Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Compelling Character

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Naomi kinsmen and author and a coach for creative minds. I'm also the founder of both society of young inklings and writerly play. In this class, we will develop a character concept that readers will love. If you are a writer or narrative artist of any kind, maybe you're an illustrator or an animator or a filmmaker. And if you want to know from day one that you're creating a character that readers can relate to in this class is for you. In this class, we'll borrow some mindsets and tools from the world of design thinking, as well as from my background in improv theater. In both of these spaces, The goal is to fail faster in order to succeed sooner. Actors and designers both use exercises to frame creative thinking in a specific way. Writing can be hard when you feel alone. We're here to have fun to develop a winning character concept and to grow your creative confidence. Let's get started. 2. Why Design Thinking?: Welcome, I'm so excited that you're joining me for this design thinking class. Our goal is for you to finish this class with a greater sense of creative confidence. Here's a question I hear all the time. Should I choose this character or that one? What's underneath this question is a concern. Is my idea good enough? Will it be worth me spending my creative time and energy on? E. L. Doctorow wrote, "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." Maybe because I grew up in Portland Oregon with all the rain and the trees, I think of writing more like stepping onto a forest path surrounded by Douglas firs and there's fog swirling around my feet. At first, the mystery and magic make writing fun. But at some point when you're stocked in and lost, you want a flashlight. You want that cozy glow of light around you that assures you, at least for this next step, you've got this. That's what creative confidence looks like to me. It's reframing my doubts about whether my choices are good enough and focusing instead on two questions. First, what experience do I intend to create with the story I'm writing? Second, how might someone outside of my head experience each of the choices I'm making? Am I bridging the gap between my imagination and their experience? In this class, we'll use a design thinking approach to answer those two questions as we create and test a character prototype. Here's a quick walk-through of design thinking, as it's talked about at IDEO and the d. School at Stanford. Empathy gives us a chance to observe our user, or in our case, our reader or audience member and see what they might need, and then we can use that information to define our creative target. This can be a bit tricky for us as writers because it might sound like, I'm saying we should write for the market, but that's not what I'm talking about here. What we're doing in this class is we'll create a design brief that lets you define your vision and also consider what your reader's experience might be. For me as a writer, this reframe might look like moving from what's the most fantastical world that I can create, to how might I create an intriguing, fully-realized world so that my reader might be able to close their eyes and visit even when they're not reading my book. With this reframe, I can measure whether my choices are working or not. It's a very small shift, but it's a powerful one. Onto ideation. Here, the goal is to generate lots of ideas so we can move past what's top of mind to the bold surprising possibilities. In our class, we'll use three, yes and games but loosely from the world of improve theater for our ideation process. A design thinking prototype can take many forms. The main goal with a prototype is to show your idea in a way that's easy to see and understand. That's why prototyping often includes sketching or other visuals. But don't worry if drawing is not your thing. It's not about creating an artistic masterpiece, it's about moving the ideas that are in your mind out into the world so that you can see them and you can share them. Once you have a prototype, you can test it and get feedback. In our class, you'll have three character prototypes that you can share to gather data about how you're hitting your creative mark. From there, you'll be able to choose one character to develop in your character profile. That will be your first round of iteration, which helps you to take the information that you've gained and develop your story further using that information. Your character profile will be your final class project. But please don't wait until you're all the way done with this class before you start using the class projects area. Since you have this collective of other artists who are going through this process with you, put your work out there as you're going through the process. Let them give you feedback on your character profiles so that you can use that to make that choice about which character am I going to develop further. I'll also pop into that projects area and provide feedback along the way. This class includes a set of templates that you can download and use to guide you through the activities. To download those, you'll need to go to the Skillshare website, to the projects and resources area, and you can download them there. You actually can't download from the app, so it's important that you head over to the website to get those resources. That's the only time you'll have to be on the website itself for this class. That's all you need to start this class. Go ahead and download those templates and when you're ready, come join me in the next video where we will create a vision for our character. See you there. [MUSIC] 3. Create Your Vision: One temptation when we're thinking about creating a compelling character is to not experiment or follow our curiosity, but to instead really worry about making a fantastic over the top amazing character. We start thinking about movie deals and awards. And we don't allow ourselves to just play around and try things out and have a low-stakes experience as we're creating our character. I'm going to invite you to take a step back. Let's yourself play and don't get too worried about if this one idea that you're starting with is going to be perfect, like yourself experiment and see where it leads you. My invitation to you is to consider the first time you go through this class, an opportunity to learn a new way of approaching character design. You're learning about design thinking and how we can apply it as writers. And so let that be the primary value that you take out of this class. Then if you also come away with a character that you are very excited to write a book about. That's even better. With that in mind, let's make a couple low stakes decisions to start. What kind of story might you'd like to work on? What story would be exciting or meaningful or intriguing for you. Right now, you might already have some ideas in mind or you might be starting from the very beginning. Here's where I'm starting. I want to create a detective character who is interesting enough to appear in a series of mysteries. That's a very small idea, but it's enough to give me a base to get started for this activity. If you need a moment to gather your thoughts and figure out what you would like to work on. I encourage you to pause this video. It takes some time to do that, and then you can come on back and we can start to work through our design brief together. You're back, which means it's time for us to start on our creative brief. It's an untraditional one and it starts with a question you might not be expecting, which is, where might a reader or an audience member experience your work will capture our ideas on this template. I'll walk you through an example and then you can try it out yourself. I like to listen to Mysteries when I'm out for a run, I'm picturing someone who's out for a run. And I think it would be in a suburban neighborhoods. So not in a busy city where they were distracted by all the things that were happening around them. And not in a beautiful place like say, a beach, I want to just have it be irregular neighborhood, the sidewalk and maybe a place that has some trees. But this would be a place where they would be out for a run, trying to not focus on the physical effort of the wren having a great time enjoying this mystery. The next question focuses us on an individual. So just in the same way that