Sanderson 2016.2 - Characters

I don't want to start off with a little metaphor for you relating to what I talked about last week to kind of ease us back into this idea so I thought of this metaphor of cake not the band sorry um so I want you to tell me this say there is a when you see those two words what's the difference between those two words for you what's interesting a cook and a chef chef's we're okay right here chef's wear hats chef is more likely to be friends a chef is for likely to be French okay okay chef is more the boss than the cook would be that might be coming up with something new where is it goes just sort of making progress okay the chef's coming up with something new where the the cooks working for firmer Optus recipe in the back they're training formal training yeah and that was yours too yeah the cook is somebody got hired on to do a job whereas the chef is like I went and I trained and I am a chef um so I want you guys to be chefs and I really like the whoever it wasn't said the chef comes up with something new the cook follows instructions now this is an issue but from what I talked about last week this idea that your job as a writer is to not be a cook but to be a chef the chef looks at the ingredients and says I know what happens when I combine these two ingredients and if I combine them in a different and interesting way I will create something new and I'll try that out I'll see how it is it may not work it might work but I'm going to experiment with it the cook says well this tool goes in this spot so I use this tool great example of this is the hero's journey hero's journey is a great tool you guys familiar with the hero's journey Joseph Campbell's monomyth it's this thing you study we'll talk about it in the class off and on but it's this idea that there's a young protagonist who goes on a quest and there's kind of things along the route that most of them run into you're wearing Star Wars hat Star Wars was the hero's journey goes back to classical Greek stories this idea of you know the mentor figure the descent into the underworld or to the belly of the whale and then at the end the the hero comes back and shares what he or she has learned usually was he in the past with with the people where he came from right so the hero's journey it's actually a great model for looking at the story the chef school would look at this and say ah this is describing storytelling externally this is describing how these tools have been applied in the past and I can now look at and see why the the protagonists having a mentor makes such an interesting part of the story the cook says well here are the lists of things that are on the hero's journey I will apply each of those to my story so don't want to go into it too much the poor man's been uh been had criticism caped upon him but the virgin birth virgin birth is a part of the hero's journey so George Lucas put the virgin birth into Star Wars in the prequels if you haven't seen them then you're lucky but there is this moment where Anakin's mother says there was no father virgin birth now I'm convinced that George Lucas put this in to follow the checklist of the things that are on the hero's journey every person I know that watched that at that moment said what this doesn't fit the mythology that you've presented to us it doesn't doesn't match it doesn't add anything to the story it's just there in this weird sort of way this is a perfect example in fact again not to heat too much on George Lucas because we all do this we all occasionally say well I've learned this tool this has to happen the mentor has to die so I'll kill the mentor right now if that's why you're doing it then you're missing something if instead you say okay if I separate the the protagonist from the mentor at this point the arc that I've already built means that the protagonist now can stand on their own can prove that they can stand on their own even though all along they didn't think that they could and then they have this moment to achieve something by themselves without the training wheels on that is a great moment for this specific characters arc because I have referenced it all the way through and built to this point that makes a great moment in a story just doing something because it's part of the checklist does not I bring this up because we're going to talk a lot in the class about things that can feel like a checklist we're going to talk about formulas we're going to talk about three-act formula when we do plotting we're going to talk about you know how Hollywood constructs the story how this person constructs a story today we'll talk about characters I'll talk about here are some things I've noticed that make a character sympathetic the point is not to say to you here's a checklist still use the point is to get you thinking about the why why does this work for for this character why does this make a character feel sympathetic and how can I adapt that to the stories in the way I want to use them all right kind of the preface for the whole class is this idea of what makes up a story let me ask you that what makes something a story what what's--what is a story pretty open-ended question we're going to take an entire semester dancer but let me ask you okay conflict is a story that's kind of one of the classic definitions of it right you know the the King died the Queen died is not a story isn't how it goes but the King died and the Queen died of grief is a story because one implies an actual conflict whereas one is just a sequence of events yeah what else and idea is what one makes a story character growth okay something changing I would say that's definitely a big part of it a character growing is a good ask a good example of something changing and the best stories tend to have the character be someone different even if they return to the same place like the hero's journey says that's a different person from who left yeah preferably interesting characters doing interesting things interesting characters doing interesting things yes that is one thing I look forward to as aspects of the story homogenous sequences and excuses then importantly nice people care okay yeah sequence events and characters that make the reader care definitely definitely um as I've tried to divide this out in my head I've kind of come up with these are the these are the parts of the story the parts of story are really plot setting and character and then there's this idea of conflict that ties them all together that's how I started viewing it a story is a character at odds with their setting or characters at odds with other characters or even themselves or characters and odds with what the world seems to think that they should do or with the the plot of the book necessarily is this is what makes a setting now the box for snuggles in a box is there is this box around this and this is the structure I'm not talking about the plot structure I'm