Transcripts
1. Class Intro: Indiana Jones, Elizabeth Bennet, Jay Gatsby, John vel,
John Scarlett O'Hara. No matter their genre
or their gender, great characters all have
one thing in common. They stay with us
along after we've closed their book or the
final credits have rolled. But maybe great character is actually have more than
just one thing in common. Okay, fine. I said maybe to build a
little bit of suspense, but the truth is
they definitely do. And in this class,
we're going to explore what makes
great characters tick. And we'll talk about
how you can incorporate some of those tactics
and techniques into your own writing so that your
readers are talking about and thinking about your story
long after it has ended. I'm Justin 5k, author of ten novels and counting
at this point, mostly in the adventure
fantasy series, the varchar Chronicles, but also numerous short
stories that have been published in anthologies
and literary magazines. But it was taking all of those individual pieces that I learned in the
classroom and learning how to actually combine
them and apply them in practice through my own trial and more than a bit of
error over the years. That really brought me to
the place where I could consistently write stories that people would love to read. That's what I'm excited to
share with you in this class. Together, we're going to look at three primary areas that think about and incorporate
in order to write truly unforgettable
characters. First, we're going to look at the four primary elements that all great
characters need to have. Then we'll take a look at
the three different types of characters and talk
a little bit about how the different type of character
and the role that they play influences the way that
you write that character. Finally, we'll talk about
how to build satisfying character arcs by considering
the different scenes and moments that you combine and integrate in order to create a satisfying character arc
that achieves the kind of payoff that will
make your characters really unforgettable and
memorable for your readers. So if you're ready to fill
your stories with a cast of unforgettable characters
that your readers will be talking about
for years to come. Then let's roll up our sleeves and dive
into this together.
2. Character Overview: So as we begin this
class on writing unforgettable characters in the immortal words
of Julie Andrews, we have to start at
the very beginning. And that means
starting with a bit of a discussion about what
character is actually, are the functions that
they serve in a story and kind of an overview of the different elements that
make upgrade characters, which we will be working through in the different
sections of this class. Now starting off by asking, what is a character
may seem like one of those painfully
obvious questions that is so straightforward that there's almost no point
in even asking it, but there's actually
a lot of nuance. The difference or
the distinction between characters
in a story and the real people or our
experience of real human people, that they're based off of. That nuance is pretty
important to understand. One of the ways that characters are distinct from people is that characters exist on a
spectrum between what I like to think of as reality
and imagination. The fact that when you
are writing a character, you have to be heavily
rooted in reality. Because if you go too
far into the realm of the imagined or
the constructed, then the character
becomes so unreal that it's not relatable anymore and it breaks the
immersion of the story. But if we move too far in
the reality direction, we begin to get frankly, boring. Reality is a bit
boring in the sense that reality isn't
concentrated enough. All stories are essentially a set of events or
experiences that are concentrated down and curated for the reader to experience
in a certain way. If we were to take almost like
a slice of life approach, then you begin to
actually move more in the direction of a
biography or a documentary. But even those are
edited because if you take every single event
or every single thought, or every single action
or every single moment. There's no narrative
left anymore. So we, as the author
of the story, have to be making
intentional choices along the way about what to focus on, what to present to the reader. Because otherwise
you would just have like an infinite
list of pages that are disorganized,
disoriented, and boring. So finding the right balance, that's sort of Goldilocks
balance where it's not too much reality, not too much imagination,
but just right, can take a little bit
of work figuring out what are the things that
we need to highlight? What are the things that
we want to draw out? What are the ways
that we want to take elements of reality, elements of how
people really are, so that the reader can
see themselves and see their own experience
reflected in the characters that
they're reading about. But pick the right elements and place them in the right
combination with each other and with the right
contrast with each other to create the effect
that we're going for. Which then begs the question, of course, what effect
are we going for? What is it that we
need our characters to do in the story in order for it to be successful and actually work well as
an effective story. I like to think of characters as the fuel of the story vehicle. If you want to use
that metaphor or the characters or
the element that animate the story that bring it to life and
drive it forward. Characters are the thing
that we as readers can actually get invested in
and attached to there. The thing that
creates stakes there, the thing that create
motivation there, the thing that make a story, a story, a plot
without characters, is just a news report. A great setting
without characters is a photograph or maybe
a travelogue at best. But characters are
the thing that makes a story because at
its simplest core, a story is the record
of a person or set of people who start out wanting something
they don't have yet. Or needing to do something very difficult for reasons that are compelling and
relevant to them. The story begins when something happens in the world of
the story that disrupts it or changes it for
that character to such an extent that
they are forced to take unusual actions. Otherwise, we're just
watching people make toast. It's a story hat starts
when something propels that character into a
series of unusual actions. And then the story itself is the progression of those
unusual situations, those unusual actions that
the character must take in pursuit of their ultimate goal. Hopefully a goal
that is compelling enough and motivating
enough to drive them through increasingly
difficult obstacles, challenges, costs, and
prices to be paid. The external part of the story, the external track are
those series of events. It's the things that
happen too and around. And because of the characters
in the external world, the internal track is the
really interesting part. That's the progression
of the way that the character changes over time throughout the
course of the story in response to the things that
they are experiencing. Usually ideally, we want
to be able to see how distinctly different
to character is from the beginning of the
story to the end of the story. And to be able to intuitively understand where and how
all of those changes took place in one of the reasons that a Christmas Carol is such
an enduring story is because the change in
the primary character of the story and Scrooge
from the beginning to the end is so extreme. And Dickens does a solid job of not just saying
that he changed, but it's showing us each of
the small progressions of change that happened through Scrooge's experiences
in the story. So each step is
understandable, is reasonable. We see it happening that internal progression of change throughout the
course of the story. Ideally in the
best-case scenario, the internal track and the external track
of the story for that character and for
the set of characters are played out in conjunction
with each other. And ideally done in
such a way where the internal change and progression is required for the story to be
resolved successfully. A question I like to ask myself when I'm working on
planning a story is, who do these characters are? Who does this character
need to be in order to resolve the
problem of the story? And the further apart you
can place those two poles, who they are at the beginning, but who they must
be in order for the story to be
resolved successfully. That progression then becomes
deeply interesting and compelling to us because we are drawn to that
kind of change. We want to see it and kind of vicariously experience it through the
progression of the story. Watching that change happened in the character is endlessly fascinating and endlessly
compelling to us as people, psychologically
and emotionally. That's kinda the, the dynamic core of a story that we can't
help but be invested in. In this class,
we're going to look at three major sections or focuses that are going to
help us to do exactly that. In the first section,
we will take a look at the four primary elements that all great
characters need to have operating in order to
be fully realized and as effective and dynamic and impactful and memorable
as we want them to be. Those areas are pop, flaw, drive and vibe. And we'll take a look
at each one of those in more detail and talk
a bit about what goes into each of those
elements and also how those elements all
relate to each other to create a
complete character. In the second section,
we'll take a look at the three primary
types of characters, which are protagonists,
antagonists, and secondary characters. And we'll talk about
how the nature of each character type influences
the way that you write those characters and also influences the way
that they function in the story and how they operate
in relation to each other, and the different types of
characters that all form the complete cast that make
up the story as a whole. And finally, for
our third section, we'll look at the three
different types of scenes which you can use to construct a complete
character arc for each character
in your story, independent of each other and independent of the
larger plot to make sure that every
character from protagonist, antagonist to minor characters and secondary characters are all getting a complete
and satisfying arc that actually pays off the setup of that character and the
function that it is meant to serve in the story by making
sure that you include the right types of scenes and understand what each of those types of scenes
is trying to do. Finally, let's talk
just a moment about the class project.