making specific choices about a character allows that person to actually be relatable to a wide range of readers. When we think about a reader who is one person, it's easier for us to make those creative choices. Will this be funny to this person, or will that be if we're thinking about one individual, it's just an easier choice to make. When it asks me, who is this reader I'm imagining, I'm going to be thinking about a runner who is I think she's in her mid forties. I'm going to put her on here. And remember I said that we're just doing stick figures here. So we're not doing anything really over the top. We're just trying to get a sense of who this person is. And as they're running along this particular runner, she is, I think she is a creative person, maybe an entrepreneur. She's really busy. And so that busy-ness, the reason that she wants to go on this run and she wants to have this experience is that she she just wants to escape for a little while and maybe she also has been sitting down for a little bit too long. She's maybe she's an entrepreneur who's a designer of some kind. So she's always sitting at a desk and she just needs this chance to get out, be healthy, have fun while she's getting in shape and maybe she's even leveling up a little bit in her career. Maybe she's taking some new steps forward. So the next question is, what feelings are experienced? Do I want to create for this reader? And I think what I want here is I want her to have this sense of immersion in the story. I want this character to be someone who is delightful, has a sparkle to them so that she can really lose yourself in the story like we were talking about before. And I also want her to have her curiosity stimulated a little bit. So I'm going to say immersive. Animal's going to say curiosity sparking. That might help me think a little bit more about the type of world that this character would live in. Then finally, I have, why does this reader need this experience at this time? And I'm thinking that we were talking about this designer who is leveling up in her career. She's getting in shape. She's taking some new challenges on. I think what she really needs is just the, the companionship of a character that she can see in multiple stories who is also on a growth journey of some kind. So I'm just going to put growth in here. You'll notice that in these bottom boxes I actually wrote in words instead of drawing. And you're totally welcome to do that yourself if it makes more sense to put a word and do that. If you want to put it in a sketch or drawing, you can do that as well. To sum up my design brief, I want to create a compelling detective character with a growth mindset. Ideally, I want my character to be in creative spaces because I think that that will appeal to this designer. And I think it would be most appealing if those creative spaces allowed for an traditional mediums so that this designer might learn something new about a type of creativity that maybe she's not as familiar with. So now it's your turn. Use this template, fill in the boxes to get a better sense of the reader or audience member who you have in mind for this project. And at the bottom you can write a sentence or two that summarizes what you've discovered. Once you're done, come on back and join me for the next video where we will start building our first character prototype. See you soon. 4. Character Design: Choices: Welcome back. So you've made your creative brief, and now we're going to look over it and think, who might character B that would appeal to this reader, who would fit the goal that I have. So in my case, to make a compelling detective character who has a growth mindset. So do I know anything about this person? For me? I know that this person is probably in her mid forties and that will just be something that she has in common with my potential reader. And I want her to have some sort of way to access these interesting artists that I was talking about. I wonder if she could be a museum curator, so that would be an interesting job for her. And I want there to be some way that she relates to the reader that I'm imagining some way that maybe the needs that they have or their emotional state would be similar. I wonder if she could be instead of just having because we're having your beat detective. Right. So instead of having that be her job because she's a curator, what does she's moonlighting as a detective. I'm not sure why she'd be doing that, but let's say she's moonlighting. And what that would do is give her the opportunity to be earning some extra money. Maybe she has this idea of starting her own business. And so she's earning extra money moonlighting, solving some art crimes because she has access to these people through her curator work. So that's what I know so far about my character. Not a lot, but a little bit. And it's enough that I can take what I know to go into this next game, which is called choices. But I want you to do is go ahead and write down anything you know about your character, just 35 things. And then once you've done that, come on back and we will go through a series of choices to get to know our character a little bit better. So you use the foundation that you've thought of for your character as you consider the choices I'm going to present to you, I'll present one choice versus another, and your job is just to make a choice. So here's an example which your character prefer to be too hot or too cold. Now, most of us wouldn't prefer either of these scenarios. But by forcing ourselves to make a decision for our character, we cane interesting information about this particular person. So if I'm thinking about my museum curator and asking, Would you rather be too hot or too cold? I think she would rather be too cold because she would be able to bundle up. And I also think that maybe she likes to go in the bathtub and just spend some time soaking that maybe one of her favorite ways to process information after she hasn't gone out and found some clues for mystery. And so that would be a fun detail for her and would also be one of the reasons why she would be a little bit more okay with being too cold, but not so much with being too hot. And I also probably know that my character wouldn't want to live in a place like Hawaii. Maybe she would prefer a place like Seattle or Portland in the Northwest part of the United States. So just by making that one choice about too hot or too cold, now I have a variety of things that I know about my character. And that's the goal of this game. So as we go through, I'll present you some choices. You'll have a chance to make your choice. And then you can make some notes on your character. One planner, just take shorthand about what you have decided. And after we've gone through the game, you'll be able to extract any information that you've found and put it onto your list of what you know about your character. Are you ready for your choices? Does your character prefer bright colors or muted ones? Next question. What's your character? Invite everyone they know to a party they were hosting or just a few close friends. Next, if they saw someone who needed help with they help themselves or call for support. Here's your next question. Are they more likely to buy a gift for a loved one? Or to make one? Final question. When they're sad, when they go somewhere loud to avoid their feelings, sit somewhere quiet to feel them. That's all the questions I'll ask you. But if you want to take a moment or two to ask yourself some more questions, You absolutely can. These kinds of questions are not necessarily Yin Yang types of questions. They're just two possibilities that help you see what your character's preferences and interests and needs and desires all are. Once we've made our choices, we can then add anything that we know about our character to our list. So when I was thinking about my character either buying gifts for someone or making them, I realized that she every year for Halloween makes Halloween costumes for her to nieces. I discovered that she has nieces and I discovered that she's this amature costume designer and that's something that she's passionate about. I'm going to write that down on my list. This also is another area that might allow her to get access to some people that would bring in some interesting types of creativity that might be less traditional. So I'm going to finish capturing my thoughts here on this page and I encourage you to do the same. In the next video, we will start thinking about a new character who fits our design brief, but it's very different than the one that we just made. And our goal here is to stretch our thinking to find a character that might surprise us in some way and maybe a possibility we didn't expect. So when you're ready, come join me and I'll see you there. 