talking about the things like your viewpoint attacks your tone your paragraphing how you build your chapters all of these things I view these as kind of a the window through what you're going to see the story your own personal voice all of this kind of stuff that are the decisions you make about how to tell this story about a character in a certain place doing a certain thing at odds hopefully with all three of them so in this class my goal is to take each of these chunks and spend a couple weeks on them today we're going to start with character but we'll have probably usually during the year you can tell I usually kind of feel out as I'm going how I run these lectures it's not always I don't have a strict lecture set but usually I end up doing two weeks on character two weeks on plot two weeks on setting and in each of those I'm talking about conflict and then we'll do usually about two weeks on the box we'll talk about viewpoint of tense we'll talk about you know picking your tone your paragraphing your prose all of those sorts of things so today we're going to talk about character we're going to talk about character sliders and this will be the biggest chunk of what we do today yes the character sliders so character it's interesting to think about those three boxes are those three circles because if you consider we're in a science-fiction of fantasy writing class that's what this is focused on so you would assume that the setting is the most important part right that's what drew us to this class in specific but we have this weird situation sci-fi fantasy where in my opinion mode you can have the most interesting setting ever but it isn't it doesn't have interesting characters to populate it it's actually going to be a boring story right now plot is it as is a different beast there are plenty of books with boring characters and exciting plots that work just fine but I can't think of very many book length works they have a really fascinating setting but bad characters that I enjoyed so there's this catch-22 ideally I want to teach you in such a way that you can do all three of those circles well and then you can choose the box that you enjoy most that naturally matches your writing style and the best to tell that story in a way that achieves your goals that's what I want so that all three will be equal realistically though if you're going to skimp if you're going to fail on any of them don't fail on character okay I have read books where I'm like you know what the setting it's only so-so but I love these characters and I finish that book now this is a personal thing it's entirely possible that you may have a different opinion on this but I really think that character it rules the roost of those three and having interesting people is important if you can think about it we often talk in writing classes about starting with a bang right you're like I need you need to start with a hook you start with a great scene that draws the reader and anyone heard these sorts of things and writing classes or in English classes before most of you have and then a lot of write writers think okay I need to start with an action sequence which is not necessarily a bad way to start but then they include that lots of action and fighting and people dying and heads getting chopped off and people thrown out of windows and are surprised when the reader finds that intro kind of boring I say but heads got chopped off people got defenestrated right literally defenestrated this is exciting isn't it well the writer will find out often that they didn't give enough character and people dying you know action particularly in a book it's not books are not like Jackie Chan films right I can watch Jackie Chan punch people for an hour and a half and I'm okay with that right Jackie's going to find some different thing to punch people with you know he's going to use their own fists at point until use you know someone's hair he will throw them off cliff yeah yeah Jackie Chan is a great character he is and that that's that's the thing is Jackie Chan doesn't consider himself a martial artist as much as a physical comedian who does martial arts but the thing is in a book that blow-by-blow if you wrote he punched him he punched him really hard he grabbed the chair and hits him it just is boring and beyond that if the people who are getting hurt are not people with whom you empathize you're gonna that's going to run thin really quickly now that doesn't mean you can't start with a bang with people you don't know but you got to be sparing if you're going to start off with a 20-page battle scene you're going to have readers be bored even if it's the most exciting scene ever however you can have a scene that starts with no action but is a really intense character moment that readers will love and will draw them in it will be a much better hook than your action sequence so kind of discard this thing you've been taught about starting with a bang and start thinking about that idea of the hook the why okay the why when I was in high school we got taught about holes for my English teacher said you need to hook your audience quickly and efficiently with something that will grab their attention and then so we all did essays we wrote them and then we present in the class and one person got up and said sex sex sex sex sex now that I have your attention let's talk about race relations that was their hook that's what I want you to avoid right ask yourself with your hook you're planning is this sex XX XX race relations in the 1950s and is right you want your hook to be something that introduces the idea of your story in a concise interesting way that encapsulates the kinds of emotions not every one of them but the kinds of emotions and tone you are going to give this reader by reading this book this is what we call making promises right making promises of tone very early one of those promises you can give people is an interesting and engaging character I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut who said start a story with somebody who wants something really badly even if it's just a glass of water which I really want right now a character who wants something so as I thought about this I thought a lot about what makes a character work what makes a character interesting so let's let me ask this what makes a character interesting what makes a character interesting to you yes really for me okay they can do really cool things that's great what else what else makes a character interesting to you I can switch it world's conflicted morals I'm actually gonna write some these up these are good ones okay cool things qual conflicted alright what else we got yeah after yes out of their depth okay that's great alright well that's great okay good relationships with other okay relationships relationships great alright well what else we got yeah contrast against stereotypes okay contrasting stereotypes and they seem