For this class. You will find in
the class resources a PDF document that will
give you a complete walk-through of the
character breakdown with all the different
sections that we're going to cover
throughout this class. And that's gonna give
you the opportunity to do one of two things. And it's up to you how
you want to approach it. The first option is you can create a character from
scratch as part of this class. You can go through each
of these sections. You can either do it
as he listened to the videos or do it at the end. Once you've finished the class, go through each
section, fill them out, and have fun creating a
brand new character that hits all of the
elements we're going to talk about
throughout this class. Another option is you can
take a character that you already have written in
a story you're working on, or maybe a story you've
already finished. You can take that character
and you can kind of run them through
the same process. And you'll see where you already intuitively developed
some of those elements. And you might also then
see where there are opportunities to flesh out
that character further. Or sometimes it can be
helpful to learn from seeing a character that's already
been developed and kind of see where some of those opportunities might have been. To take that a little
bit further or develop a little bit more richness by incorporating some
of the elements that maybe weren't there, or noticing which elements really were there and
why you did it that way. So whichever way you decide to approach the class project
when you're finished, make sure you can post
it here in the class. I would love to read them. I will definitely
respond to them. And I think it'll
be really fun for us to learn from each other. Seeing the kinds of
characters that we create and sort of
seeing inaction. How a lot of this theory
gets put into practice.
3. Elements: Pop: So let's start off this first section where we're
gonna be looking at the four major elements that all characters need to
have going on for them. And we'll start with the
first one, which is pop. Pop is the list of
things that make a character unique,
distinctive, or interesting. They're the things that
set that character apart from the other
characters in the story. And they're really the first, usually the first
things that the reader encounters that makes
that character memorable. And it kind of gives them a hook to hang their
mental hat on. Like that's what this
character is all about. This is what you can tune
into and take away as like, oh, that's what they are. Pop can take a couple
of different forms, which we'll talk about
in just a second. But I kinda like
to think of it as the characters like ticket
to enter the story. What is the thing about this character or the set of
things about this character? That means that they
deserve to be here. Like what is it about them? That makes them interesting
enough to stand out? And sort of like to grab
the camera's focus, so to speak, on them
for any period of time. So that they deserve to be
part of the story because they bring something
to the story. They're not just scenery. What makes them stand
out from the crowd? So like I said, Pop can take
a couple of different forms. Let's talk about a
couple of those. The first one is the things
that your character can do. I'm usually you will find this in almost all
cases in a protagonist. Often you will also find it with an antagonist are different
types of characters, because characters need to
have some elements about them that we recognize
as either some kind of an expertise or some kind
of a natural ability or a honed skill that
is interesting and that we can tune into
and find fascinating. So e.g. if I was to say, Who is the world's only
action hero archeologist. You probably know who
I'm talking about because the set of skills
that make up Indiana Jones and the things that he
can do are immediately interesting and
we see them right at the beginning of the
movie that he's in, the very first movie, see him putting those
skills into action. So if you're looking for action type of pop, that
can be like I said, skills which tend
to be things that the character has spent
time and energy developing. So maybe they play an instrument really well,
or they're an artist, or they are really, really good at some sort
of physical skills. In action movies, you often
see this action stories. The hero or the
main character will typically have a set of
skills in a particular set of skills to quote me and mucin that they then are going to rely on throughout the
course of the movie. But you see this also in
various other types of genres, like most Hallmark movies have characters who have
action type of pop. You might not think
of it that way, but if you stop and
think, Oh, like e.g. the love interests,
the main character is she's a lawyer up, high-fiving lawyer who has to
retire from the big city to go back home to the small
town or she runs a bake shop. Those are still
action type of pop, even if they're quieter
types of actions, because they're
interesting things that, that character can
do or as good at. It takes different forms
throughout different genres. But one place you can
look for pop is to say, what is it that my
character can do? Maybe a profession
that they have that makes them interesting
or that doing that thing is interesting
and draws the attention or the interests of my
particular audience for this particular story. Another area you can look for, action type of pop can
be in a profession. So it's a lot of
times you'll see this in like police
procedurals or thrillers. Working for the FBI
is interesting. So just right off the bat, or a grizzled cop that's been
on the force for 20 years. Those are types of
action pop that can help establish interests in the character right off the bat. When Sherlock Holmes,
a big part of what makes him interesting
is that combination. He has skills and his deductive reasoning,
his hyper intelligence, but he also his job is
interestingly key is a private practicing
detective, but that's unusual. That's interesting. There's a draw there that just hearing
that makes you want to learn more about the character and tune
into more about them. What makes them that way? How do they do
that? What kinds of challenges or problems
are going to come up? There's a lot of interesting
questions just baked into some of the pop about that
character right off the bat. But another completely
different type of POP that you can look for is
history or backstory. Sometimes one of the things that makes a character
really interesting is just what we immediately learn about where
they come from. And very often those will
connect because a lot of times your history or your
backstory might influence your set of skills. That I can remember. Fantasy series, I read where the main character
was an assassin. But right off the bat, the first thing you
learn about him isn't actually that
he's an assassin. It's the fact that
he was raised by assassins and his backstory
of what led to that. How did that happen? How did he get placed
in that situation? And yes, so that's a set
of skills and there's pop, that's action pop,
but there's also backstory pop that makes that really appealing or interesting. Harry Potter, e.g. is
the boy who lived. One of the very first
elements of pop that we get about him isn't
so much anything he does because he's in a
pretty mundane situation at the very beginning of the
first book in the series. But we do learn through a bit of a prologue
and some other elements. We learn more about his history, the fact that he comes
from this family. His parents were killed, that he survived under mysterious like,
that's interesting. And so we're given
reasons to tune into that character and care and
being curious about him, even though it takes
a little while for the character to actually start developing some
more action type of pop that That's like
an ability based thing or a skill-based thing
or a profession based thing. We don't get to see
those right away, but she does a good job of
giving us backstory pop. So that's another area
that you can look for when you're
looking for what is it about my character
that really makes them deserve to be in
the story that makes them stand out and makes them memorable or distinctive
from the other characters. The third and final area that you can
consider when you're developing out your character is more of a
personality-based pops. So we have action, things like stuff your
character can do. We have backstory in history like where your character came from or what happened to them
before the story started. But we also have
personality pop. This can be a little
tricky because it has to be distinctive and significant enough of a
character trait that is also unusual enough to see that way that we tune
into it immediately. You can't just be like, Oh, they're a little bit this thing, it has to be pretty definitive and it has to be
something that you can demonstrate fairly
quickly on the page. But you absolutely
can have one of the main elements of
pop for a character. The way that they think, act and behave in the story. I'll really good recent example of this that I thought was really well done
is mirror bell in, in Canto, which is a movie
I have maybe seen too many times at this point
because my daughter's love it. But I thought that was a really interesting
contrast because we have a main character
who doesn't really have much action pop at the
beginning of the story. She's more defined by
the fact that she can't do anything special when all of the other characters
around her are all defined by action
pop like this one controls the weather
and this one can grow flowers magically and
this one's super strong. And here's what each of
these characters can do that you immediately go, oh, that's popped like,
that's what makes that character different from the other characters
in the story. What makes them interesting and what makes them stand out. But she doesn't have
any of those things which is necessary for the
whole plot of the story. What she does have is an incredible degree of empathy and emotional
intelligence, like the way she handles her backstory is
really appealing. Like you tune into her
immediate and you go, Wow, she is really trying. She's making the best of what is kind of a tough situation. And she's choosing to
be happy and she's choosing to sort of tune into the other people
in her family. And instead of having a bad
attitude about it, she liked, she really loves them
and she likes to help tune into where
they're at, what they need. And she has a couple
of really great lines right from the beginning. I mean, even in the first
few minutes of the movie, she has some great lines that help establish her personality as her pop that develops more and more over
the course of the story. As you begin looking at those three different
types of pop, and you begin figuring
out what makes sense for this character to layer
on top of each other. One thing you want to
watch for that can be really powerful to take all of the individual
elements of pop and turn them all up to 11
and make the character more dynamic is to look for
opportunities to create contrast and subvert
the expectations of the reader with
that character. E.g. when you take one thing
that we think we understand, but then you contrast it
with something unusual or unexpected that doesn't
usually go with that thing, then that can create even more compelling interests
around that character. Like, wow, why are
they different? What that wasn't what
I expected to see. So e.g. you could take a skill or a profession
that we have associations and
expectations about what people are like,
Who are that thing. And then subvert
those expectations by giving that character really different
personality traits. A TV series that I like
and I watched with my wife is the royal panes show. They do that with their
main character and gloss. And right in the
beginning of the story, he's an extremely successful
Dr. in a large hospital in, I think it's New York or
LA or somewhere like that. And we have some
associations about what that is probably means
about him as a character. And then right from
the beginning, those expectations are
subverted because we discover actually, he's
extremely empathetic. He cares deeply about each of these individual patients
and he doesn't really give a rip about position or the
importance of his patients. He treats them all equally, which is kind of subverts the expectation of
what we go into that character thinking
based off of what we know about just
right off the bat, his job and his skill set. That immediately. Is that interesting contrast where you tune it and you go, Oh, that plus that equals
something different. And now I want to
know more about where that difference
come, comes from. The character scout from To Kill a Mockingbird relies on
this really heavily, just the simple juxtaposition
of a child character, where again, we have some expectations about
what does that mean? What does it mean to
be whatever she has, like nine or ten or
a younger child, especially at that time period. And then she behaves in ways. She has some personality pop. That is not what we
would have expected based just on the simple fact
of her being a young child. And again, that contrast
becomes really interesting. Think about the
elements of pop for your character
individually first, as you begin to flesh them out like what makes them different, distinctive, and unique
within the story. But then as you do that, you can start looking
for opportunities to subvert expectations
and kind of take a different approach to contrast different things that
don't usually go together. And as you begin to do that, then you really start to create a more dynamic and
appealing character that your readers will be really drawn to and interested in.
