Transcripts
1. Introduction to Writing Believable Characters: Welcome to Writing Believable Characters. My name's Selina, and I write almost every day. In particular, I enjoy writing paranormal romance stories with fantasy elements. Horror beats, adventure beats and the odd bit of humor. I have studied genre fiction writing since 2008 in a private capacity, and I've been steadily working my way to publication standard in that time. I have two manuscripts written and finished, and I've been moving into the editing and publication phases for both of them. I hope you will enjoy this class on how to build and write believable characters. I hope that what I have learned and that I shared here will help you to write, realistic characters that will appeal to your target audience. And your readers will come back consistently seeking more and asking you for even more stories. The aim of this course is to help you to understand characters and to begin to build characters that come across as real people in your stories. So, we'll be exploring the following: what makes the character interesting? What makes characters likeable versus being an unlikable character? The role your character's are playing in your stories and what to think about when putting together a character profile. So, please join me in the next video when we'll be exploring what characters are and thinking about how creating a character from the inside out can help to develop them into real people on the page.
2. What is a character?: Hello and welcome to video two, where we're going to talk about what are characters. So, the first thing is, what is a character? A character is the lens through which the reader experiences a story, the kind of like you stepping into the character when you're reading a story and you're living vicariously through them. Characters of the players on the page, and in order to capture your audience and bring them into your world, it's important to make them as real as possible. But what does making a character as real as possible actually mean? To me, it means writing a character who has faults, who struggles in life and with their emotions. That they're relatable to human beings, that they're likable, especially if there are the protagonist or the main character. And if they're the antagonised so that they got some complexity to them as well. It's important that they experience an inner conflict and that they have outer conflict, which they must rise to the action of the story and resolve. It also means going beyond paper thin cliche characters and often paper thin cliche characters are characters that we have in our mind that we haven't fully explored well enough before we've come to write the story. So, it means that they don't have enough complexity to make them real in the minds of the readers. So, at one point I did a story with a 1950's Greaser guy. He was a love interest for my main character, and the feedback that I received was that he came across a bit cliche and I struggled with that for a while, and one of the reasons was that I made him a little bit too much like John Travolta, out of the movie, Grease, and a little too much like the thing that people had seen over and over again. So, what I needed to do was building more complexity to who he was and change his mannerisms and his speech in a subtle way so that he became real as a real person rather then as a an archetype. for example of that character, it's about finding depth in each of the characters that you have, so that when you write them, they are real to people inside of their minds. And that what you've got in your head transfers through the writing and into the minds of the readers. and that's the ultimate goal with writing as far as I've become aware. Characters also have roles to play. Roles such as the protagonist or the main character/s. That's the 'good' guy or the 'good' girl, the heroine or hero. The antagonist, who is the character, the other main character and the opposing force to your protagonist. The antagonist works against the protagonist in the external conflict. You may also have a romantic interest or a love interest or lover for your main character. depending on who and what you're writing, and who you're writing for, and what you're writing, you'll also need a sidekick or two for your main characters and maybe a henchman or three for your antagonist to command. So, in an example of that, think about Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling was very smart when she did this. She gave Harry some side kicks who were best friends, and people could help him along the way. They were the support group, and the ones that helped him to be successful as he confronts conflicts, and on the other side he had the ultimate antagonist in Voldemort, who who had the death eaters as his henchmen and he commanded them. But they were not best friends. They were his dark servants and wanted to work with him, but for their own means and also out of fear. But Harry also had another antagonist that he had to deal with in each of the books and that was Draco Malfoy. And Draco in his antagonist role also had henchmen, and his henchman were Crabbe and Goyle. And if you familiar with the Harry Potter series, you'll probably understand that. Okay, so in the next video, we're going to talk about what makes a character interesting?