real or they're okay okay so they contrast stereotypes remind you of yourself all right yeah this is great over here in the yellow scarf takes action character takes action all right Proactive all right yeah right here um okay when they're flood they're not perfect great um when they have defining moment okay okay think about office but they don't tell you what that if I love this lady's butt refilling drop the story okay so you're talking about a past a powerful past they're not just a character who starts on page one and as never had a life before that but there are things in their past that have shaped who they are oh you like when they're funny okay good okay yeah okay okay or not all right so you one more let's have one yeah they're affected by the world around them okay yeah interconnected this is a pretty darn good list I would say you could almost write this all down and then say okay we're done for today but this might stray into being the chef typist up stuff this is this is a great list the question you want to be asking yourself is how do I do this why are these things compelling what's interesting about them so early in my career I started think about characters one of the things I realized is the characters kind of exist on this sort of this timeline this is my kind of first attempt to describe character it's not necessarily the model I think he capsule eights everything but it was useful for me as a new writer and this timeline was between what I called the everyman and the super man or woman every man is Superman right the idea being that we like characters often because they remind us of ourselves all right this is one of the major sources of sympathy for characters so we're talking about right here how to make characters sympathetic really or readable on the other end of the spectrum though we find that readers really connect with characters who are hyper competent this competency sort of drives interest and a lot of different characters in fact oftentimes if there's a character who's not very much like us they are made hyper competence as a method of making them very interesting and sympathetic to us even if they aren't much like us the BBC's Sherlock is a great example of this Sherlock has presented as not very much of an everyman at all but he has presented his hyper competent is given and everyman companion in that show in order to balance the fact that he is so Superman and in fact they take great pains to make Watson very everyman like in that show much beyond the actual originals if you've read Sherlock Holmes he is just way more normal he's not as bumbling as some of the Watson's have been but he's a little bit bubbling hey but he's also very grounded they try very hard to make him feel like an everyman so a lot of the stories yeah go ahead but it's not the things that would make it super human at the tasks that needs to be performed in us here yeah you could say that you can definitely say that you could say that where Watson is competent is that he's competent at being a human a good person he's competent all the things that Holmes is not competent that you also see this in Lord of the Rings another great example of this is Sam Sam it was that was at a cheer for Sam Sam wise so Tolkien himself and this is said that he considered Sam to be the hero of The Lord of the Rings most readership pulls list Sam as their favorite character Sam is competent but he's really only confident in one thing and that's really being a good friend now he is hyper competent at being a good friend he is extremely loyal but in most ways he is there as to kind of fulfill this role of Tolkien was a available scholar he's done a translation of Beowulf and their writings where he implies that the whole idea behind the hobbit in the first place was to put a normal person in the role of one of these heroes from an ancient epic right Beowulf goes and you know slays dragon there's actually scene where someone steals a cup from a dragon in Beowulf there's all these sort of this great journey and fighting and he wanted to do kind of a normal British dude who got thrown into Beowulf right and that's kind of our Sam to a lesser extent our Frodo but Sam and this but those books also have characters over here on this end of the spectrum Aragorn you never really questioned whether Aragorn can slay the fifty orcs that he needs to slay in fact if you read the books tokens like in yeah and they were going took care of those 50 old orcs because he just can write he's Aragorn in fact if you if you watch the movies and read the books they had to kind of move Aragorn for the film's this direction a little bit give him an internal conflict making much he wanted to be king in order to ground him a little bit more and kind of build some more of everyman sympathy because you is on this edge of the spectrum so far in the screenwriters opinion I don't know if that's right or wrong your tolkien-esque senses can decide whether you think that was a right move or not but that's what they did so it this story that is Sam in the world of of superman' and I'll get to this question in just a second the other thing about this scale again this doesn't cover everything but it was really interesting to me as I thought about it is that a lot of stories are about moving up this line right spider-man as a hero or the classic hero's journey Luke Skywalker whoever it is many of the stories are about going like this you could even argue that there are a lot of books about manners where the main character the protagonist her job is moving from the outsider who doesn't understand high society to the person who understands it and becomes a master of it this is one of the things that we like Evan as an arc is we establish a character that we like and then we push them toward this to the point that by the end they are dominant in their field whatever it is what was your question it's more of a clarification so much of scalability like everyman isn't good at anything but super very good at everything it's more every man as the person very quickly yes format is words so you're giving because he's so right right right it's not necessarily a scale of competence on this one what it more like is this is the person we want to be like this is the person we see ourselves as alright moving from the person we see ourselves as to the person that we would like to be like that's not to say that you're going to read a book about James Bond to be like I want to be James Bond necessarily but that's kind of the thing James Bond was one of these super men James Bond was good at everything and this was more common in older days than it is now you don't see a lot of contemporary stories you still see some dirt pit is like this and you want to read the dirt pit books dirt pit Clive Cussler they're very popular I've read one where I swear to you like like he is dirt that is just awesome he does everything awesomely and