4. Elements: Flaw: Now let's take a look
at the second of our four main elements that
great characters should have, which is character flaw. If you remember at the
beginning of the class, when I said that a story is essentially inviting a
reader to watch what happens when a
character sets off in pursuit of some kind of
compelling motivation? Flaw are the set of external and internal obstacles that will make that
journey difficult. The thing that
stand in the way of the successful completion of that pursuit of a motivation, whatever it is, that goal, that thing that they want. Flaw is a big part of the
reason they can't have it yet at the beginning of
the story without flaw, it's really hard to know why there should be a story
in the first place. We need flaws there,
both for two reasons. The first is to complicate the character and
actually make them relatable and recognizable
as a realistic character. Without flaw, you tend to, you're moving more
in the element of either satire or farce or some kind of an extreme story where the character
isn't real anymore. Because we know intuitively that real people have good
elements and bad elements. Real people have
strengths and weaknesses. Real people have that mix
that tension in play. And it's actually a lot
more interesting and relatable to see that same
tension in our characters. But the second function of flaw, aside from just
making the characters more real and more relatable, is to actually help you
develop interesting story. We external obstacles that
happen around your character. That's more of a plot thing like if the characters
are running away from the bad guy
and they jumped in the car and the
car doesn't start. That's not a character flaw. That's a plot obstacle that's just been
thrown in their path. And now it's, oh no, how are the character is going to
deal with this new problem? That's a plot thing. But flaw is the set of
things that come from within the character that similarly complicate the
progression of the story. And that gives us
that same sense of, oh no, What's going to happen? Like, how are they going
to overcome that thing? But it tends to be coming
from the character, not from the world
outside of the character. The two primary types of flaws that you can look
at when you're trying to figure out what
your flaws are for this particular character are
limitations and Ms beliefs. And let's take a look
at each of those in a little bit more detail
first, with limitations. That is the flaw that is again
baked into the character, but tends to have more
to do with the way that the character relates
to the world around them. So that can be different kinds
of physical limitations. So Forrest Gump, e.g. as a character, has some physical and
mental limitations affect his ability to relate
to the world around him. It can also be social. So your character might be
a woman in a man's world, or might be poor in a
society that values wealth, or might be lower-class and a society that values
class and prestige and your family name or
any of those types of elements that affect and specifically that complicate
your character's ability to relate easily to the world
around them is a limitation. It's something imposed
on them or that is something about
who they are that gives them either a disadvantage or a set of obstacles
that they're going to have to figure out how to
either deal with or to overcome in order for the story to be
successfully played out. And you reached that conclusion that you're moving towards. Ms. Belief, on the other hand, is a flaw that is truly
internal to the character. It has to do with the
way the character, either he sees
themselves and what they believe about
themselves as a person, or what they believe
about the world and other people and the
way the world works. I've read this, talked about in a lot of different
books about writing as either the lie the character believes or characters wound. I like Miss belief
because it's slightly less intense because it can take a lot of different forms. But typically a
character's miss belief is that internal
thing, which again, unless they work through that thing and come to
the other side of it and change the way they see themselves or change the
way they see the world. The story is going
to be resolved in an unsatisfying way unless
they actually overcome that. And very often some of
the most powerful climax is in story history
are the moments where the character
actually manages to overcome that Miss belief or
overcome their limitation, right in the moment
when everything is on the line and the
stakes are the highest, because the resolution
of the story hinges on whether
or not they can successfully pay off the growth that has been happening over
the course of the story. When it comes to that, Ms. Belief in this belief
can look like things like not fully
trusting themselves, are not believing in themselves. Maybe not believing that
they're truly worthy of love, or maybe not believing that they can be happy
unless they are loved. Maybe Ms belief can also take the form of beliefs
about the world. So it might be a character
who believes that everyone is out for
themselves and you can't trust anybody and then
wouldn't you know it, the resolution of the
story requires them to truly trust somebody or maybe the characters Miss
belief is a deep level of selfishness that they need to take care of themselves
first and foremost. And wouldn't you know
it, the resolution of the story requires
them to be selfless, sacrificial in
some specific way. That's Han Solo's
and primary flaw as a character in the
first-order is movie. It's very clear all the
way through the movie. He doesn't stick his neck
out for anybody else. He's only in it for the money. He's only in it for himself. And then he gets those
things and takes off. And that is what makes the
moment when she comes back just in time to save Luke and save the day and give him the opportunity to do his thing. That's what makes that such
a great moment and it's a big part of what makes that
character so interestingly, all the way along, like
we like this character, but we can clearly see how this flaw of only
looking out for himself, only carrying about himself, not being for any larger cause
or for any other people. That flaw is going to make
it really difficult or impossible for him to reach
a satisfactory conclusion. Like if the movie had
all played out and he hadn't overcome his flaw
at the moment that he did, it would've ended
very differently. And so the fact that it was
the resolution of his flaw in a positive way that made
that moment play out so well. It's a big part of what makes his character so compelling. Myths, belief can
take different forms, but any way where you can find a clear way of showing
how this character is. Some element of a flaw in their character is a thing
that is actually going to stand in the way of their successful resolution
of the story or of them achieving the thing that
they truly want or need that is motivating them through
the progression of the story. Readers are really
intuitively smart. You, we have seen
so many stories. We've read so many books, we've watched so
many movies that we are trained up on this, whether or not we even
realize it often at a very subconscious
level when we start to see evidence of a flaw, we then begin again tuning in and it creates that
conflict that interests that compelling
attention grabber where we now know,
oh, there's a flaw. And I can already
start to see how that flaw is going
to create problems. That if they can't
overcome that flaw, it will mean this
kind of ending. But if they can overcome it, it will mean that ending. And that creates
that classic moment that we most want as authors, which is for the reader or the audience to be sitting there thinking what happens next? What's going to happen? How
is this going to play out? Like, I think they're probably going to overcome that flaw. But I really want to
know how I want to see how that's going to happen. I want to see it happen in this particular way for
this particular character. And I'm going to stay more
and more and more invested. The harder it seems like it's going to be for the
character to do that. So as you are fleshing out your characters for your story, the more you can make
sure that they not only have clear and compelling flaws, but that you
incorporate those flaws into the very fabric of
the story by essentially requiring the character to overcome or deal
with those flaws in order to progress
through the story in order to reach that
satisfying conclusion. You, the more you do that, the more you created deeply memorable and
compelling characters that readers will be
thinking about long after they've
finished the story.