5. Character Design: Opposites: One thing that design thinking teaches us is that ideation is supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable. The whole goal is to reach beyond what is already in our mind and get into unknown territory. And so for this second character, we are going to take what we came up with as the character that seemed most obvious. And now make a character who is they're opposite and at least one way. So I'm looking over my design brief because it's important that this new characters still fits with this design brief. So I said, I want to create a compelling detective character with a growth mindset. So now that I have these ideas written down, I'm going to take out my character to Planner and start to think about some things that I might know about this opposite character. So I really am liking this idea of the art thief as an opposite to the curator. Think that's just a fun possibility, especially because you don't really think of a thief being a detective, but I'm going to think about that a little bit more in a minute, see if I can make that work. So this character is going to be an art thief. I think that another opposite I want to put in there is since my other character is 40, I want this character to be a 10-year-old. She'll give me a different kind of dynamic to the character. And then thinking about the detective piece, I think it would be interesting if this character, so an opposite, we have the other character who's moonlighting as a detective. And this character, maybe this character feels very passionate about being a detective. She's ten, so she's not technically a professional detective, but she treats her detective work as though this is her pro job. So as I look at my creative brief, I need to make sure that this character actually fits what I'm trying to create. So I said, I want a compelling detective character with a growth mindset. And it's possible that if she is a thief who is also a detective, trying to figure out how does that all work together. I want her to be hopeful and I want her to be trying to do good in the world, trying to grow and make the world a better place. I think maybe when she is pursuing clues about mysteries, She's looking for art situations that have happened in the past that maybe feel wronged her that she wants to make right. And so she'll have this passion shall have a, a great belief in what she's doing. So I'm gonna put she's committed to her cause. Also, I just need to think a little bit about how a 10-year-old would be able to travel the world and have access to art. I think maybe instead of living in the northwest corner of the United States, she will maybe our families based in Hawaii, and her dad or mom is an ambassador who travels around the world. So we'll put that down too. So hopefully you have captured some ideas about your character along with me. And our next step is to do an activity which is called What's in their bag. And in this activity we're going to think about a bag that this character would carry. And think about what's inside of it and what can we learn about this person by looking at what is inside of their bag? So keep in mind that you don't have to make this a beautiful piece of art. It's just a diagram. You can use shapes if you want, and label just so that you get a sense of who this character is and what they carry. So I'm going to start with what the bug is. In my case, I think my character would carry a backpack, so I'm just gonna do a loose backpack here with straps. And I'm going to label it backpack so I know what I have here. And I think that I want to start with the large objects in this backpack. So I don't think that right now I want my character to have art in her backpack. I think I want her to have some of her other materials that she would always carry. So I think one of the things is going to be her detective journal where she keeps all of her notes about everything that she's figuring out. Then it would be fun to have a really old fashioned, kind of big, fancy camera. But I think that the most likely situation is that she takes pictures with her phone. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that she has her phone in her backpack. Because if she's a modern young person, so I wanted to have that. Then. I think also in her bag, she has a toolkit that she carries so that when she does her art heist, she's able to do the things she needs to do. So we'll just have a belts. I'm just going to put some shapes here because I'm not going to draw all the tools right now and later I can figure out what those will be. I'll just say this is our toolbelt. Sure. To label my phone. Then I want to move into thinking about what my character would carry a more small item. This is feeling a little bit more challenging to me. We should probably have a pen, she probably have a variety of things. I want to think about something that's not so related to her detective work. Maybe she has a snack that she always carries like maybe peanut M&M's because they give her good energy. So we'll put that MEMS. It could be a fun thinking tool that she has a chilly eat an M&M or two and think about what she's going to do next. It would be fun for another small object that I think I'd like to have her Carrie is I wanted to have a business card because they think that she really does take herself this seriously. And I wanted to have even a silver business card holder that she carries with her all the time, which I think would be pretty fun. And that will help me to know a little bit more about how seriously she takes her work. So the goal of our activity is to think about the main things that would be in their bag. And to think about what this tells us about the character. Your next step is to list any new things that you know about your character now that you've looked in their bag for me, I know that she's prepared. I know that she is a little bit methodical. I know that because she's carrying this phone. I think she does have a little freedom. She gets to go out and do these art heist somehow. Maybe there's another character that goes with her companion of sorts like achieves type of character who is a little bit in on what she's doing and makes it possible for her to carry out this work that she is so committed to? You get the chance to go ahead and write your notes. And once you're finished filling out this list about your character, will move on to the next video. In that video, we're going to make one final character. This one is not going to be related to either of the two that we've done so far. We just want to see what's one other possibility and that's where you can really bring your interests and your passion and maybe try something completely new or surprising. So I'll see you in the next video. 6. Character Design: Wild Card: For our third character, we're going to have a wildcard. So what we wanna do is we want to let ourselves imagine somebody who might bring some of our favorite pieces of the characters we've already come up with. But also who allows us to explore an idea that we really want to have on the table when we go get feedback from our feedback partners. One way to think about this is to consider, do I have any concerns about the first two characters that I've already come up with. And for me, I do have a little bit of a concern because I have never been a curator. I've also had never traveled all over the world. They've traveled to a few countries, but both of these characters have some experiences that I'm not as familiar with. One reason this concern is coming up for me is because I actually learned from the writing of my, from CDs sketch book series, that it's really important for me as a writer to have a personal connection to the character that I'm writing and particularly to the world in which the story is happening. So when I started my first book, shades of truth, I knew I wanted to write about black bears. My husband was really passionate about them. He went in studying them actually with a scientist who was working with black bears and learning about their habits. And so I had really gotten