that's okay because you want to read about dirt but he's even a really nice person so it's not anything I'm in a jerk like like James Bond right he's just a great person and he's so awesome that everyone around him becomes awesome by association one book has been a while but I'm pretty sure like his accountant was trapped on an island by himself with terrorists and thought what would Dirk Pitt Duke and whit got himself a bazooka blew a helicopter out of there armed himself and killed all the terrorists because he knew Dirk Pitt and knew what Dirk would do and he was able to do it even though he's the county because you know the dirt pit right Facebook still can be successful but you don't see as many of them anymore if you leave three Golden Age comics and compare them to modern age comics you'll see that what's going on here is that there's a lot more movement along the scale that's really what do you want to be like how do you see yourself now as I said I don't really I think this is a fun model it was useful for me for a number of years and maybe it'll be useful to you I've instead recently started to look at characters as a group of sliding scales again not necessarily as a checklist but as trying to analyze why some work and some don't I should make the caveat that when I'm writing books I'm usually not thinking about most the things I will write on this board when I'm designing a book I often will be thinking about them when I run into a problem in a book the tools I write up on the board are usually the things that I step back and say okay let's analyze this let's see what's not working let's try and figure out why this is not working so these are usually tools I'm not necessarily in the moment of writing I've done this so long that I've started to do a lot of this by instinct this is me trying to explain what's going on inside my brain so this is mine but we will do a talk about a few other people's that I've met their methods of building character so this there are lots of ways to do this but I started looking at characters kind of these sliding scales that you can kind of imagine you can come up with your own but you you can imagine one of them being competence another being likability and another being proactivity and there are plenty of others on this isn't going to be talking necessarily about how funny the character is which would be another you know sliding scale or things like this but I kind of look personally at three things driving three major forces driving what makes a character interesting for us to read about one is this competence we talked about that someone who is very competent and capable is interesting to us now the reason I like this better than that other scale is because you can have competence in a limited area you can say Samwise Gamgee is the most loyal person in anything and you say his competency in a really narrow band is pretty high compared to everyone else in the world he's way down here because he's only good at one thing whereas Aragorn is good at almost everything but you can you can kind of look at that likability is just how naturally nice how much how much they remind of ourselves a little bit like that everyman quality but it's also you know are they a good person do we want to read more about this person do they have friends one of the easiest and quickest ways to make someone likable um in a story is to have another character talk about why they like them now this can stray into being sappy so be dangerous right if you start up your book and there's like 40 different people being like wow I wish I could be like Sally she is the best have you seen her throw throwing stars faster throwing stars the next person is like Gus and Sally also is really good at kicking people in the face I don't know you yeah you could see how this would get annoying but if you introduce this is a person who is who just you know they interact with their characters and those characters like them we will naturally be more sympathetic toward that person in Hollywood terms they say if you want someone the audience to like someone have them pet a dog if you don't want them to like that person have that same person kick a dog that's again a cliche this is not this is but this is a tool to kind of dig out and say okay what does that mean what's going to make us like you care so likability finally proactivity we really really naturally like people who move the story along and we get really frustrated by characters who refuse to move the story along now when we talk about plotting we'll talk about this idea that progress in a book is illusionary all movement through a story is at in your control as the author and the reader kind of knows this so they know that when that character is just not going anywhere when they're stuck in the same rut that they've been in for four or five chapters it feels like an eternity to the reader because they're like just come on you can do this you can get beyond it you could change something we like characters that are proactive now what this does is when I was thinking about this is you can kind of move people up and down on the scale to create by by create taking these three you can create different styles of characters and think about why they work and why they don't for instance if you have someone who's very proactive and very competent but not likable at all can you think of any characters who are like that let's add ray raise your hand did give me one yeah in the back okay Sherlock is an awesome example we've already talked about him yeah okay umbrage umbrage yes umbrage very much so yeah okay I grew okay I would say that GRU is supposed to be unlikable but you actually do but you're right that's exactly like I think Cruz arc is is that you think he's this this you think he's this exactly and grew through a despicable me what it really means is through the course of the story you realize he's really here and actually here but still pretty proactive right and that's that's a fun reversal that movie works because he looks all awesome that you're like you know what you're really kind of a has-been but you're also really really likable we liked you you're nice to your minions most of the time you know in things like that but yeah that's that's perfect that's exactly but I would say that a lot of your classic villains are like that they are hyper competent or at least hyper proactive but not very likable this leads to by the way the thing that I've talked about on writing excuses before what we call the villain problem we're in a lot of stories with dynamic villains the villains are the main source of proactivity in the story and you if you look at a lot of Hollywood blockbusters or a good example of this just because they're so translucent or transparent I mean with their with the way that they're approaching storytelling the villain is this dynamic it's low-key right loki is like trying to do stuff what