring about that because he's so science fictiony you know whatever it's gonna be look interested in the technology the types of phones people are carrying you know the woman over there is going to see weapons and know they're great she's gonna see metals um whereas the end of the kid it's going to be like you know everything see he's gonna be like red red I want the red daddy bear and that person you know means fascinated by colors or something I'm them you know your goal is to build these characters and then try and describe the world in a way that is unique to them and have them all go through the same scene and have without info dumps show us all this stuff about them without ever telling us in a single line their passions by what they notice in the world never say she was a necromancer have her say that's a ward against necromancy I won't be able to enter that building suddenly we know she's a necromancer and that's a much better book you know you can start this book by saying you know Jill stood outside the building confronted by an ancient necker's Nancy Ward award realizing she wasn't going to be able to go with the rest of her school group into the state capital because someone had warded against the necromancers you start your sentence like that can you imagine a you know a nice why a book starting like that um there's there's a great hook line for you that tells us you know we've got a seventeen-year-old necromancer on a school field trip unable to answer em to the State Capitol so she's like I'm gonna have to like fake a heart attack or something do this with everybody and see what if you can get across you know mastered string theory if you can get across you know love of siblings and family without without actually having a say she loved her family deeply okay and that's your challenge do this with your own characters in your next into your writing all right

Channel: zmunk

Views: 23,127

Rating: 4.9176955 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, creative writing, sympathetic character, proactive, show vs tell, character building

Id: wIt4PIdaLsE

Length: 60min 39sec (3639 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2016