excited about this topic. I chose a little town outside of Yellowstone, which I had never visited. I'd been to Yellowstone, but not to this little town. And I was using it because it was in topic to me and it was an interesting community, but the plot never really took off. It didn't have that emotional depth that I felt like I needed. That didn't happen until I actually went with my husband on a research tour where we got to learn from a scientist who was studying black bears in the wild and in his community there were hunters. The scientists was studying black bears. And then there were also community members who had varying ideas about how bears should be handled in their community and the conflicts for so interesting and so deep. And having been in that town and having met the scientists, having seen bears for myself in this community, I had a much deeper and more personal connection to this place. So when I moved my setting of my story to a community that I felt that personal connection with. I was able to write a character that felt even more passion filled, even more interesting, even more emotional. And so in this third character, I want to choose somebody that has a little bit of a quality that I truly can relate to. So I'm going to go ahead and let this character be related to the theater because that's something that I am very familiar with. Instead of having this be an autobiographical character though someone who is a director, I think I'll go with an actress. And I want it to be in a community theater. Again, because I'm more familiar with the community theater setting then more of a professional, say Broadway theater setting. The other thing I want to do is I want to give her some other aspect of her life that has a creative bent to it. I liked the idea of having a character in the Pacific Northwest because that's a part of my history too. So I'm going to put her in Portland, Oregon where I grew up. And I want to also have her know a number of chefs because I think it would be interesting to bring food gourmet food, food culture into the story. And so maybe her job is to be a waitress, which helps her to have access to a variety of people in the food scene in Portland. And I guess you would have to be I don't know when she wouldn't necessarily do her job, but we'll make sure that she has hours so that she can do her theater job as well as be a waitress. Okay. I have a few ideas about this character. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to play around to get to know this character a little better like we did with our other characters. So I'm going to start by listing some emotions. If six numbers here, this is something you're gonna do too, is list your six emotions. So I think I'm going to start with joy because that's one of my favorite emotions. And then I'm going to go with surprise. I want to ask some more negative emotions on the list as well. I want a range. So I'm going to put anger, pride, maybe disappointment. That's a strong one for me. And I think I'm going to put fear. Okay, now here is where the fun comes in. We're going to take a day and we're going to throw it and see what number that we get. So I got to number two, which was surprised. And in this box down here, I'm just going to come up with a moment for my character's life. That could have been a surprising moment. So as an actress, it might be obvious to decide. It was surprising when she got a leading role in a show. Or maybe it was surprising when she was hired at a particularly interesting restaurant. But I think it'd be fun to choose a funny moment for her to just see how does she react and media funny, slightly stressful situation. Maybe. She was surprised. Let's do this. She was surprised when her co-workers at the restaurant surprised her with a birthday singing moment in front of all of the people in the restaurant. So I'm gonna go ahead and put birthday. Want to decide when this would be? Wasn't too long ago. She's probably in her later 20s. Maybe it's her 25th birthday. And I'm just going to put little cake with a candle or two here, just so I remember what this is. And we'll just imagine that everyone is singing to her. Alright, there we go. So now I'm thinking about how would you respond in that situation. I think that she would be a little bit embarrassed, but also feel really excited about it. She's an actress, so she likes to be in that center of attention a little bit. I think maybe there would be sort of that mix of excitement and a little bit of embarrassment. So we're gonna do this one more time. I'm going to roll the dice. And this time I got a four, which is pride. We could go either way with this. We could go with a proud moment that is unfortunate. Something that felt a little bit over the top too proud, or it could also be a moment that was really, she felt that she had stepped into a moment that she could really be proud of and that she'd like to celebrate. I think for this moment, I want to choose maybe a moment where she did a really great job in a show. One thing that I've experienced in a show myself is that when someone else is struggling on stage, they can't figure out what their lines are or they've had this moment of fear. There's kinda that frozen. I don't know what to do moment. And as an actor, if you can step into that and help the other actor find their way back to where they need to be. That can be really proud moment. So I think that's going to be what it is for her. So I'll just maybe put my stage here. It's the curtain. Replicate actually an experience that I had actually got stuck myself once in The Importance of Being Earnest because there's this bag that I had to get a prop out of and I just couldn't get it out of the bag and it made me forget my lines for a moment. I'm going to just put two characters at a table there, sitting here and they're having conversation. There's a prop and she's going to help her fellow classmate do a great job in this moment. So what this tells me is that she's actually a kinder character than I thought she was. I mean, I knew she was a person I would like. But I love that she's not just an actress who wants the attention on herself from both moments. I see that she doesn't always love to be the center of attention and that she's willing to share the spotlight. So that's a good thing that I've learned better. So now it's your turn. What I'd like you to do is to go through, figure out what you know about this third character. Remember you can go any direction you want to with it. Then list your six emotions. Roll your dye, come up with your moments, see what that teaches you about your character. You can add those into your list. I'm going to write down my list so I don't forget. Then once you have your third character, come on back for the next video where we'll start to make a prototype that's more standardized, that we're able to share with someone so that we can get some feedback about these characters. Ecn. 7. Create Your Rough Prototype: It is time for us to make our character prototypes. Now I know we were playing around with their character planners before, but now we are taking what we have on these sheets of paper, which could be a little bit difficult for someone to decipher and putting them into a form where people can give us some feedback. The main thing about a prototype is that you want something that's visual, that's easy to scan and give feedback. What you're trying to do is answer a particular question that you have. So in our case, we have our design brief. We know that we want to create a compelling character that awakens our readers curiosity. And we want to get a sense of which of these characters does that best? Or is there some combination of these characters are some quality from one of the characters that we want to build on. So in order to do this particular prototype, we're going to draw a character. And I don't want you to panic because you don't have to draw a beautiful artistic masterpiece. What we're going to do is try to convey the idea with the shapes we've put on the page. So character designers, when they're creating a character, will use a circle for a warm character, maybe a square for a more firm or solid character. A triangle can be very energetic. S curves can be flowy and signify some sort of gentleness, grace, elegance, that kind of thing. We're going to use all of those clues as we develop our characters. And then we're going to rely heavily on labels. And the