is thor trying to do I want to drink and maybe throw my hammer at some people um if that's all he really wants out of life Loki has aspirations and the entire whole thing moves because Loki does stuff this creates this thing where the majority of people like Loki as a character more than the Thor right because he is proactive and even though he's kind of despicable he's proactive and moderately competent he drives the story we ended up liking him so your challenge as a writer writing particularly this type of story but really anything we are going to have a dynamic antagonist is to keep this in mind how are you going to make sure that your main character is proactive this is difficult and I want to take a moment to talk about making your your character proactive because you might be thinking okay I'm going to start this story with a character who doesn't really want you know they're artists learning to step up and you know kind of take control of their own life and to be proactive how do I write a story about a character who does that would they naturally have to have a low proactivity bar at the beginning well what can you do what can you do to make a character proactive at the start even if they aren't going to be the main driving force of the plot in the first three small journeys okay small drinks small dreams like what I one day specific magic card I want a specific magic card ah after my own heart yes go ahead okay forcing their hand very early is a great way to do it when we talk about plotting we'll talk about three act formats one of the things which is Act one the character doesn't want to have to do anything but they are quickly forced beyond it yeah I think some books kind of have like a fall spot that's very secluded throughout the book yeah yeah the little small plot in the first you know you can kind of look at the first third or the first half the first third and first sixth to be this thing where you're like we're going to do something the character actually wants something and we're going to show them wanting it while we reveal the main plot yeah into that they start off with I just want to know my for smoking reason yes that's a really good way to do you've got two good things in here I'll get to your second there's two good things in here I'll get to that let me let me the first one is to give an indication that even though the character thinks their life is perfect something is missing or to give an indication that you know what there's a big world out there and the character would like to explore it deep in their heart that's that moment in the original Star Wars where Luke Skywalker stands up on the the hill is it and you see the two stones and Sons and he looks out and there's that moment of he longs for something right you can give this indication that the character isn't satisfied even though they don't quite know how to be proactive in their life yet that there is something missing there is something they want the other thing you can do is you can make the thing that they want beat stability and not give that to them from page one right we don't read The Hobbit and have like fifty pages of Bilbo living a perfect life we read The Hobbit and very quickly dwarves show up on his doorstep and ruin his perfect life so at least you know we know what he wants so there's this idea of you can show the characters desires even if they can't really be proactive yet let me go to the people who had other suggestions but I do want it will hop to you and then there there was somebody over here who had one yeah right there so right here you can give them small things to be proactive about choices they make they want that together but it's very small things yeah and it just shows them that they can and be proactive right you show but small things they can be proactive even if they're stuck in a rut in the main part of their life then you can show that there are things they can work on I recently read the first book of the expanse Leviathan wakes which has a character who is stuck in a rut in their life actually both main characters are kind of in ruts but is showing they're in their everyday lives the things that they do and they are making decisions and then big events happen that shake them out of their comfortable life but we I've already seen them doing things and wanting things even if they were in a rut so it works very well yeah sire oh yeah yes yeah they're big ones move but yeah what you really want to avoid like if okay they can't be proactive you probably want to try showing them being competent in at least one sphere let's talk about the confidence one for a little while a more contemporary with contemporary way of looking at it is not that characters are hyper competent or a hyper incompetent really it is characters we are all competent in certain areas and what a book might do is force us out of our area of competence and force us to learn new competencies or to learn to apply what we are good at to the world at large you can probably think of many stories where the character is good at one thing in their normal life the the one that comes to mind is Legally Blonde alright in Legally Blonde she wins the big court case by knowing how to take care of hair products right how to take care of a perm that's like you know the you can show someone being hyper competent in one area move them outside of their area of competence but then show how they adapt and learn to use their old competence in their new life this is a very good way to show someone kind that is competent and incompetent at the same time like we forgive people for not being confident we do forgive though that's the proactivity and you can you can actually let's talk about this from it you can probably let's see is there somebody is highly proactive but highly incompetent that you can think of that's a good character han Solo Megamind um I would I would say yeah uh who else just yeah mega mine's a great example of ego Smeagol okay yeah yeah he's trying to do stuff definitely what's that wily coyote oh that's the perfect example of somebody who is really really proactive and hyper incompetent right and so so there can be you can write characters who are just not very competent but trying very hard and that's what you're talking about the person who tries hard will get huge points from us I remember reading an essay about the opening of Indiana Jones the first one and if you remember this of this indiana jones indiana jones goes into this cave they has to like face spiders to get stuck on people's backs and get over a pit and there's like traps and spears and then finally that famous scene where he like gets the idol and puts like the bag on and the ball rolls after him and he'd run and at the end of that indiana jones loses right indiana jones is not competent enough to succeed despite everything we've gone through now i'm not going to argue that indiana jones is incompetent