5. Elements: Drive: So now let's talk about
the third element that all great characters need
to have going for them. And that is character Dr. Character dr is
the combination of a character's
motivation and agency. We're going to talk about each
of those two elements and how they influence each other
and reinforce each other. I've mentioned
several times already how much character's motivation defines the story. A story begins when at least one character is
thrown into a situation where they want or
need something or are compelled to pursue or do
something extraordinary. Prior to that, we just have
everyday life motivation and drive is the thing
that kicks the story off. And they think that orients
the story all the way along. Essentially, a
character's drive is the thing that tells us when
a story begins and ends. The story begins when
the question is raised, Can this character have
this thing or not? And it ends when we get a thorough are clear enough like a definitive answer
to that question. So Pride and Prejudice begins when we are introduced
to the question, can Elizabeth Bennet find real love and find
a love that will allow her to be herself or not. And then we are in the
story and we know that even if it seems like it might have ended or
there's a false ending, we kinda had that sense
of the story is not really over because
I don't really have a thorough answer yes or no to this question that was
raised at the beginning of the story and raised primarily through my introduction to a character's drive
or motivation. So a character is
that motivation, which is the first
half of drive, can be broken down
into two elements. The first is things
the character wants, the second is things
the character needs. And those things are
sometimes related, but also sometimes in
contradistinction to each other. Character wants are more
easy to identify there the thing that the
character themselves could tell you that they want, they want to be reunited
with their family. They want to achieve
a level of success. They want to stop a bad
thing from happening, or they want to right a wrong
that was done previously. Very often it's
something that if you sat down and interviewed
the character and you said, What do you want the
character to be like? Well, I want to restore
my family's honor, or I want to become
king of the kingdom, or I want to find true love
like this is what I want. And that's important because as we've said several
times, generally, an interesting story
is going to throw an increasingly
challenging series of external obstacles in
the characters path. And also is going to require the character
to do some hard, often painful work of engaging with their
own set of flaws as those flaws become increasingly
significant obstacles to them achieving their goals. So at the beginning,
we need to have a pretty clear sense that the character not
only wants something, but once something badly, like they need to want something significant and meaningful
enough to them, it doesn't necessarily
even have to be that meaningful to anyone else. But we need to be
clear about why it matters so much to
that character that they will endure the discomfort of having to be pushed
out of their normal routine and set off on something
that is challenging or uncomfortable or
even dangerous or deadly in pursuit of that want. A character's need,
on the other hand, is usually something
that the characters themselves couldn't
really tell you is there. But it's operating deep
beneath the surface and is usually even more compelling and relevant and necessary for their ultimate resolution in the story then there want. You can very often have
a story that ends in a very satisfying
way with a character doesn't get what they wanted, but they get what they needed. And the discovery of
that distinction is a huge part of their growth as a character
throughout the story. Going back to encounter
as an example, miracle is a really
good example of this. What she wants is to
get a gift of her own so that she can fit into her
family and be like them. And actually, you know, feel like she belongs there. What she really needs is to learn to accept herself
the way she is. And even then, when she
actually achieves that, when she finds that
she's no longer striving to meet their expectations
of how she got to be, but she learns to accept
herself as she is. She's been able to help
them do the same thing and learn that actually their gift
is not what defines them, who they are is good enough on its own without their gift. That distinction between what she wants at the
beginning of the story, but what she really
needs as a character is a huge part of what makes
her arc so compelling. So when you're thinking about your character's
motivation, yes, definitely be clear about
some things that they want. But also think about what
they need as a character, what they need to be whole, what they need to be
truly themselves, what they need to be
complete in some ways. And usually it doesn't
always have to be that way. Sometimes want and
need art can be the same or can be reflections
of each other. But very often it can be a
really easy way to create. A very compelling character arc is to find ways to make want and need either in contrast to each
other or oftentimes even mutually exclusive, where the character can't get what they want and
what they need. You see this a lot of times in sort of hasty movies with a, with a upbeat conclusion
where the character, or maybe one of the secondary
characters is that moment where they wanted all along was the pursuit
of the riches. The thing they were trying
to steal or whatever. And there's that
moment where they have come to care enough
about each other as characters or other people
that they actually give the thing up in order to get
what they really needed, which was to have the relationship
with each other that they were looking for
or something else. This is a big part
of the resolution of the third Indiana
Jones movie. The whole movie along. He wants to get the Grail. At the end of the movie, he actually gives up the Grail and doesn't get what he wanted, but he gets what he needed, which was to find
a better sense of rootedness for himself as a character in
relationship to others, like who he is
morally and who he is in relation to his father
and to the other characters. She chooses people over history, which is actually the flip of the choice that
his father made, which is a big part of what
makes it such a great ending. Because he actually, it's
like he becomes the character he needed to be for that
resolution to happen. But it required him actually realizing that what he needed was deeper or different than what he thought he wanted at
the beginning of the story. If you can pull that
off in right there, built into your character's motivation from the
very beginning, you have a really
compelling arc to follow, and you have the seeds
of a great climax and a great payoff already built right there into the
motivation of your character. But I said at the beginning of this lesson that
character drive, which is the third element
we're talking about, is their motivation,
but also their agency. And I think that's really
important to think about agency are the steps, are the actions or the
methods that your character uses to try to actually
achieve what they want. And it's really important
to think about this. I have seen lots
of stories where the character has a clear wants, like the motivation is there, but it's really unclear. They tend to be fairly passive
and they're not taking interesting or compelling
action in pursuit of that want their sort of
responding to the events, the story, and the things
that other characters do, but not necessarily striking off to do a thing on their own. And that's just always
going to make for a weaker or less satisfying
character than one who is pushing the story forward through their actions
in pursuit of that one. So when you have, once you're clear about the
motivation of your character, also think about their agency. What are the things that
they are likely to do? What types of actions
are they likely to take? What? And then
specifically what are the moments in the story where they're going to
do those things. Because the agency
that they show us in pursuit of that goal
is a big part of what makes them interesting
characters like we are compelled to
tune into and care about characters who do extraordinary things in pursuit
of an extraordinary goal. Just having the goal isn't
necessarily enough on its own, unless there's also fun, compelling, character
relevant actions that are taken in
pursuit of that goal. So when you're thinking
about your characters drive, yes, think about
their motivation, but also think about their
agency that they are going to demonstrate throughout the story in pursuit of that motivation. And when you put those
two things together, you have a very driven
and compelling character that we can't help but
root for and tune into. And we want to watch
and see what happens. How is, how are those actions is going to play out the things
that they do? Are they going to work or
they're going to not work? They're going to
create more problems. Usually especially in the
first half of the story. They're going to create more
problems than they solve. And that's then how are they
going to get out of that? What their agency of
the actions that they take in pursuit of
their want are very often the very things that will create the moments
that give them the opportunity to learn and grow and change in relation
to their flaw in their pop. So as you think about
your characters drive, make sure that you
are putting both of those elements down
for your characters. And then you will end up with very compelling and
dynamic characters that the audience is
deeply invested in.