purpose of this is that you would be able to put these three prototypes in front of someone, ask them a few questions and get some quick feedback. They can just scan what you have and let you know what they think. So I am going to start with my first character, who is the curator. And I feel like this curator should be long and willingly. Because I just have a sense that she is someone who is elegant. And this is what I'm talking about. I'm really just not making her realistic or somehow artistic, but I do want to show that she has very long hair. And I'm gonna just refrain from doing much detail on her face, even this, okay? So this body shape gives me a certain elegance, a certain grace. So I'm going to set her aside and then see what I might do with my next character. For character to, we have our 10-year-old who's an art thief. And like I mentioned, as a triangle tends to be a pretty energetic form. So I'm going to take the green, we're going to use an energetic color. And we'll have her dress be sort of a off-kilter triangle. And she will have her arms going out like this. And we will have zig-zags on her dress. One thing that I find is when I let my characters be a little bit loose like this, when I show them to other people, they realized that it really, I'm just starting from the beginning of an idea. And it's okay if they don't like a character or if they want to say, if they need to give me difficult feedback, It's really okay because these are just brand new characters. Who this character is going have some kinda fun, short shoulder length hair. Does that. And I'm going to again refrain from a face right now. I'm just going to let her be there. I'm going to come back and label these, but I want to go onto my third character. For character three, we have our actress, the community theater. There's also a waitress who's kind. I like the idea of S-curves for this character. So I'm going to pull out some aqua. Let's see, actually like this, this color as well. Like the curator, I wanted to have a certain amount of elegance and grace, but I think I want her to be a little more round. A little bit more. Kinda just typical theatrical person. I want to go with some S curves for her. Have her hands on her hips, give her a little belts, feets. She's a little shorter. I wasn't expecting that, but I think that actually could really work for her. I'm going to give her curly hair. And that's kinda fun for this actress character. Okay, so now I have these three different shapes. I've got little curvier, I've got really willow II, and then I have my triangle shapes. So then I want to answer a few questions about each one of these characters. And I want to stick with similar answers across the board so that when someone's looking at all three, they can compare them. So for me, I would like each character to have a name. You don't have to name your characters. But for me that helps me to kind of get a sense of their personality. I think for my 10-year-old, I want to call her Zoe. I'm actually not going to worry about last names right now because it takes me a little bit of time for that. So I'm just going to let her be my curator. I think I want her to be Maria. And then for my actress, I wanted dramatic name. Glenn, G, L-Y, and n. Just kind of an unusual name that I'm not as familiar with anyone having, so I'm gonna go ahead and let that be her name. So they all have names. Now, I want to also put some details about each one of these characters from what we already know about them. Zui up here. So she is ten years old. She is very committed to solving aren't mysteries. And because this is going to have a few labels like this, I'm just going to make bullets to make it easier for someone to parse out what I'm saying here. I want to make sure that they know she's an ambassadors daughter. If you want. So I have this bag about her. I could label some things about what she carries. I think what I want them to know about her. Let see, she's she's committed to solving mysteries. She's an investor's daughter. I want them to know that she's highly intelligence, wants to make right what went wrong historically. And then I'm just gonna put returns art to original owners. Alright, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do the same kind of work on my other two characters, naming them, thinking a little bit about their personalities and what they like, what I wanted to call out about each one. And then I will have these three that I'm able to show to my feedback partners. And we'll be able to do that next step of shaping our questions so we can have really positive and constructive feedback conversations. So go ahead and fill out your prototypes and when you're finished, come on back and we'll talk a little bit more about how to frame those conversations. See you soon. 8. Frame Your Feedback Question: Now it's time to get some feedback from your feedback partners. And remember the reason we're getting feedback is because you've made your design brief. You know the impact that you want to have on your reader and you want to have the creative confidence about the choices that you make about this character. To know that if you lean into certain aspects of the character, not only will you enjoy those parts of your character, but you're also connecting with the reader and what the reader may want or what my interests the reader, what might make them excited? So you're going to use this feedback question planner to make sure that you know what questions you want to ask. And the reason for this is you might feel a little bit intimidated about asking someone for feedback on your ideas because they're early ideas and maybe this isn't something you would often do. But also keep in mind that the person that you're asking for feedback can also feel intimidated or vulnerable when you ask them what it is that they like about your character or what they are wondering about your character. The reason that can feel vulnerable is because maybe they're not a writer. Maybe they feel like they don't have the expertise to give you the feedback that you're asking for. Maybe they don't want to hurt your feelings. So there's so many reasons why you want to make this conversation really comfortable. On your feedback planner. There are a few sample questions you can use. There is what draws you in about this character. That's the question that helps us to know what they like about each one of your characters. The second, what do you wonder about this character? I use this one often instead of what don't you like about the character? Because I find that I get more interesting feedback. If they tell me, I wonder whether this would be possible for this character or I wonder why she wants this thing that seems to contradict with that one. And instead of telling me I don't like this, I feel like that wondering can get me deeper into what it is that I might need to fix about someone. Then the third question on the page is, can you imagine this character making you? And then there's a list of possibilities. Laugh, cry, think worries, celebrate. And when might that happen? This third question is opening up a dialogue between yourself and your feedback partner to get a better sense of MI having the impact that I want to have with this character. So you can use these exact questions in the way that they're worded or in that I will ask section, you can reward them a little bit so that you have three questions you feel really excited to talk to someone about. This should be a pretty quick conversation. It might take five or ten minutes and it will give you a good idea of what your readers are connecting two. Now when you choose your feedback partner, I encourage you to, instead of thinking of the very most perfect person you can come up with, just think about in the next day or two. Who might I see that I can ask and try to ask a couple of people so you get some varied feedback that you can compare. I want to also encourage you to take advantage of the fact that we're in a creative community where other people are doing the same exercise. So you can actually take your character prototypes. You can upload them to the class projects area. You can list your three questions and let your classmates give you feedback. That may take a couple of days as people come in and out of the class. But it will give you a chance to get some feedback before you move on to your final steps. And the last thing I want to say before I send