3. What makes a character interesting to readers?: Welcome to video three. In video three we're going to talk about what makes a character interesting to the reader. So, one of the major thinks that makes a character truly interesting to a reader is that they have conflict. And there's three main types of conflict that I've discovered in my writing study. The first one is internal conflict. So, it's on the inside of the character, and nobody else knows about that. So, a character becomes interesting when they are conflicted on the inside of themselves, and they'll often work to find a solution to their internal conflict, which will help them to move away from pain and into a state of comfort and pleasure. So thats the goal for them in their internal conflict, so they don't want to be conflicted. But the really interesting part is how do they manage and move through being conflicted about a subject or a situation on in on the inside with their emotions? One of the big internal conflicts for protagonists, and on of the most interesting ones that I've investigated has been the identity conflict, and that's an internal as well as an external conflict, like, who am I? Those sorts of questions. The more that they tackle an internal conflict the more it will help them to grow and to learn as they go through the arc of the character arc in the story and it will also give them the strengths and the qualities that I need in order to fulfil their goal, or meet their goal at the climax of the story. So it's an important internalization of difficulties. And even as human beings, we all experience internal conflict. We may have two voices inside of ourselves telling us to go one way and then the other voice is telling us to go another way. And that's sort of what characters have with an internal conflict? As you preparing your characters sheet it's important to think about what could be an internal conflict or maybe even three internal conflicts for them. So they've got a level of interest, a level of complexity for each character, especially main characters. Main characters must have these nuances to be very interesting to the reader. The second type of conflict is an external or outer conflict. So, that is the conflict that moves the story forward, and its the opposing force between the protagonist and the antagonist. So, the protagonist is trying to get somewhere, and the antagonist is trying to get somewhere else and stop the protagonist from getting where they want to go. And if you think about Star Wars, and Luke, for example Luke Skywalker. He and Darth Vader had this external conflict, which was complicated by their relationship, which became revealed over time and at one point Darth Vader acknowledges how far Luke Skywalker has come in his development and wants to bring him across to the dark side. So it's kind of like that's a temptation. And, of course, the internal and conflict for Luke is: Do I go the dark side? Or do I stay true to my values and become a Jedi of the light? It's just kind of example of an external conflict that also interweaves with an internal conflict. The third type of conflict is a romantic conflict. Now not every story has a romantic conflict. But if you're writing romance or with a romance beat you'll need a romance conflict. So, somewhere in the main character's life in a lot of stories there is a romantic conflict that the character faces, and it could be an internal and an external conflict for them. So, for example, they may have been emotionally hurt by a previous relationship on it has broken down and they are single. And, they have vowed that they will never ever fall in love again. The will never trust that person again. So there's the trust part of the conflict. They will never trust anyone to get that close to them again. But then, throughout the course of the story, another protagonists comes in who is like the love interest role and the main character starts to really fall for them. I have feelings for this person, but there's mannerisms and experiences of the other person that remind them of the one that they had vowed that they would never be falling in love again with. So, the internal romantic conflict is that they need to overcome their distrust and learn to trust. And the external conflict is coming to terms with physically allowing themselves to fall in love and to be vulnerable again. That brings a lot of pleasure to the reader when they see and experience that internal conflict come to a resolution over a period of time throughout the arc of the story. So, to make a character interesting, it's best for them to be nuanced, to have different interests. To not be one dimensional. For them to have conflict. To have the inner and the outer conflict. They need a conflict at the start of the story, which is like the inciting incident that will let them know that their life as they know it has changed forever and that they need to rise to the call to action and that, in itself can be an internal conflict Like, I don't want to go and do that, versus I will have to step up and make it happen. Conflicts how you write a character for story
