Writing Great Side Characters | Avatar: The Last Airbender

avatar the last airbender is full of colorful and compelling side characters those we meet in a single or just a few episodes my cabbages have you forgotten that the fire nation killed your mother you've got to keep an open mind katara there's water in places you never think about we all remember the cabbage merchant jet and hammer everyone's most lovable side character with no flaws whatsoever but how did they achieve this we're going to do this by comparing jet pyandow and hama three extremely memorable and compelling side characters with the zhang and ganjin tribe leaders antwu and combustion men three not bad but least compelling side characters discussing three crucial techniques the writers used this isn't going to be an exhaustive video on what makes a side character good because i don't believe in using just a single source to explore an idea like this but i feel like i can say that avatar is my area of speciality so i'm gonna use it as a case study for today keep looking cute doggo they'll think that they like the video when they really just like you also this video is truly made possible by my patrons and i cannot believe i'm saying this but there are 1455 of you and i stupidly promised that if i reached 1500 then i would do a probably three hour long video on why the last airbnb film fails so miserably my name is ong and i'm the avatar but i can't back out of it now can i i'm doomed to my fate so if you want to see that travesty if you want to make me make that video then head over to my patreon and support the channel and if you do thanks so much uh goodness okay on with the video now to get this out of the way on the more superficial hand why we remember characters like the cabbage merchant isn't that complicated they have a catchphrase the joke is repeated in the same format like 14 times across the series i think so we remember it and it gets funnier every time because it gets more absurd that one guy could be in so many wrong places at so many wrong times it's typical slapstick humor and this trope character is sometimes called the chew toy where we enjoy a character's repeated suffering it's a kind of sharden freud we see the same concept working for other memorable side characters like scrat the squirrel from ice age or milhouse and the simpsons though they're suffering while funny can lead us to care about them please please just let him have the acorn on that same superficial level blake snyder and save the cat encourages giving side characters a limp and an eye patch everything's great except for one small problem it's hard to tell one minor character from another the reader has to have a visual clue often a running visual reminder which makes remembering a character easier the cabbage merchant is visually distinctive jet has his hook blades and straw that shape how he moves and speaks and even less compelling characters like combustion man are visually memorable with his iron claw arm and tattoos so if this part is pretty easy to do we'll leave with the question what separates jet piano and hammer from the rest of the side characters well now this might be a hot take but we don't really care about the cabbage merchant do we not in any deep and personal way or maybe you do maybe you do that's going to spark some comments if you do i expect an extended essay down in the comments detailing your emotional attachment what i mean is that you can make characters funny or look insanely cool and distinctive and that will make them memorable in a way but we don't really find the cabbage merchant compelling like we do with jet pyandaw and hama so let's return to that comparison of jpy and hammer with the tribesmen antwu and combustion man now because screen time obviously makes it easier for us to get attached to or hate side characters i've picked ones with roughly the same amount of screen time now though pian dao is in two other episodes he barely gets any screen time or lines he really only features in one episode the first technique we're going to discuss is about using what blake snyder calls primal drives it's often difficult to give real definition need or want to a character who barely appears in the story so snyder writes does your plot hinge on primal drives like survival hunger sex protection of loved ones or fear of death even if on its surface it seems to be about something else this can go for little fixes of minor characters or subplots in a script that's not working are these characters motivated by primal drives this is a very simple way of giving depth to characters with little page time and something to care about with them jet and hammer both want cold angry revenge it's simple it's something we can root for or against but regardless we feel something but what about combustion men or aren't woo they don't really want anything not anything primal we don't see combustion man begging for money on the side street lisa i want some more what or aren't we lusting the power to protect her family [Music] so it's hard to find their stories as compelling and yeah the tribesmen want justice but their argument is written in the episode to sound mostly petty and spiteful and the primal drives thing is only one ingredient so what do your side characters want primarily think about that the second technique avatar excels at is using side characters to further the protagonists and katara soccer toff and zuko are who we experience the story through their lens matters jet piano and hama all challenge our protagonists on a character level and further their personal journeys jet is a quintessential part of soccer growing as a leader and trusting his instincts when all the world is against him jet is what is known as a character foil for soccer he's smart creative and a great leader but without soccer's morals through his character we see what soccer could have been like piandao pushes soccer to believe in himself and defined his skills that no one else has manifesting itself in his blade and hammer forces katara to question her moral boundaries with blood bending while also revealing a bit more of the southern water tribe's story and importantly all of these things that they learn come back in the story whether the signed characters are there or not katara breaking her moral