you off to have your feedback conversations is I want you to know about three possible types of feedback that could come up that might surprise you or you might need to problem-solve a little bit. First of all, there's the, wow, I love it friend. Now, it's always helpful when someone says, I love all of your ideas. But if you find yourself in this situation where someone has just said, Wow, I love your characters and you don't feel like you've gotten the feedback that you need, then I encourage you to ask some additional questions. The third question, can you imagine this character making you laugh? And when might that happen? Can be a really good solution here, because after they've said they loved these aspects of the character, you can get into that a little bit more deeply. Another thing I find that's useful is to say, can you tell me what you love about this character's job? Can you tell me what you love about this character's physical expression? If you can narrow down on a specific aspect, sometimes that will help a person give you more specific feedback. The second kind of feedback that can be a little bit tough to wrangle is when someone is, uh, you should kind of person. So they might look at your three prototypes and say, Oh, you should do this. It tends to come from people who are big idea people they get excited about your ideas and they start to tell you what to do, which is not really what you want right now. So I find the best thing to do in this case is just to let them give you all their suggestions. You can write down the notes. And then after that's done, take the time to ask them some additional questions. Go back to your original questions. You might have already asked them, but repeat them. See if you can get into a deeper conversation with your, you should friend and see if you can get a little bit more feedback from them. Finally, the last kind of feedback that can be a little bit tough is if you find that you've asked someone and instead of giving you feedback, they're starting to worry. Maybe they're worried that you won't be able to finish this project or what happens when you send it out to publishers and will you get published? There are way down the road from where you are right now. Often that's an indication that someone cares about you and they want you to be successful. I encourage you to take that as the carrying response that it is. And as you're listening to your feedback partner, decide whether you want to go back to the questions and try again, or whether it's possible the best choice is to redirect the conversation and choose someone different to get feedback from. No matter what, make sure to process through that so that you don't get stuck in your head and stuck in the worries that they've presented to you. You're not at a stage where you need to be worrying yet. You're just getting some initial feedback. Alright? So you're going to go and get your feedback from your feedback partners. You can either write it down on a piece of paper as they're talking to you. If you write things, make sure to write not only the things that feel a little more negative, but also the things that feel positive. And you could also record the conversation, say, on an app like otter, so that you have a full transcription of what they've said to you so you can go back and review either way. That's great. I hope you have a wonderful conversation or two, and once you've had them come on back and I'll show you what to do with all of those notes that you gather. 9. Sort Out Insights: Once you have your feedback, it might look a little bit like mine. Here. You can see I have just very scribbly notes from my conversations that I had. And so this is a really great way to capture your information from someone so you don't have to think too hard about it, but this page is quite overwhelming to me as an artist. It's hard for me to think. What do I do with all of this? So the next step is to start to sort all of these insights out. I do this with post-its. And what I'll do is I'll just take a post-it and I'll look on my page and see, what do I notice? What is someone telling me about this character that I can pull out as a specific insight and I put one inside on a posted. So I heard in my first conversation that it was interesting that a character could be an amateur costume designer because she could make her own disguises. So I'm just going to put an amateur costume designer could make her own disguises. Then I'm going to just put this over here and think about what else I have. There are some questions around She's a curator, what she curated are, and what would we learn about that part of the museum? And one of the things that was coming up for me is this particular character would require a lot of research about things that I don t know a lot about. So I'm going to just put a curator would need to have subject expertise. I'm just going to put research in quotes. So you can see that I'm translating what I heard into ideas and insights that I can actually use as I'm starting to sort out what character is going to be a good match. I thought it was interesting. One of my feedback partners said that they felt like no character ever is the one who prefers to be hot when we did the hot versus cold activity. And so I thought that was interesting. Would it be more interesting to choose a character who likes to be hot? Just a fun side question that I want to capture. So I'm going to move on to my next character. I'm, I'm speeding through this a little bit to give you an example of how to do this. And when you're ready to do it, you can take all the time you need to gather all of the insights that you want off of your pages. One of the things that I heard in my conversations around character to my amateur 10-year-old detective, was that this was this could be a fun backstory to be the child of an ambassador. And could maybe even be a reason that a character felt so passionately about solving art crimes. If that's the kind of crime we're solving, then also a concern that a 10-year-old may not have the resources to be believable. Moving on to character number 31 thing I noticed in the feedback conversations were that people were really excited about the culinary aspect of this character. And as they were talking about their excitement, it awakened my own. I was wondering if maybe that has to do with the fact that so many people we eat every day. So this idea of food being an interesting part of the character is something we can all relate to. So maybe someone who's not an artist or who doesn't have certain aspects of this character in their life, would be able to relate to that part of her, even if they weren't someone who was a chef or had worked in a restaurant. I'm just going to put down culinary expertise is exciting to readers. And to me. Now, I don't have all of my insights captured yet, but I'm just going to show you what happens next so that you can take this and go with it yourself. So I'm looking at these different post it. I'm actually going to move my notes out of the way so I don't get overwhelmed with all of the words in front of me. And I'm going to start to see, do I have any patterns that are going to help me to think about my characters and finding some insights that I can capture. We have this opportunity for an amateur costume designer to make her own disguises. We have a concern about a 10-year-old who might not have the resources. Also a concern about a curator who might need some expertise. We don't have the fun backstory I think I'm going to put here because that's a fun idea, but it's not necessarily related to the story and where the story goes right away. The culinary expertise. So I'm going to put over here, then, would it be more interesting to choose a character who likes to be hot? So just maybe I'm going to put over here on the side questions that we have. Are we making this character as original as they could be? Here I have a cluster or the beginning of a cluster. That is telling me having a character who's an amateur costume designer, who has culinary expertise. Those are both really interesting things. And because of costume designer could also be related to the theater, I think it'd be really fun to, instead of have that character who is an actress, maybe she is a costume designer at the theater. Maybe sometimes she's in the show, but for the most part that her job is designing the costumes. And then also she has this culinary expertise