he's not but they met great pains to show indiana jones kind of being right there he is hyper proactive right indiana jones does not sit around Indiana Jones goes and does stuff even when it's stupid to do so and he's just competent enough to get himself out of troubles but not generally presented as competent as a lot of the people around him but we love him because of how hard he tries and in some ways we start getting into this idea of a character being flawed which we'll talk about next yeah about that so yeah definitely lowering confidence raise the stakes yeah you always feel like he's one step away from catastrophe and that raises the tension and the conflict now the question you have to ask yourself is what type of story am I telling okay am i telling a story where I want the reader to feel that the characters always one step away from catastrophe it's a certain type of story it's this fish-out-of-water story who mentioned that one out of their debt it's that sort of story is a character whose competence does not match the competence required but their proactivity is high enough that they compensate for it right they just try so hard it's this idea of you trying 99 times and fail but the hundredth time you succeed that is a out of your depth type story that's a great story to tell however there are plenty of stories that people tell about hyper competent people that you never really believe are going to fail a lot of the classic James Bond stories are like this hyper competent you know he's going to succeed you just know a lot of the classic Superman stories are like this - he is going to succeed and there are plenty of stories that you read where this extremely competent character and you know they're going to navigate this world pretty well and it's fun to simply watch how great they are at it in another type of genre the high strana anyone seeing the movies Ocean's eleven you never really doubt that Danny ocean is smooth and knows exactly what he's doing he is not out of his depth but it is fun to watch someone extremely competent go about doing awesome things that's a type of story those are two different stories your job is to decide what is my story going to do and what kind of emotion do I want to evoke from the reader what kind of tension do I want to have in my story so competence I would suggest that as you look at confidence you kind of have two or three scales here one is their general competence and fluency in the situation that they're in and the other is this idea of what are they good at everybody should be good at something in your stories whether it's simply being loyal or whether it's at singing acapella really well okay everyone should be good at something even if it doesn't relate to the main plot of your story all right so likability likability is this kind of middle-of-the-road one where the other two will naturally bump this one up the higher you move those on the scale so if you want them to be unlikable and they're competent and proactive you need to try and drag them down on the scale by you know having them burn down a city or something like that not necessarily have to do that but a good way to do that if you want to pull someone down and likability is to make them the cause of the obstruction that the protagonist is suffering from right if you want do you want a character who you know she moves to a new school and she's feeling like she's out of you know from her comfort zone and everything is uncertain she's kind of like oh man my life has been up ended I knew everything back home here I don't know what's going on you can easily make a villain or an antagonist in the story by presenting a character who exacerbates that right who makes them feel more like an outsider who makes whatever flaw or handicap or conflict they're dealing with worse as soon as you do that that person will be presented as an antagonist and the characters mind it'll move that person down on the likability and it'll move your character up a bit we like people who struggle with constraints flawed characters are actually generally pretty likable to us if you do it right handicapped characters are even more likable if you do it right now there is a difference between a flaw and a handicap someone who has not watched my lectures have any guesses like what is what do I mean by distinguishing a flaw and a handicap yeah right excuses counts yeah and you know what do you got so someone for handicap cannot overcome their whatever blocking them yes work with a flaw like whether they can't see it or they're too proud to look beyond it and so they're stuck but not because they have yeah yeah that's it exactly I would imagine in a story this fried finding myself the distinct who's a handicap the story is not about getting rid of the handicap a handicap is something you do have to overcome something you have to live with and work with but it is not something that the story kind of it presents as boy this character needs to get over this this is a problem of the characters own devising that if they would just get beyond this life would be better a flaw is the reverse a flaw is this is the characters fault and it's presented in such a way that I will expect either the character to work on and learn from this thing or I will expect it to cause them serious trouble through the course of their story to the point that it could be the disaster that ruins them in the end so we you know when I say handicap you probably think of natural handicaps such as you know missing one hand or or being blind or something like this but there are all sorts of things that can be handicaps that aren't necessarily you know that the character has to work with but are not necessarily physical limitations for instance having a code of ethics can be looked at as a handicap compared to other characters a lot of comic books like to do this that he will not kill that's a handicap right so I mean Batman he'll run people over with his car he'll stick them in the leg so you know he'd do but he won't kill them but it's it it's silly but it is a handicap right you can look at these other things that a character having a family that they care about that they don't want to get into danger the family is a handicap we as readers do not want them to get over having a family we like that they have a family this is important to them and to us it is a handicap it is something the character will work with but will not necessarily get rid of flaws are things like this character is arrogant shy whatever it is that you want your character art to be these sorts of things make characters sympathetic to us because they it brings them into that sort of they're like us if they have they have flaws that are like us or handicaps that we deal with we like them even if they're maybe a little ridiculous like for instance I live with my evil aunt and uncle who buy a hundred presents for my nephew but none for