4. What makes a character likeable?: Okay, welcome back to video four where we're going to talk about what makes a character likeable and why you should care about them being likeable. And I'm talking about the protagonist, the main character here. The reason that your protagonist should be a likeable character is that they are the main character of the story. The one that you want your readers to buy in to and to want to follow. So, I think of characters such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She's got problems. She's a young teenager. She's got the weight of the world on her shoulders. She's also got a life to live, a day life, a young high school student, and she also has to save the world multiple times from vampires and the apocalypse and stuff like that. And she has difficulty holding down relationships, romantic relationships, because of that, and her greatest desire is to be a normal 16-year-old / into a twenties, and that sort of stuff as the arc of the story goes. So, I really love Buffy, she's a great example of a likeable character. You know, she's funny, she's serious, she's nuanced. And we, as viewers of that particular series can enjoy living through her because we may have experienced similar situations in our lives and although were not necessarily out staking vampires at night but it's kind of cool to have a double life kind of thing happening. And it adds just that extra inch bit of interest. So, one of the reasons you need to have a likeable character is that your readers will buy into them and they will come along in the story with that main character, and the main character is the lens, as I've said, through which the readers will connect with your story. So, it's kind of like they've got a little lens on their shoulder and that lens is also looking in the heads and telling you what's going on inside them as well as what is happening to them and around them. The reader will want to see what happens with your main character and how they resolve the conflicts, the internal conflict, the external conflict, and the romantic conflict, as they go through the story. The reader wants to connect with that person. Here's some of the things that I learned about what makes character likeable: loveable characters have people around them who loved them. So, they may have a mother that loves them and wants the best for them. They may have a partner who loves them and what's the best from them. They may have best friends, a bit like Bridget Jones. She's got crazy parents but she's also got her best friends that, you know, surround her and support her when she's down and out. And that tells us something about how likeable she is as a person. Despite her difficulties in life, we like her. We resonate with her. We want to see how she comes out and ends up falling in love with Mr Darcy. Likeable characters also have pets, or I'll liked by animals. So there's nothing that I've heard about called: pet the dog. And I think it's a Hollywood screenwriter thing, and basically within the first few scenes of a movie or a story, you have the main character petting the dog. And as they do that, they're connecting with nature, connecting with the world around. They're showing through their actions, that they are likeable people and that they're not gonna harm creatures. That's important to some readers. Likeable characters step up and face their fears. They build their courage through facing their fears and trying to resolve the problems before them. But they also fail, and that's an important part of the character's arc and the plotting of your story. Trying to resolve a situation and failing is what makes the story interesting for the reader as well. Likeable characters are relatable for the reader, like we talked about Buffy and with Bridget Jones, as in, the reader may have experienced similar conflicts to the main character. And they can resonate with the life of the character. And sometimes we have no personal experiences that a similar to the main character, but we can feel into that, and we can connect with them as human beings. And that's what makes the character real for the reader. It's kind of living vicariously through this other being on the page. But one of the things I found that makes the character likeable is that they can have heroic qualities but that they also are quite vulnerable. So, if I think about Buffy, she, she is a a hero. She's there to save the world and all that sort of stuff, but she has these vulnerabilities. She falls in love with a vampire. She's a 16-year-old. She's not mature in the world yet. She's not got all of the tools, and she has to keep learning and growing in order to grow up emotionally, but she also has this heroic ability to fight villains and fight vampires so they have heroic abilities and they also vulnerable. The other thing that can my characters quite likeable is having a great sense of humor. So, if you enjoy writing humor in your stories, then that's really great, but you need to be careful about that kind of human that you put out there. So it really has to be, in alignment with who the character is on the inside and how they connect. So, I like Bridget Jones as a character because she's quite funny, but she's quite vulnerable too. So, her super power is that she is quite quirky. Things go wrong for her. She keeps picking herself back up, she's vulnerable and she still keeps putting yourself out there. So her superpower is her ability to find courage in fear. That's how I see it, and I think that the more you have a likeable protagonist, the better it will be for your story. And the same goes for an unlikable character. So if you make your main character mean that will turn off readers and they will put your book down or your story away and you don't want to do that. And I learned too because I had a character that had funny scene on the train and I though it was hilarious, and actually a few people told me that it was quite funny - out of my beta readers - but... what I found was that it was, a kind of mean humour and I had to correct that because it wasn't in alignment with the character. And so that's what's really important is making sure that the actions that the character takes and the decisions and words and dialogue that they use is all in alignment with who they are as a character. And a main character really does need to be a likeable character. So, I hope that answers what makes likeable character and why we should care about them being likeable. In the next video we'll talk about how to build your own character sheet. So, join me then.