6. Elements: Vibe: Okay, so now we are ready
to take a look at the last of the four elements that
great characters should have. And that is a character vibe. Character vibe are
the things that make your character feel
like themselves. What I mean by that is, it's the set of things that are distinctive about the
way that character is, acts, behaves, operates the
way they exist in the story. They're the things that
make that character different from the other
characters in the story. And also there are the
things that allow the reader to begin to anticipate how that character is
likely to act or react to events in the story. There's three
primary areas that I look for when I'm thinking
about character vibe. And those are demographics,
personality, and preferences. So let's take a
look at each one of those in a bit more detail. Starting off with demographics. This is often the
thing that character profile or a character sheet or a character
spec sheet or whatever. If you've seen those in writing classes or
books about writing, they'll often give
you like here, right? You're a character bio or
your character spec sheet will often start off by talking about demographics
and for good reason, like those are some of
the most immediate things that makes one character
different from another. So that might be
things like their age, their gender, their education
or social background, their family of origin, their physicality, you
know, what they look like, what their body is like, really elemental or fundamental
things about a character. Because in general, a tall, muscular man who was raised as on the docs
or the mean streets, is going to immediately be
a different character from a Victorian housewife who is short end doesn't
leave the house much in his meek and okay, so those are just clearly
different characters based purely off of
their demographics. That's one place to start. But when it comes to
describing what a character is like or what makes a
character who they are. We want to move past those surface or obvious external things
like the demographics of who they are and start
to dig into some of what makes them distinctive
as a person as well. So that's where we begin
to get into personality. Personality is the character is adverbs and
adjectives, so to speak. This the things that
you could say, Oh, this character is witty
or sarcastic or loyal, or take your pick
like, there's a long, long list of the ways that
real people really are. And generally, you want to be
choosing at least a few of those things and have them be even more concentrated,
more noticeable, more distinctive than,
because oftentimes, real people are a little more nuanced and we'll maybe send me, we want characters to
be nuanced as well. But when it comes to Vive, I do think it's helpful
and important to have a few things that you pick out for that character that are, that are really distinctive, inconsistent about
that character. So Robert Downey
Junior's portrayal of Tony Stark in the Ironman
films, in the MCU films. One of the most
significant elements of that character is his vibe. It's his personality,
the way that he talks, the way he carries himself, the way that he quips and snarks and has this
great one-liners. And just the way he behaves is actually a huge
distinctive of his character. As soon as he's onscreen, you know, that you're in for
certain things from him. And more often than not, you get those things. And when the character
confounds those expectations, it's always done for effect with intentionality where
the fact that he is behaving against type
in that moment is actually something
that makes that moment really memorable and
compelling as well. So as you're working out
your characters vibe, yes, think about demographics. Some of the things that make Tony Stark who he is
are his demographics. Yes, his age, but also
his family of origin, his backstory, his affluence, his natural
intelligence, some of those different things about just what makes him who he is. That character would
just automatically be a really different character
if it was a woman, just because of
societal expectations about gender roles,
such as they are. If that character was as
intelligent as Tony Stark, but wasn't a billionaire from a billionaire family who was raised by a cold
and distant father, like it would be a
different character. Some of his demographics are a huge part of what
makes him distinctive. But it's also his
personality as if he was very somber and quiet and thoughtful and maybe
very sincere and earnest, again, really
different characters. So some of the vibe that
makes him who he is, is also his personality. And you can think
about those things for your characters as well. Give them some clear
adjectives and adverbs that sort of
orient and organized the way that character
tends to behave in the world and respond to things and respond
to other characters. The third important element
of dr is Preferences. And this gets into what your
character loves and hates. Make sure that
your character has strong opinions about
some things in the world. This can sometimes be
related to their profession. You know, if they have
a rooted expertise, often a character who has an expertise in
an area will have strong opinions about subjects
related to that expertise. You know, if a great chef, they might have certain
ingredients that they will always use are never
used because again, they have strong opinions
about that thing. Things your character really, really loves and would go out of their way to have or out of, out of their way to
help other characters have distinctive
of that character. Things your character hates, feel strongly about, will
react really intensely. Two, in the negative are also really great sources of
strong character vibe. A character who hates bullies
and is likely to respond intensely or respond extremely when they see someone
bullying someone else. That's a really good
element of character vibe. That's a part of what makes
that character feel like themselves and feel like
who they are in the story. And again, all of those
three different elements of vibe start to play into
reader expectations. It's important for your reader to begin to start thinking, oh, yeah, I know what's going
to happen here like this. Oh, she just said that thing. Because I, intuitively, I have this mental file for this character where
this is their vibe. These are some of the things
that they love and hate. This is their
personality I expect. And then open up
there, they did it, they did that thing that
I thought they would do. They reacted in that
interesting way. That's a big part of how we
begin to get attached to characters into truly remember them and feel like
they are memorable. One of the most
beloved characters in the Harry Potter
series is Hagrid, in part because he has
such a specific vibe. He has things he
really loves, things. He really hates ways
that he carries himself, ways that he behaves. And those things are significant and
memorable and likable enough that they make that character memorable
after the story is over. In ways that if you strip
a lot of those things out, there's less to remember, there's less to be attached to, there's less to respond to in
relation to your character. This can totally happen
for antagonist as well. An antagonist with a really
great vibe is a lot more memorable and a lot
more interesting than generic bad
guy in the story. A. Because the vibe of what makes them unique
in who they are, what makes them distinctive is a lot of what
we then relate to as readers and what we begin to both anticipate how
they're going to act. Then also it lets you
as the author create, like I said, those moments
where they play against type, they play against expectation, they do something unexpected and the jolt of what I
thought it was gonna do this. And then they didn't
do it and they didn't do it for these reasons. That's really interesting and we tune into that,
we lean into that. And again, we remember
those types of moments. So as you're working out, fleshing out your
character in full, make sure you really think about their vibe and be clear enough. Go about the characters vibe that you can
be consistent with developing that vibe over the whole course of
the story and look for opportunities to play that out in fun and interesting ways.
7. Types: Protagonist: So now that we've worked through the four primary elements that all characters should
have to some degree. Let's start taking a look at the three primary types of characters that you'll be
writing into your stories. And talk a little bit
about how the type or the role that the
character plays influences the way that those four
elements combine and the impact that the character has on the story as a whole. And let's start that process by taking a look at
the protagonist. One of the things that
makes talking about the protagonist of the
story a little complicated is the fact that the style of protagonist will vary a lot between different
genres of stories. So the protagonist and an action story is going to play out
really differently or feel different than
the protagonist of a romance or a historical drama, or different types of genres. They seem like they
might be different on the surface because the style of the genre they're
in is different. But if you really drilled
down at its core, the protagonist is the character whose movement
throughout the story most directly impacts
the progression of the story and the
resolution of the story. So great, you might say, that sounds fine, but
what does that even mean? Well, character
movement is really the combination of the
character's actions, decisions, and
especially their change over the course of the story. A character that is
not very different at the end from how they were at the beginning hasn't
really moved very much. A character who is extremely
different at the end from how they were at the
beginning has moved a lot. And a protagonist
movement in particular. There, the character whose
movement most directly affects the way the story
plays out along the way. And ideally, they're
the character whose movement is
required there, the character who
needs to change the most in order for
the story to be resolved in the way that the
author intended to pay off the ending in a satisfying way where
the audience that we, as the readers get
invested in it and at the end were cheering
and we're, we're all in. Usually that is because
we've become invested in the protagonist
movement and we want to see if and how that movement
will result in the ending. Especially if that ending
or that resolution feels huge or daunting
or impossible. We're clear that the only way to thread the needle
and arrive at that incredible pay-off of that resolution is if
the protagonist is able, through their experiences and the impact of the other characters that
they interact with and the changes that they go
through as they overcome obstacle after obstacle and challenge after challenge