boundaries in the southern raiders by blood bending ties in with her anguish over her mother's death and soccer's humility is a big part of him becoming a leader during the day of black sun a few episodes later and her sword skills of course tie into that there's emotion there's a real kick behind these sign characters stories now just because they should further the protagonist doesn't mean that they shouldn't have their own arcs those primal drives that we talked about this is partly a structural thing which we'll get into in a bit in contrast i don't think that aunt wu combustion man or the tribesmen really furthered the protagonists as efficiently though antwu does force the group to question whether they make their own destiny there is a little bit of it with ang given he struggles with his destiny as the avatar and he wants to know if there's a girl in his future aunt wu doesn't really challenge aang about his destiny purposefully or accidentally he's not really placed in a difficult dilemma or a personal crisis like he is in the storm the tribesmen here fit into a similar boat the two tribes hate one another over something that happened in the past and broadly speaking it's an analog for the conflict between katara and soccer as siblings so you could say that it furthers the protagonists but this conflict really just feels petty compared to those that they find with jet pian dao and hama the writers don't seem to play this conflict as important and and katara and soccer don't really seem to have changed that much as people after these episodes which is another important element to this as i mentioned before the conflict to do with those other side characters returns later in the series and if the conflict itself isn't played to be as compelling or important then the side characters themselves don't feel as memorable lastly there's combustion man he's a big hulking metal killing machine but taking him down doesn't really further our protagonists zuko saving them from combustion man does mean that the others somewhat accept him into the group but that's not really combustion man motivating that he's just an obstacle he doesn't force them to change their view of zuko or question moral boundaries like hama or yonra did for katara i don't think that we really ever care that much about combustion man that is loving him or hating him as cool as he looks or maybe you do maybe you do and if you do then i expect a steamy erotic story down in the comments section [Music] featuring me and the character change has rarely already happened with zuko that peach with the damn black sun it's kind of like watching transformers dark side of the moon it looks cool but do you really care about grey transformer number 33 and the third thing that i want to talk about is subplots versus side quests side characters do not exist in a vacuum just as making their character design cool and their dialogue natural or funny creating compelling side characters is just as much about the reason that they are in your story all of this ties into one of the best videos i feel i've made on good pacing that's linked up in the corner go check it out there is a difference between subplots and what i call side quests both of which often center around side characters subplots complicate the main plot supporting fast pacing and adding tension or slow pacing by adding contemplative moments these will usually alter the ending develop your main characters complicate major themes or reveal a part of the mystery side quests however won't do these things and will undermine the pacing of the main narrative the question is this does your side character appear in a subplot or in a side quest the former is usually more compelling and memorable so let's look for these three things that make for a good subplot in our signed characters stories jet piano and hama all create conflicts that develop our main characters they develop the mystery of the daily and jet's case in book 2 and the white lotus in piandao's case in book 3. piandao also furthers the themes of unity across national borders by being a part of the white lotus because of this they all contribute to how the climax of the series thus plays out in other words their stories are subplots the stories of the tribesmen aunt wu and combustion men don't really develop our main characters as much antwoo is probably the closest they don't reveal overarching mysteries or fundamentally alter how the climax of any of the books play out not in any major or fundamental way that if i were summarizing the series i would want to mention so this story is a moroccan to side quest rather than subplots which kinda summarizes why their characters aren't as compelling or memorable a lot of advice about writing side characters tends to be make them as real as possible and while that's helpful you don't want cardboard cutout characters simply giving them detail isn't really enough i think it's more of a structural thing none of this means that side characters shouldn't have their own arcs they can or even should but it's about how these arcs fit into the wider narrative both jet and the tribesmen have their own character arcs but only jets feels important because of how it plays into the core story for all the reasons we've discussed this is why we don't really remember every minor character in csi or the mentalist they simply don't function in a way that propels our protagonists forward a lot of the time they don't have a limp or an eyepatch most of the time no memorable phrases and some feel a lot more like side quests there's more to say in writing great side characters but i think avatar gives a good insight into what makes a fantastic one they play into the protagonist stories and that their story supports the main narrative's pacing so let me know about your side characters down below what makes them good what makes them great and how might you create one stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 433,623

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, avatar, katara, hama, waterbending, firebending, earthbending, airbending, zuko, aang, tlok, atla, last airbender, iroh, combustion man, piandao, sokka, sword, writing, puppetmaster, bloodbending, amon, mako, bolin, korra

Id: XYCommbOVFY

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020