5. Characters and Your Project: Welcome back to video five, where we're going to talk about building your own characters through your own character sheet, and the project. There will be a word document that I'll attach to this project so that you can download it and begin to fill it out as a character sheet. And it is some of the questions that I ask myself that I've learned a long way that helped me to develop characters that become real people on the page. The first thing is: What roles will I need for characters in my story? So depends on the type of story you're going to tell. But for me I'll need a protagonists who is my main character. My likeable character. I will need an antagonist who is also another main character who may not be in every scene. Then I have best friends or side kicks, and there may be one or more. Then I'll have henchman, which will do the bidding of the antagonist. For me, I like a love interest. I particularly enjoy having love triangles in my stories because it adds another level of conflict for my characters and having to resolve who they love and why, and I get a guide character. Think about someone who could help them during their difficult times. Someone who's got wisdom is the kind of character that I'm looking for is a guide. So when I think about guide characters the one that comes to mind most easily is Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in that he is the old grey wizard, and he has experience but he doesn't have all the answers. He doesn't have a magic that can change everything, but he has some knowledge, some experience, and some magic. But beyond that, he is that guide for Frodo and for Bilbo. But he doesn't play a role in every single scene in the story. So, I think those things. For each character I write down a few points on what their name is. Their age, sex, social status and employment status. What they look like because it's important to know physical features, so you don't forget what they look like when you go back when you're writing along. If you're writing the series and you go back and think, Oh what what was their eye color? 'cause that's easy to forget and get wrong. So physical description, you know, the main features. But I don't just say they have blue eyes. I describe their eyes, I describe their eyelashes their eyebrows, their scars, their tattoos, the way they walk, the build of the body, the color of the hair and how big their ears are. Because, believe it or not, that's quite interesting because, you know, do their ears stick out? Are they concerned about having their hair pulled back? It gives you mannerisms that you can work with. And then I write a small paragraph from their perspective, on what they think about how they look? Then I have them describe one thing that they dislike most about their bodies, and I asked them to tell me why? Then I move to their goal/s. Like, what are they trying to achieve in the story? What is their internal conflict? And I usually look for three internal conflicts. What is the external conflicts? So that's a big conflict that they're going to try and resolve (the action of the story). And what is their romantic conflict? if they've got one. So, if I've got a love triangle, I'm going to have, I like Jim and I like Bob, but I don't know about each one. Say that this sort of, you know, which one does the character go with? Then I think about what motivates them to keep trying to achieve their goal and what they'll do in order to succeed, even after failing. Because for me, they will always fail at least twice before they succeed. What is their greatest fear? I like this one because when they tell me their greatest fear it's the one thing they want to avoid. And knowing this fear helps me to put little situations in the story where they could come to a situation where they have to face the fear and build the courage to face it and overcome it and it makes them grow and mature. So that's about it. So I'm going to put the the word document together and pop it up here, so please feel free to download it and use it to fill out your own character sheet. What I would like to do like you to do is fill it out and put a small snippet of that up on to the projects so I can have a look at it and give you something back.
6. Summing up characters: Hello and welcome to video six. This is the summary. So, today we've discussed what are characters? Why it's important to create characters that are interesting and nuanced. The three types of conflicts that I learned about being: internal, external and romantic conflicts. We've touched upon the romantic triangle, which can pretty much help the conflict of any book, especially for young adults. We've also touched on what makes a character likeable and why you should care about character likability as it will help people to continue to read your stories. We've also talked about why it's important to stay away from writing unlikeable main characters and how that can affect your readers. So do you try to keep them in the positive when you're talking about and writing your main characters. And we've been thinking about how to build your own characters so that they come across as real people when you write your stories and we've been talking about a project which is a project sheet for character creation. So, thanks for taking this class. I hope you've enjoyed it and got some value out of it. Please do upload a snippet of your character sheets to the project tab on this class so I can have a look at it and give you feedback. And if you like this class feel feel to recommend it. I'd very much appreciate that. So until next time, happy creative writing and writing believable characters. And if you have any feedback or questions that you want to ask that I may be all the help with, please feel free to put that have placed, feel free to put that in the community conversation section and I'll see you soon, so bye for now.