throughout the story. If they're able to actually
move enough to become the character they need to be in order for that ending
to be possible. So with that definition
out of the way, let's talk a little bit about some keys to writing
a great protagonist, no matter what genre of
story you're writing in. One of the keys to a great
protagonist is to set the poles of their character arc as far apart as
you possibly can. We'll get into character arc in detail a little bit
later in this class. But essentially, you
want to make sure that the person that your
protagonist is at the beginning of the story is as far apart from the person
that they need to be in order for the story
and the resolution to happen successfully as
you can possibly make it. Because the more of a gap there is there and the more that we, as the reader can experience
or intuit that gap like wow, they are not who they
need to be in order to achieve a satisfying payoff. They're going to need to
grow and change a lot. That creates immediate
interests like weird then in more and more
invested in that process. Because we know that
that's going to be really interesting,
really engaging. Because the change that happens, we know it's going to happen. But how it happens
is everything. And we become much
more invested in and interested in observing
that process, that journey of the protagonist. If we can see that
the gap is wide, it gives you as the author, a lot more interesting
territory to cover. If it isn't that why? Like if the protagonist
is already kind of okay, like they're already pretty much the character they need
to be for the ending. And they just need to
have meander through plot events to fill time in the story to
get to the ending. But they themselves
are not really needing to change or
move all that much. It's just less
interesting of a story. It can be done, but
it's inherently less interesting and less
dynamic and less compelling. So as you are planning
out your protagonist, I like to work backwards. I like to think about
who the character needs to be in order to unlock or achieve the ending
that I have in mind that, that really satisfying
payoff moment. And then see what all
of those qualities, those, those character qualities,
those different dynamics, thinking about their flaw, thinking about these
different things that they're going
to have to grow and change through in
order to get there. And how far apart can I set that like rewinding
the clock and make them as much not like that
ending character as possible, so that you've got a lot
of good room for movement. An interesting thought
experiment that kinda helps make
the case for this. If you think about some
of your favorite stories, I like to imagine taking
the character from some of the very first scenes
where you encounter them. And imagine that none of the
story in-between happens. You take that character and
then you just drop them right into the conflict of the climax, the big conflict right before the resolution of
the story, like e.g. take Luke Skywalker from the
beginning of a new hope. And then drop them
in an ex swing and send him at the
desktop without any of the intervening story
from there to the ending. And how would that play out? Well, obviously it wouldn't
play out very well. There's no way you would get the satisfying
resolution that we do get because the whole
payoff of that ending is seeing the ways that he has moved as a character
through his experiences along the way that
brought him to that point and enable
him to overcome that impossible daunting
task in a way that the care who he was
at the beginning of the story never could
have accomplished. That's good protagonist movement across the course of a story. And you want to make sure that your protagonist is able to do the same thing throughout your story to get to your
satisfying conclusion. Another helpful key to
keep in mind for writing strong or dynamic
protagonist is to really focus a lot of your
energy on the protagonist, drive one of the four elements. All of them are important. But for the protagonist
in particular, Dr. really matters because since they are the linchpin
of your story there, the center, so driving engine of the story
and their choices and their actions and their movement most directly impacts the story. It's important to make
sure that their drive is going to be big enough and compelling enough to push them through the obstacles of
the story in a way that we, as the readers can get behind. I've read a lot of stories
where it's sort of like, it feels like the way this is
playing out is really only playing out because the author knows their writing a story. If I really stop and think about the protagonist motivation
is that enough? Like is the fact that they just want that thing or
they have that? Yeah, They have a want, but
is it really big enough? And does it directly relate to the core plot thrust
of the story, the core sort of semantic
argument of the story and plot drive of the story
so that the protagonist remains that central element
and other things don't kind of like overshadow
their journey. Again, I've read
different stories that approach this differently, but I think at least
as an ideal if you are planning out your story and you're
approaching like, how do I write a
great protagonist? If you can make sure that
their drive is both large and compelling and also central
essential to the story. In essence, tying it right
into the story problem that is being posed by the
beginning of the plot, like using Lukas
another example, his personal motivation to become a great Jedi
like his father, is tied right into the central
story problem of Canvas, scrappy rebel band of good, good folk like
Kansas side of good, triumph over impossible evil. They're interlinked
and the resolution of his personal drive
and motivation, it essentially ties
into the resolution of the larger story problem at
each point along the way. Again, that just makes for a really strong
protagonist because their journey is the story
journey to a large extent, versus it being something
that overhear or incidental. And also it needs to
be large enough and compelling enough that we
get as the reader like, yeah, there definitely, I see why they're
pushing through. I see why they're
risking what they're risking their life
depending on the genre, but maybe their personal
happiness or their reputation. Maybe they're, they're risking their sense of identity or
important relationships. There's things are on the line, things are at stake. We believe that they're
willing to risk those things in pursuit of
their wallet or their need, their drive, and the
steps that they take, the actions they take to have agency in pursuit of
their drive makes sense because what they want is
big enough to compel them to do these extraordinary or
dangerous or costly things. Another area of character
development that is worth spending some real time on for the protagonist is their flaw. If you can make sure that the character's flaw is one of the primary obstacles to the
resolution of the story. Then you have created immediately compelling
story stuff that we as the reader are going
to be really invested in. Because we see that not only are these external
factors in their way, the antagonists,
choices or the things in the story around them,
they have to overcome. But if we can see how wow, they're not actually
going to achieve the resolution that we can
feel the story moving towards, unless they can
actually grow and overcome this clear character
flaw that they have. This is one of the
central elements that makes Pride and Prejudice
such a classic. Both of the two dominant
protagonists, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, their primary flaws
of Pride and Prejudice. Those things are the things that are directly opposed to them achieving the resolution at the happily ever
after in this case, because it's a romance. They can't get to
that unless they, through the course of the story, are able to grow
through and overcome those floss
sufficiently to allow them to become the
characters that they must be in order for the
ending to make sense. If you take the two
characters from the beginning with no experience of the plot playing out and none of
the movement that they go through throughout the years that the story takes place over. And you just drop them
right into the ending like they're going to have
the same fight that they had at the beginning
because they have not sufficiently
changed and overcome their flaws that are inherent to them at the
beginning of the story. So spending some
time thinking about your protagonist's flaw and not just so that they have one, but specifically making
sure that the flaw is directly connected to
the plot and serves as one of the
primary obstacles or barriers to them achieving
the resolution that you have in mind for the
end of the story creates inherent interests and
inherent character conflict, which is just more
dynamic and compelling, a way of writing a story
as it isn't easy way to create that sense of
drive and interests. And like the audience leaning
in and getting more and more engaged in what's
going to happen? How is this going to happen? Like we think they're
probably going to do it, but how are they going to do it? I want to know I'm invested in the story because I'm
invested in seeing if and how this character can grow and change enough
to be different enough to then achieve the satisfying resolution to the story that we
feel is coming, but we're not sure how
we're going to get there. That's great storytelling. A final note about protagonists that I think is helpful to keep track of is just
remembering that your protagonist sort
of by definition, is going to get the
most page time or screen time of any of the
characters in your story, we're going to spend the
most time with them, which means it's
worth your time. You can spend the most time on them as a
character developing them and giving them
more layers and nuanced. When you're thinking
about there pop, don't just have them have
one interesting thing. Give them several, makes sure that the, like
we talked about, that the top has contrast or unexpected
layers because you're going to have time in the
story to explore and uncover. And it kind of investigate some of those layers and
some of those tensions. Make sure you have enough in
your protagonist to support the amount of time we're
going to spend with them throughout the
course of the story. With some of those
things in mind, I think you'll be better
equipped to develop really dynamic and
compelling protagonist that can support the weight of the story and give it that inherent energy at its core that a great
story needs to grab the reader's
attention right from the beginning to keep their
attention all throughout the course of the
story and to give them a resolution
that we as that will keep thinking about
and keep talking about long after the
story has finished.