to her. So now I'm starting to think about pulling together different aspects of my ideas to maybe combine and go with what's awakening my interests and also my readers interests. I think this cluster because she's learning in both situations. So because she's working with chefs, she's learning about the art of food. And because she's an amateur costume designers, she's learning about costume design. I think that, that sort of art of being a learner is what's popping up here. And that was one of my original ideas that I really wanted my character to awaken someone's curiosity so that they will learn about art, that they might not know about otherwise. So I'm just going to say learning allows the reader to learn too. I'm just naming my cluster. And then I would go through and I would name my other clusters as well. Then this cluster name learning allows the reader to learn to that feels like an insight. I can just leave it the way it was. But let's say my cluster name was just fun backstory ideas. Maybe I have a couple of different backstory ideas here. I could call this cluster backstory ideas. And what I might then turn that into as an insight is that backstory that gives my character access to lots of cultures and interests will make her more interesting. Adults to write about would be an insight that I could take and use as I'm thinking about my character. So your job is going to be to pull out any of the insights that you're saying to start to sort them out, give your clusters names once you have your clusters. And then if those names are not insights yet, you can rename your insights so that they really feel like something that you can use as you're building your character and making your final decision about who you'll write about. So go ahead and cluster your insights by pulling your ideas out of your notes, putting them on post-its, sorting them out once you have them all out on the page that naming those clusters, if your names need to be transformed, you can turn them into insights that you can actually use. And then hopefully you'll have a good idea of who you want to write about. As we move forward. In our next video, we are going to finish this project and create a character profile about the character we want to write about. And by now, I hope that you're feeling a great sense of creative confidence about this person who is starting to evolve. For me, I'm starting to be very excited about a character who's a combination of some of these ideas that I had. We'll finish doing my thinking. You do your thinking, and we will combine all of that into our final project in the next video. See you soon. 10. Your Character Concept: Now that you have sorted out your insight, I'm hoping that you have a good idea of who you want to write about. For me, instead of just choosing one of these prototypes, I've decided to do a combination. So when I'm filling out my character profile for this last part of the project, I'm going to have to do some translation and make some decisions along the way. But I have a lot of information I can use to make those decisions based on my conversations I've had with potential readers. One thing to do right now at this stage is to go back to our creative brief and be sure that we're on the same page as we were when we started. So I remember that I was thinking about my reader experiencing the story while out for a run. And I was thinking about someone who is leveling up in her career. She's an entrepreneur, she is ambitious. I wanted the story to evoke the feelings of curiosity. I wanted it to feel immersive. I wanted my character to be in a growth mindset. And what I think would be really fun about my character is that because I decided to go with someone who is learning a number of things. She's learning from chefs in her world. She's learning how to beat detective. She's learning about costume design and growing in that art form. It gives her a lot of areas where we can lean in. And especially for a character who is going to carry a series, It's nice that she has these different aspects to her life and to her personality that will allow her to be interesting over time. I'm going to go ahead and start filling out this character profile with my idea. Now, I'm going to walk you through some of this and then I'll send you off to finish this up on your own. But I want to highlight a few parts of this page just to make sure that you understand how to think about these different aspects of your character. First of all, I like this name Glenn. I'm gonna go ahead and keep her name. And I don't have a last name for her yet and I'm just going to skip that. That's something I want to give you full permission to do. Anything you come up to in this page where you feel like, I don't know yet, just skip it and go back to it later. I think with the last name, for instance, I tend to like to go onto Google, do some research. It's good to try to push yourself to fill out all of the parts of this page because nothing is two out of the ordinary here. So if you're feeling resistance about filling something out, it might be that you just need to push yourself a little bit, but you don't need to do it immediately. So skip something if it's causing you to feel a little stumped. The first parts of this are pretty straightforward adjectives to describe my character. She's a learner. I think that she has a sense of wonder about a lot of things I want her to have that curiosity herself that I want to evoke in the readers. So I'm just going to put wonder filled. And by that I mean, I think I just want her to be the kind of person. If she was walking outside on a really dark night and she saw the moon up above the horizon. I want her to be the kind of person who would stop and just take that in and think it was beautiful and feel enchanted by that. I can continue on with those adjectives, but I'm going to keep going. Strings. I know she is, she has a strong visual eye, which helps her with her costume design. I'm also going to put good taste. Because as a chef or as someone who's around Chefs, I think it'd be great if she has really great culinary taste. Then as far as the weaknesses, I was thinking about these other characters that I'm weaving in. I think I want her to be a little bit obsessive once she decides that she's going to go for a mystery, I want her to be willing to do just about anything to try to solve it. So she's not careful, necessarily. A little impulsive. I think I'll use that word impulsive because it reminds me a little bit of anteriorly and I love that aspect of her character, of how she's always getting herself into these ridiculous problems. Because she's just single-minded about doing the thing that she's excited about doing. So at the bottom of this first page of your character profile, there is a square. This area is the important part that will really help you to find where your character is coming from at the beginning of your story. And this will help to establish the beginning of your character arc. So at the start of my story, my character wants, I think she wants, she could either want to have a new, a new part in a show. She could want to get to design something special. As I'm saying, that I really liked this idea that maybe there is a particular historical era that she wants to design for. Maybe she thinks it'd be fun to design flap or costumes and Roaring 20 kinds of things. So maybe she wants to design. A show set in the twenties. And maybe she and the director are budding heads about that. So she's trying to figure out how to get a show set that way. And what is she fear? I think one of the things she might fear. One of the questions at one of my readers asked me was about, does she have a priority? Is she more interested in being a professional in her costume design? Is she more interested in being a professional in her detective work or in her work in the culinary field. I think she might fear that she'll never be a pro. Maybe that's something that she thinks about a little bit. She wants to be a pro at something, but she hasn't made up her mind. She doesn't know which way to go and maybe she's a little indecisive about which which direction to head into. Maybe because she feels that way. She mistakenly believes that. To be a pro you have to immediately be an expert at something. I do want it to have a growth mindset. I want her to be someone who likes to learn, but maybe that's actually something she struggles with. Two, she thinks