me and make me live in the closet under the stairs where there are spiders right the the handicaps on top piled on top of him are pretty high and that entire opening sequence in Harry Potter is all about proving that Harry lives with a lot of handicaps in his life or but they're not his fault they're things he's going to um that he's going to deal with it he's under a lot of pressure he's got all these terrible things in his life he didn't cause them but he is going to surmount them yeah so like mom monk monk has a great handicap yeah and you can kind of look at these handicaps as external and internal monk has an internal one he has he has a certain psychology it's not his fault that he has a weird brain chemistry but he works with it and uses it in a really cool way Harry it's not his fault that his uncle and aunt are awful people it's something he has to live with they don't stop being awful people but this is a thing Harry works with through the course of the stories and and surmounts doesn't get rid of but surmount so you can you can look at handicaps in all these other ways they can be things put upon you externally they meet you internal they mean things like your family that you love they could be taken advantage of that you don't want the care to get rid of these are all problems that the characters are gonna have to deal with in one way or another it's weird to call them problems but trying to get beyond that that the initial gut instinct of that word and look at what I mean does that make sense this is one of those baking things right cooks versus chefs questions about this idea all right yeah also like yep totally can monk is a great example monks handicap is also kind of what makes him interesting and it serves him very well you could say that Harry Potter's handicap in part is being raised by muggles but having been raised by muggles there are several points during the series where he knows things that had that people around him wouldn't know because of his upbringing so let's quickly talk about some other ways that people design characters that will help you out hopefully some other tools and if you want to go into depth on those sliding skills more I believe we did it right excuses on each one didn't wait so there's a 20 minute podcast where you get some different perspectives from what just I said what's that well they're supposed to be 15 on number 15 and I really ever 15 that's the joke okay so another method that a lot of people like is what we call the dossier method the dossier method is where you develop over time a list of questions that you ask yourself about every character that you're going to write and you have to target these questions at yourself you're looking for the questions you can ask that provoke the sort of deep understanding of that character that you want to have okay so I can't give you a dossier I can give you some sample questions that people like to ask about their characters but I can't necessarily give you the dossier that will work for you it can be things such as what's their favorite food when was their first kiss um you know what kind of what kind of attributes the admirer what would they like to have in life what is their fondest desire and why can't they have it what's their favorite animal you know what jobs have they had in the past all of these sorts of things that you develop this sort of list and the idea is to have a structured brainstorm for yourself where you start listing all of these things off and that gets you spinning and just figuring out who this character is over time you can google and find dossiers online that various writers use it's actually a very common method I've mentioned Dan's method Dan one of my writer friends he likes to do a monologue from a character before he starts writing them now Dan is mostly a discovery writer so this is a way if looking all is sliding scales and stuff near discovery writing like I just want to start writing my story and see who they are well doing a monologue is very useful but the monologue should be directed usually the best monologues are things where there may be answering a few important questions from a dossier you know what is your great passion in life can you tell me about it oh my great passion in life is you know whatever for Dan's first character he did this with it was serial killers and in creeped us all out I thought that was good so you wrote a whole series about it what is the character I'm passionate about a way to look at characters in this way predict if you're going to try one of these these monologues you should be asking yourself okay before the story begins and the plot like a freight train smashes into our character picks them up and carries them to deepika because important things happen there I'm sure before that happens who is this character why would they have done with their life what are they passionate about where are they going what who are they other than the train when you run into flat characters in a book it's almost always because the character is built to suit the story their belt built they've got like little they've got like a hook for the train to catch them right and they're standing there waiting for that train to come along and there's nothing about them other than them waiting for the Train you'll read these characters and the question is yeah but who are they what do they want why are they going along with this and this this will dig to the next time we talk about character I'll start digging to this idea of character motivation character motivation when you're writing characters is probably the single most important thing that you can have for this character is their motivation if you can nail their motivation in their voice you will probably have a great character at least a character readers will read and never feel that they don't understand who this character is or what they want in life now we've got a few minutes left let's do some application one of the other methods that I've heard for designing a character is to ask yourself one simple question why don't they fit the role that they've been put in in fact Dave when he taught this class he said that's his primary tool for developing a character is you know he's building a plot he's thinking about her stories like all right who doesn't belong in this role in order to create some conflict and then he puts the worst person you can think of to be in that role in that role so why don't you guys give me give me three so great with the raise your hand I'll call and you give me I want you a standard character trope of some sort all right mentor all right you've got the wise mentor okay all right another standard cap strip on each side camp okay funny sidekicks all right what's our last one cow boy best friend okay loyal best friend who may or may not be gay because they often are um all right all right so let's go with each of these on the column