8. Types: Antagonist: Now let's talk about a different type of
character which is the antagonist of the story. Talking about an antagonist, I think there's a
lot to discuss here because a great antagonist can really take a story
that's already good and ratcheted up
all that much more. A great antagonists creates such memorable and
compelling conflict. And conflict really is the
lifeblood of a great story. So spending some time to get your antagonist right and to make them as good
as they can be, is really, really time well spent in
developing your story. I think a good place
to start when we're talking about
antagonists is to name the fact that it's
important to not just think of your antagonist
as like the bad guy, The force of opposition. They are that, but not thinking of them so much
in moral terms like, oh, well, they're just bad and we need a bad guy in the story. So here they are. But to actually recognize
that the antagonist is the character
whose own motivation and drive and direction most directly opposes your intended
resolution for the story. I think it's actually
helpful in some ways to think of the antagonist as the protagonist of
the story in reverse. Like they, they should be
compelling enough and clear. Have enough Pop, I have enough. Dr. have good flaw, which we'll talk
about what that means for an antagonist and it really memorable
and compelling vibe. All the elements that
would make them a great protagonist that could carry
the story on their own, except the story they
would be carrying would be the mirror opposite of the
story you're trying to tell. It would have a different
thematic resolution. It would have a
different plot drive. And if they succeeded in what
they wanted in the story, by definition, it would
be almost as far as opposed to the way you want to tell the
story as possible. Because that opposition will continually make them a
compelling obstacle and a compelling agent of opposition that will require
more and more and more from your protagonist
and the other cast of characters in order for them
to achieve their goals. So it just sort of
elevates the whole story and makes everything bigger
and stronger and richer. Now we talked about
with a protagonist that it's important to try to set their poles of movement
as far apart as possible, keeping the protagonist
with lots of room to grow and change
across the course of the story with an antagonist. Oftentimes you wanna
do the opposite. It's actually really, I think, more effective to have an
antagonist that starts out as strong and as self-defined, at attentive, as, as compelling and overwhelming as
you can make them. Because the more the antagonist
is, clearly dangerous. Dangerous doesn't have
to mean physically dangerous depending on the
type of story you're telling. Like if, let's say
it's a romance, the antagonist of
the story might be a character who
is just much more, much more socially established
or who has just much more confident and more
interesting of a person. Maybe not even necessarily
a good person, but they, they just are
already more fully themselves. Because the more your antagonist
represents that extreme, it sort of gives
another kind of kick in the pants for your
protagonist to need to grow, to need to change, to not just be able
to stay who they are and it's probably
going to be okay, but it becomes so much more
obvious, more quickly, how much the protagonist will need to change and
grow in order to become the character
that can overcome the opposition that the
antagonist represents. So giving them clear
and compelling drive, but also just making
sure that you don't need your antagonists to change all that much throughout
the course of the story. Some change can be
good, but overall, what you're really
looking for in an antagonist is kind of, I think of them as like
the shadow or that felt the lighthouse on
the horizon like that really compelling thing, especially early on in the story that makes you immediately
sit up and go, Oh, this is not
going to be easy. How are they going to overcome such a
compelling antagonist? And then again, you're invested in that question
right off the bat. You primarily do that
through making sure that your antagonist has
really good clear Pop. And again, you can give them some interesting
layers of Popplet. What makes them stand out? I think Voldemort is a really good example of an antagonist all
throughout the series, h2 right off the
bat starts out with some interesting pop
and then they layer it. Oh, she layers it
over the course of the story where you
find out more and more about what makes
this character so distinctive and interesting
and compelling. They're bad, but they're
also just interesting. They've gone to more extremes than so many other
characters in the story. And finding out why they've done that and how they've
done that is just inherently interesting and we read on to find out more. But you can also do that
through your antagonist, Dr. giving them a clear and
compelling want or even need. That isn't just bad
for the sake of bad, but that you can
kind of understand, maybe not necessarily
agree with, probably not agree with, but understand like, Oh, I get why that character
wants or needs that thing or that set of things so much that they are doing the
things that they're doing. I get why they're doing them. I don't like that they're doing
them, but it makes sense. And I can see why a character who wanted or needed that in the context of this story would go out and
do those things. Again, that just makes for a better antagonist
than one who's just sort of a jerk for the
sake of being a jerk or You know, an evil overlord
for the sake of being an evil overlord or whatever the dynamic of your
storage genre is. You don't want
your antagonist to just be there, to be there, giving them a clear drive
that makes sense and we can kind of get behind even if we don't
agree with we're like, okay, yeah, but I get it. That just makes for a
much better antagonists, which makes for a
much better story. One area of possible opportunity
for developing, I think, more interesting or
more nuanced antagonist is to think about the way
that character flaw plays out differently when it comes to an antagonist character with the protagonist and with
most secondary characters, of flaw is usually some kind of limitation or maybe
a negative quality that they're going to need to overcome in order to achieve the positive resolution of the story that they're
moving towards. But given that the antagonist is kind of all of those
things in reverse. And the resolution that
they're moving towards is by definition, the
negative resolution. Their character
flaw can actually be positive qualities or positive dynamics
that they have to overcome in order to achieve
the negative resolution. In Les Miserables is a really good example
actually of that dynamic playing out where his
character flaws are, his redeeming qualities
that stand in the way of him being able
to be fully the antagonist. They kind of trip him up
because he has those moments of mercy or tuning into like
wait, maybe there's more. It's not just as black and
white as I want it to be. And Chavez song is the culmination of
that dynamic where he realizes that he
can't fully overcome his flaw and fully engage
with his role in the story. So you can actually create incredibly compelling and
memorable antagonists by giving them lots of
good pop, a clear Dr, but give them some
positive qualities that maybe make us
more curious about how they're going to play out those dynamics in the story and in a way how they're going to overcome them
sufficiently in order to fully be that negative force. And the story that you
need your antagonist to be that force
of opposition that must be overcome to achieve the ending that you're moving
towards as the author. Finally, let's talk a little bit about stories that don't have a clear single antagonist
character at play. This can certainly happen
like you can definitely write a story that doesn't necessarily have a specific character, but you still have an
antagonistic force. You'll see this a
lot of times in disaster or survival or kind of man against nature
stories where there may not necessarily
be our character, but you still have an
antagonistic force because you need that poll, opposition dynamic
in your story. Even if it's not coming
from a character, you still need something in
your story that represents an overwhelming obstacle and overwhelming challenge
to be overcome. And the thing that if it
succeeds in its direction, it's in its movement
within the story, you get a very, very different ending from the one that
you're moving towards a gift. The volcano over, overwhelms everything and kills everyone
and no one survives. That's a really different
ending to the type of story you're actually trying to tell the ending you're
moving towards. So Giving, still thinking, still about the
antagonistic force in your story is
really important. And the other dynamic you'll notice when you're doing that. Often, even if you don't have a single
antagonistic character, you will still have
secondary characters who fill an antagonistic role. So you'll still have
the jerk bureaucrat who can't get his head out. Its own acid is
causing problems. For the other characteristic
is not the main antagonist, but he still brings in
a character element of an antagonistic
force that needs to be overcome even
if it's secondary. A lot of times you
can still weave in secondary characters who fill that role so that there is still some character dynamic at play. The Jurassic Park movies do this a lot where the
primary antagonist is really the overwhelming danger presented by all
these dinosaurs. They're not really characters, although in the reboot of the series of
relaunch of the series, they tried to make the
dinosaur more of a character, a more of an
antagonistic character. But you also have the humans who play that secondary
antagonist role because you still want to have something to associate that with
even if they die halfway through the
movie and they're clearly not the main antagonist, it's helpful to have them in, to give us a character
to associate some of those antagonists,
elements width. But yes, you can definitely
write a story that doesn't have a primary
antagonist character. In that case, you need to
think extra hard about the nature of the
antagonistic elements that you're building into your
story so that there is still a clear and
overwhelming opposition were overwhelming challenge. That is, it's clear
why it's gonna be so hard for your characters and your protagonist and the
other characters to actually overcome that thing
to get to the ending. Otherwise, it's
really hard frankly, to have a compelling
story in the first place. So with all of those
things in mind, hopefully that helps you
to be a little bit better equipped to write a
great antagonist. And again, a great
antagonists can really unlock a whole new level of compelling
and dynamic storytelling.