7. Bonus Worksheet walk through: This bonus content is where I'm going to work through the character work sheet and show you what I've written about a love interest character. But before we do that, let's just go back to skillshare and have a look where you can find the worksheet. So just go to the class, go to projects and resources tab, and on the right hand side, you'll see, a resources section that says project character work sheet. Just click that link and it will download the word document with all of the prompts that you need to start your project and then just allow your imagination to go a bit wild. This is part of creating a bible for your characters and your world building, as well as your character development and understanding, your plot and conflicts and your theme of your story. This sheet will be very very helpful to you as you move through your story and hopefully can learn to go back to it from time to time when you need to refresh your memory. So it's not about getting everything in on go, but it's about capturing the start of it. Okay, we'll just go back up here, and then we will get going with it. This is the write believable characters work sheet that I've done, not so much for my protagonist, who is Toddy James in my story, The Living Death of Toddy James, Today the focus is on the love interest. Who is also a positive character with a little bit of a dark shade to him. So, I've highlighted that is the love interest, so I know what role he's going to be taking the story. His name is Luca, and he's a white demon. He's male. His age is unknown, but he appears to be young and maybe from his early twenties. It's very difficult to tell with these sorts of, characters whether they are really 20 or 200-300-years-old. And I like that. For Luca's social status, e's actually kind of enslaved to Manon on who is the antagonist, and he's also bound in servitude to Manon with Sarah, the Black Witch, who is his kind of darker counterpart in the shop that they run. And she's a bit of a metaphor for the darkness that she has inside of her. So it's not always literal. He's a white demon and he's actually of royalty. But you don't know that when he's first introduced. His employment status is a shopkeeper and he does bargain deals and he's a deal maker in the esoteric emporium, which is the name of the shop. What his job is is he makes demon deals and bargains in this magical shop. He's a day worker while Sarah takes the night time shift and Luca works behind the counter is a sales person as well, and to quote him directly from my manuscript. "It's where bargains are made and demonic deals are done." And he really gets a kick out of actually saying that. That's something he enjoys. Does he enjoy his job? No, he doesn't particularly love his job. It's not really what he was brought up to be or do. But he actually resents being bound to Sarah because he has no freedom. But he loves making deals, and he gets a rush every time that he gets to make that deal. So some people feed off making deals and bargains, and he's one of them. So in the physical attributes, I gave him pink eyes and they're really just normal looking eyes, fine white eyebrows. And he doesn't have any scars. He doesn't have any tattoos, but he does have two silver horns that are like piercings on either side of his forehead. He's skinny, and he's not particularly tall. He's a little bit taller than my main character, Toddy, and quite a bit shorter than Nathaniel, who is the angel. His hair type is pure pure white, and it's short hair, and it's curly. His ear size is normal 'cause I like him to be able to pass for human if he goes into the human world and that's pretty cool fun as long as he learns to disguise his horns when he goes out in public. His favorite jewelry? Well, he actually doesn't have favourite jewelry. He has a silver chain that attaches to his wrist, and it goes invisible, and it's connected also to Sarah, so that's the binding between them, and he detests that chain. He also has a chaos disk and crystal ball, which are important to him and both are important to the story. His favorite clothes are a pristine white suit, as I've said here, what he's most uncomfortable wearing is jeans and a tee-shirt. So, there's an opportunity for me to put him in the story in jeans and a tee-shirt and see what his reaction is. Then what's most comfortable thing that he likes to wear? Obviously, the white suit. And he also likes his white loafer shoes. I just write a small paragraph about how Luca feels about his looks, and I'll just take a moment to read that. I like my pointy teeth the most. When I grin at my customers, they take a moment to reconsider any insidious or nefarious plans they had been hatching to do me out of a good deal or bargain. My silver horns glint when I get excited. There a bit of a giveaway or tell sign about my mood. What I dislike most about my body is the red welts this binding cord leaves on my skin. It is a constant reminder of my servitude to Manon. The other thing I dislike is the golden light that flares at the most inopportune times. It is an inconvenience, but I have learned to live with it. These are things that really make your character pop out on the page and help the reader to connect with them. So my characters goals... I have only actually put down two at the moment. Luca is trying to get his freedom back as he was feeling humiliated when Manon bound him to Sarah and took his freedom away from him. But Luca also sees Toddy as a way to get what he wants. But when he starts to get to know her, he begins to feel conflicted about what Manon has asked him to do. Now this is where the internal conflict gets interesting. If he does as Manon wants and misdirects her he may be able to get his freedom. If he doesn't and he chooses to help Toddy, then he forfeits his freedom, potentially for the love that he finds with her and that he knows he can really never have. So that's a really good internal conflict that's also very much a romance conflict, which is in alignment with the kind of role of the characters playing. So what motivates him to keep trying is Luca is motivated to help Toddy because he has figured out that if she can get the knife that he needs from the Mother of Beasts, he can then use that knife to cut the binding between himself and Sarah and then seek vengeance on Manon. So he's not really thinking about love there. It's really all about self serving stuff. He's other internal conflicts, and some of it's a little bit repetitive because it's the same type of stuff that goes through the threads of the character arc. He doesn't want Toddy to know that he is royalty and has fallen from his place among his own kind. The pain of this displacement is too much, and letting her know about it hurts too much. But then he finds himself wanting to tell her, and it just complicates things. So what does he do? So, that again is a question to be answered in the story. He has an ongoing conflict about Sarah. He has to work with her. And isn't this the typical thing of we have to work and get along with people