three different people I want you to put them in a role in the story that is a different trip okay so let's pick a different troupe from the story a story that these new characters would normally be in why'd the wise mentor let's put them in a different role the billet the wise mentor is the antagonist yeah already you should be like wow okay all right over here sitting down the Muslim and the funny sidekick is also the muscle not the little wrestling lot toy wrestlers but icer does anyone even yeah I'm like 40 I used to play with muscle man there's no 40 year olds in here but me right my they ll and Errol yeah yeah yeah you know when I first taught this class there were people older than me in the class quite a number of them nowadays doesn't happen anymore all right where are we going to stick the loyal best friend what's the what's the archetype oh yeah what's that chosen one the loyal best friends the chosen one okay okay so already you can kind of see how this would start working where your mismatched matching these I look at this and say okay the wise mentor you know you write this fantasy story where the wise mentor is the antagonist you actually combine these into one and there's a chosen one and the wise mentor quietly poisons them and the chosen one dies in Chapter five and the loyal best friend that you thought was just going to be along for the ride has to pick it up and go fulfill what the chosen one was going to even though they don't fit that role at all that's an interesting story you could make that a comedy you could make that a drama that's really interesting when you start to force yourself to say you know what the best characters are these fish out of water and don't fit but you can go further okay you can start developing these things otherwise mentor let's do four all three of these um they have an unusual profession all right unusual profession I want you to think of what I'm gonna call and you raise your hand alright what's the unusual profession okay the wise mentor is the mortician I'm not even sure how to spell that Morticia end yeah there we go mortician yes pineapple carry the funny side cat sells pineapples okay and the choil best friend I'm going to go way in the back a lawyer okay now now now now now now it's the 99 percent of lawyers to give the 1% the bad name so let me ask you know then we're kind of going in the dossier method um some people really like to do this where they brainstorm with friends and sometimes these things go out completely off the rails sometimes they give you some interesting ideas the goal is not to actually write one of these characters but to kind of get yourself thinking so what's a deep dark secret in each of these characters lives that they wouldn't like other people to know all right and raise your hand when you got one all right wise mentors deep dark secret you fail in my accusers he failed my test okay yeah give me another one I'm gonna keep going no you already did one come on well you already did one don't do red give me a new one someone hasn't raised ran in the over there yeah yeah afraid of dead people I like that okay okay funny sidekick deep dark secret somebody who hasn't given me one yet go for it Oh maybe it's yours oh yeah steroids which may or may not have to ours but here it does yeah he failed the bar so he's not a real lawyer okay that's why he stood still a nice day they failed the part that says if you were going to screw over these people how would you do it I'm joking our friends that are attorneys okay so we start doing things like this and you start to kind of build upon one another so you've got the funny sidekick the funny sidekick haha was tired of being Ron Weasley right and high in high school and said I'm going to do steroids I'm going to stop people from picking on me and just laughing at me did steroids became the muscle I don't know the pineapples fit in so this happens but you can see how this character suddenly has a backstory and suddenly becomes more interesting we have a competence for them in that now they're they're much too strong but they also have a flaw in that they rely upon an external source for they're the source of their strength and so suddenly this character's these things are filling out just from a simple brain store you've got the wise mentor you've got Gandalf the murderer but maybe this idea is that the wise mentor knows something that we don't that the chosen ones power is to become you know a necromancer and it's like I can't deal with the dead rising again I just got it I just got to stop this right now or you know the loyal best friend I'm in the courtroom drama who has to step up and argue the case by himself even though the one who is the hotshot lawyer that everyone thought was gonna be able do it if he can't do it he's got to do it for his friend but he's not a real lawyer he didn't pass the bar you these things that you can build characters out of the thing that you're looking for and you'll notice what I was looking for here is we are looking for the conflict and that should kind of rule everything about this discussion once you've got this feel of okay this is the role I kind of want the care to be in but this is why they don't fit it this is who they would be if the plot never came this way this is where they're what they're good at this is what they're bad at then you start asking yourself what is their conflict where are they going to move on those sliding scales or what how are they going to overcome this flaw what about them needs to change through the course of the story and I would suggest that all the best characters do change in some way across the course their story with the significant exception of the Superman stories not Superman himself but stories about those were you part of the whole idea is the static character who's very good at everything a lot of a lot of the like Miss Marple stories by Agatha Christie didn't have huge character arcs because they were about a hyper competent person trying to solve a crime Hercule Poirot is the same way so but there were little character arcs here and there once you've got these things ask yourself what goes wrong in their life why can't they have what they want and start working on that conflict and you will start to have characters that are going to look really good and work really well next time probably not next week in a few weeks we'll talk about character motivations and how to use viewpoint to make them characterize thank you guys turning your ships lips can't say that word BYU

Channel: zmunk

Views: 28,170

Rating: 4.9599333 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, byu, camerapanda, creative writing, dossier method, character flaws, sympathetic characters, proactive characters, likable characters, competent characters, cook vs chef, sanderson 2016

Id: lpsR4Q57RME

Length: 63min 47sec (3827 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2016