that if she makes mistakes, it proves she's not an expert in that area. And even as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that the language that she's using, they're an expert in that area. Of course, he's on an expert yet she's still learning, but that's kinda how she's thinking about this in her mind. This mistaken belief can start to build the arc of your story because we can push her on this belief and that can help to shape where she goes as a character. So of course, we have the mystery plot that will eventually come into this story. But we also hopefully can start to transform this belief a little bit. And that could be a series long arc that we also establish. The next question is, what happened to create this belief? Why does she feel like if she makes mistakes, it proves that she's not an expert. You know, we've been talking a lot through this whole class about drawing. And I think my character has a strong visual. I should just costume design. But maybe she doesn't feel like she can draw. Maybe she feels like that's an area that was that she's not a pro in and she's avoided it. But it would really help her as a costume designer and in other areas of her life. So maybe she had someone criticized an early drawing and she gave up art. She gave up art. So I think that that's something a lot of people can relate to. It's an experience many people had. So I'm gonna go ahead and go with that. Then because of this belief, my character has these habitual responses. I think that she might try something. She may be really willing to try something with her impulsive nature, but she might also, she notices any resistance. She might flip off to something else. So that might be part of why she's got all these different elements of her life going on where she's trying these different things, but she is not necessarily pro yet. So maybe she dives in and abandons early. So with this detective thing, I think what I wanna do is I want her to have immediate success as she solving her first mystery. But then come up against this realization that she's not an expert. She doesn't know all the answers. And then that will give me a great opportunity to push this. Will she stick with it? Or will she abandoned solving the mystery? And I think that could give her some really interesting character tension. So I've got this first page filled out. The next page is a little bit more of a standard character profile. My character never leave home without my characters closest friends, other friends my character would invite to a party. These are all just ways to get to know your character and understand who they are. You can define their family, where they live. You can think about both the kind of house they live in and also the place, the neighborhood, the city, the country. And then things that irritate my character. Things that make my character laugh and my characters ideal day. The ideal day, I think it's a really good one because it gives you a sense of in their dream world, what would they be able to do with the day? I think this character Glenn, would really love to have a day where she got to do a ton of her favorite things for the time felt endless and she was able to carry off a lot of different things. Your job next is two, go ahead and fill out this character profile. Thinking about your character, thinking about who they are making decisions as you go referencing the conversations you've had in the insights you've made so far. And once you're done with your profile, you can upload it to our class projects area. In the next video, we'll talk a little bit more about how to wrap up this class and also just some next steps for you as you continue thinking about using design thinking in your writing process. I'll see you there when you're done. 11. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you have finished your character profile, which means you've finished your final project for this class. I hope that you have already uploaded that to the projects area because that's a great place for myself and your fellow classmates to give you feedback. So make sure to do that if you uploaded profiles earlier so that we could give you feedback. Just know that you can overwrite your assignment and you can add this final project in so that that is there for others to look at as well. And I also encourage you to take some time to just reflect on this process. It probably wasn't the exact same approach that you usually take to developing a character. I assume that it might have taken a little bit more time than you might normally take in the upfront part of developing a character. But it also wants you to notice how much you already know about this character that you now can begin to draft about. My experience of using design thinking to develop a character is that it does take me a little bit more time than just opening a journal or opening a dock and starting to write. But I also find that with maybe an hour investment of time, maybe a couple of days. If I'm spending some time talking to different people, I have this great headstart into my story. And as we were talking about, I have this deep sense of creative confidence about where I'm headed and have a better campus for making creative decisions as I carry forward. So a couple of things I want to remind you of. First of all, when we started this class, we were talking about our goal of being the character which you have one now, but also about learning more about this design thinking process and how it can help you as a writer. I also encourage you to think a little bit about ways you might personalize the process for yourself. Maybe there are things that you would change or shift or adapt in some way. So go ahead and think about that as well so that you can continue to make your writing process work even better for you. Your next step after having a character profile is to start to think about drafting. What I tend to do once I have a character profile is to create a first scene for my character. This is an opportunity for me, instead of worrying about the whole plot of my story, to start to think about how does this particular person act in both an interesting and also potentially stressful situation? I want to show off her strengths and her weaknesses. So my character has this strength of loving to learn. She's filled with wonder, but she also has this impulsiveness. Might I be able to set a scene where something goes wrong at the theater or maybe at her job at the restaurant. And we get to see how does she both learn and lean into it and have fun. But then where might she be impulsive as well? You could write the scene out or you could storyboard it. And that could be another opportunity to get feedback from someone to tell them about the beginning, middle, and end of this particular scene and get a sense of what they would know about this character based on what you are presenting in that particular scenario. Prototypes can look like lots of things. They can be a map. They can be like we did a quick drawing with labels that they can be like I said, a storyboard. It can be anything that you feel you can put in front of someone and get really quick feedback on. And so I encourage you to continue thinking about ways to use prototypes through your drafting process. I hope you have a great sense of creative confidence coming out of this class and I would love to help you build on that. If you follow me on Skillshare, you will be the first to know about the next readily play classes that are coming out where you can learn more about using design thinking in your writing process. I also created a special gift for you as part of this class. So if you would like to have a book that overviews design thinking in a bigger picture way and how writers can use it in their process. You can go to the webpage that is listed on the screen and you can download that for yourself. I would love to share that resource with you. It was really fun to put together. And I think it will give you even more context about different ways that you can use this approach. Just want to thank you for being here with me in this class, for experimenting, for stretching your creativity. I hope that you do for sure share your project and the project area. You can also share on Instagram. And if you do make sure to tag me at Naomi kinsman, I would love to see what you've created as part of this class. And I look forward to creating with you again. See you soon.