we don't like necessarily at times. So they run the Esoteric Emporium shop, and she's being driven crazy by unrequited love and so she switches moods very often. He can never tell what she's gonna be like, and it's like walking on eggshells. But he has to try to get along with her, and it's really annoying for him. Sometimes he loses his temper, and that's when the magic battles of wills between them flare up. He doesn't want to fall in love any with anyone. He only wants to get what he's owed. So this is conflict number three. Basically, it's his place back in the Demon Clans. But then when he meets Toddy, things change, cause she's sassy and bold, and she's vulnerable and innocent as well. And even though she's touched by darkness that she's also got a lot of light in her. And so he can't help but find her really irresistible because in a way she's a mirror image of himself, and he wages an internal war about helping here versus doing what Manon wants. That's quite a big conflict, but he's gonna be dealing with. So what is the external conflict for Luca? So, Luca is facing an eternity of servitude to Manon and the binding to Sarah. It's just too much to take as time goes by, so he's going to face a choice. Does he continue to try to make deals with Manon? Now that Manon himself has been freed from an entrapment and is back into building an army? Or does he help Toddy get the knife that she needs to finish Manon off and use her to take back his freedom? It's all very self serving, and he then has the internal conflict about it as well. Like if only he wasn't born with feelings. If only he wasn't born with the soul, then the choice would be clear for him. But it's not, because he could just act. But there's so much more to weigh up. This is what brings more believability to the character and makes seem him not so much of a cliche on the page. So there is a romance planned. There is this three potential love interests in this story, and Lucas is one of them. Luca isn't on the look out for love. He hasn't thought much about it, really. All he knows is that love and being rebuffed as Sarah was and what she went through turned her crazy, and he just doesn't want to experience anything like that. But when he meets Toddy, he finds her irresistible. But is her, you know, irresistibly enough to make him trust in love and put his own selfish needs to one side? Now that's the big question, isn't it? And throughout the story. he will grapple with that, even though he's no main character, as in the protagonist. He's the main character, but he's not the protagonist, and we're not looking through that lens. So when I write it, I can't write his internal thoughts because it's all from the viewpoint of Toddy James. That's how she sees him. So describing my characters greatest fear. Luca's greatest fear is that he will never ever be the kind of white demon that he was born to be. He wants to rule the clans, but he's afraid to rule them because he has a soul, and that makes him weak in the eyes of the clans. He's afraid that if he ever gets his freedom back, then he'll, attempt to reclaim what his rightful place is among his kind. But once again, he may endure the humiliation of losing that battle. And then where would he be in? And, who would he be? So there's the identity conflicts starting to really rise up for that particular character. What makes them so likeable? Well, Luca saves Toddy from Poppet, who's a possessed doll in the store when she (Toddy) returns from another realm, which is the Mother of Beasts's realm with the knife that he needs to cut himself free. Sure, it's somewhat of a self serving act, but what do you do? And what do you expect for a demon who's trying to redeem his darkest features whilst also possessing a soul of light? He's got dual motivation here, but it makes him likeable 'cause he's real. How many of us have two different selves inside of us that are always maybe working towards something with different motivations? He's tender and funny, and he watches out for Toddy. He even begins to open up to love, and it does begin to change him, so his motivations change over the arc of the story. Then have the character tell you something important about themselves. It could be their most embarrassing moment that has affected them and I think this is really important to allow yourself some time to delve into. It's not necessarily going to be easy. They may not be forthcoming and especially if you're going to tell your character you're going to put it out there for other people to read right now, they may not want to tell you right now, and that seems a bit silly, but fears get in the way of us doing this sort of stuff. So need to just give it the space to allow the character to talk to you. And then if you feel comfortable, then put it on the project page. So this is Luca's response to me: "The day I fled the hell realms I was beaten down and bloody. My kin, the White Demons, had picked me for what I was, a fraud to their kind. My soul, this golden light that emanates from within me I cannot disguise it to dark, malicious eyes. Rejected by my kind. I was almost ripped apart. I staggered out into the world of humans and discovered the sorcerer, old Mr Hubert. He caught me in an entrapment. Such a humiliation! Going from one humiliation to another, he bound me to his will. Commanded me to do his bidding. Compelled me to call the darkest of entities, the most twisted creature I could find. And so, like a pup who has bean beaten. I went into the shadows once more and took my chances somehow getting myself caught up in Manon's clutches. He bound me to his will. And so I had to masters and I was the master of nothing, not even my own freedom. Do you know how humiliating it is to have to serve others and fear that I would never be free? It is excruciating. But there was an upside to the red hot pain that stabbed through my heart and forced me to my knees. That was the glorious moment Manon also found himself the unwilling play thing of the old fool sorcerer." And that's my character sheet for the moment. Of course, I'll add to that over time as I discover more about my character as he grows through the story. But this was so helpful for me because secondary characters or, you know, side kicks, love interests, and that sort of stuff, they all have to feel real so don't just do your protagonist, do all of the roles. And I know it seems like a big job, but it will truly help you to write a better story. Okay, Thanks for watching.