9. Types: Secondary: Now that we've talked about
protagonist and antagonist, you might be
wondering, okay, but what about everybody else? Like most stories have quite a few more
characters than just two. You can write a story
with just two characters, but most of them have
a lot more than that. The rest of the cast of
characters in the story are composed of what I just
call secondary characters. And I put them all in
that large category. So let's spend some time talking about some
of the elements of secondary characters
and the important role that they play in enhancing
your storytelling. The category of
secondary characters is obviously the largest and it covers the broadest range
or type of characters. But the thing that all
secondary characters have in common is that they are not
the main focus of the story. A secondary characters movement enhances the movement
of the story, but doesn't define it in the way that a protagonist or
an antagonist does. Part of what makes
that a little hard to identify sometimes depending
on the story, is that, as I said, a really
wide range of significance that you can
give to secondary characters. So you can have everything
from minor characters, which maybe just pop in
for a scene like they're the shopkeeper that the rest of your characters talk
to for one scene, buy something from, and then
you never see them again. That's an extremely minor
character all the way up to incredibly significant
secondary characters who are there from the beginning and all the way
through to the end and they play a really
significant role in the story. So that gives us the first
thing you need to think about when it comes to all the secondary characters
in your stories, what level of significance does this particular character
have in the story? How much Paige time
are they going to get? How much of an impact on
the course of the story? Are they going to have? The answer to that question
determines a lot about how much time and energy you
invest in developing them. The more minor of a character
you're dealing with, the less time and
energy you should put into giving them pop, Dr. flaw vibe, all that stuff. Enlarged part because you
just won't have time to develop all of those things and show them on the
page really well. So when it comes to
very minor characters, you probably only want
to have them have one thing out of that whole list of four
that you really focus on. It's probably either gonna
be some elements of pop or some element of vibe because
it doesn't really matter, frankly what they want
or if they have flaws, because we're not going
to see those things played out and paid off over
the course of the story. But you can give them
a vibe which might be a very interesting accent or a particular character
quirk or way of dressing, or some really unusual like, Oh there, this cool thing. They have this clear
element of pop that stands out immediately
and we notice it right away. And it's just that little
extra, It's like spice. It's like a little bit of
something you dash into your story to make the
scene more interesting. But it doesn't really
serve you to give a minor character this
really compelling backstory because we're just frankly
not going to see it. But then the more
significant that character is going
to be in the story, the more you start
having room to give them some of those things that
give them an interesting, compelling flaw, give them
a clear Dr. give them more pop or more vibe with
more layers and more nuance, because we will have time to
see those things developed. Usually once a character starts becoming more significant
in the story, as secondary character
that is significant will start to take on a particular
role in the story. And you can mask
it a little bit. But typically it's pretty clearly The role that
this character plays it. They are the best friend, or they are the mentor, or they are the rival. And sometimes it can
be really helpful, at least as you're starting out, you're thinking about what
the character is going to be, to give them a tag like that, to be very clearly,
they're there, the supportive best friend. They are the trainer who's
going to teach the character. That's really critical
skill that they're going to need to know over the
course of the story. Or again, it varies a lot depending on the genre
that you are working in. But across genres you'll
still see some of the same character types
or character roles crop up over and
over again because there's really only
so many to pull from. But in all cases with your
secondary characters, it's important to think about not just who they
are as a character, but how they are. Character is going to influence the protagonist
and the course of the story because
it's not their story. The role they play in the story
needs to serve the story. Part of what that means
is making sure that your secondary characters don't overshadow your protagonist. Sometimes that can even happen as you're
writing maybe a draft, you might really, really get
invested in the character. It's fine to have really big, interesting, fun, compelling
secondary characters. But make sure that
they're there. Dr doesn't become the
drive of the story or that their flaw doesn't become
the central flaw the story because this can cause a lot of whiplash for readers
of starting to get confused about who's journey
are we following here? Whose journey is going
to pay off an impact? The ultimate resolution
of the story. Those things can weave in towards the climax and
that can be really powerful when you
start paying off multiple character arcs
in a short span of time. But just keep an eye on that dynamic and make sure that
the character arcs of your secondary characters
are supporting or enriching the primary story
development and don't kind of high jacket
or become the story. One of the ways that
you can make sure that your secondary characters are enriching the story
without taking it over, is to give your different
secondary characters, different postures
or perspectives on the central story
problem that is being explored and engaged with over the course
of the story, then your protagonist
has that way as your protagonist is relating to your secondary characters, they're also relating
to different tasks or different perspectives
or different stances on the story itself. And that tension or
that contrast pushes the protagonist to sharpen or define their own
stance on that thing. The Hunger Games does this
really well over the course of the series where
the two characters of peta and Gail represent two really different
and strong stances on kind of the story problem
and what to do about it. And so as continous
relates to both of them, she is forced to engage with those different perspectives on the central story problem. And that pushes her
own approach to the story problem of what to do about the capital
and what to do about the force of opposition
in the story. And it's clear that
neither one of them is really right for the
story resolution. So they're never gonna be like They're not
the protagonist. They're never going to
be the protagonist, but they enhance the journey of the protagonist by presenting different extremes are
different arguments towards the resolution
of the story. And that's one way that you can develop a really rich cast that enhances the journey of your protagonist without
overshadowing it. For myself as an author, I think writing
secondary characters in some ways is the most
fun or the most freeing, because you don't have some of the same pressures as the
protagonist and antagonist who really centrally defined and drive the whole
dynamic of your story. And so you really
need to make sure that the elements of
those two characters work and they work to support the whole narrative arc of the story you're
trying to tell. You don't always have to do that with a secondary character. You can just have a secondary
character that is fun, that has a cool or interesting
or compelling bio, like a fun best
friend who has these, that's fun to write and does, does really
interesting things and when they're on the page or
when they're on the screen, the audience has like,
oh, that's awesome. Because they're not
carrying some of the same story weight, but they enhance and
enrich the story and really compelling
ways I think of Lord of the Rings and some
of the back-and-forth dynamic between
legalistic Gimli, because that dynamic,
it's not the story, but it makes the scenes
that they're in more fun and more engaging,
more compelling. And they can do that because
it doesn't really matter if their central flaw or vibe
supports the story as a whole. Like neither one of them
could be the protagonist. They don't need to
be because they're secondary characters and
that's fine and great. And they actually make
the story richer. And it just relieve some
pressure and it gives you room to play as the author, to create characters
that are fun and memorable without
necessarily needing to be, be-all and end-all
for the story. So now you can take all
of that information, mix it all together, and use it to start
creating a whole cast of compelling and interesting
secondary characters that will make your story world
really come alive.
10. Scenes: Intro: So let's start off
with character intros. Character intros,
or the element of the character arc that is pretty consistent regardless of what type of character arc
you're talking about. Because all characters
have the time in the story when they show
up for the first time, whenever that happens to be. So thinking about how that can be done in some of the
ways that you can make your character intro carry
a lot of water for you in the story is really
important because all characters will
have a character intro. So I find one of the most helpful things to think about when it
comes to planning out of good character
intro is to focus in on just one of the four
elements for that character. And really build a scene or a moment that will highlight
that one element. Because if, if you can present a strong intro for the character that shows off one element of what they are, even if there's other stuff. If you try to layer too much
at once, a lot of times, what it just ends up
doing is creating a muddy or confusing picture because it's just this first moment that
we're meeting them. If you try to do
too much at once, you dilute the impact
of all the pieces. But if you pick one
thing of the four and really focus your
intro on that thing, it grabs our attention, it gets us invested
in the character, and it buys you the
permission to say, look, if this character has this one interesting thing
that I'm showing you, you can be safe to assume that
it's got other things I'm going to show you later so you'd stay tuned for more
kind of thing. So in a lot of ways it
doesn't necessarily matter which one you're
going to choose, as long as you
highlight it well, so you can totally
lead with vibe. I think Han Solo is a
really good example of a great character intro the
first time you meet him, It's all about his vibe. You don't learn about
his drive or some of his character flaw or some of those other things until
later in the story. What you see when
you first meet him, he has all of his
charisma and his swagger, his swashbuckling
ruthlessness in this great moment where he does something
pretty shocking, shoots the guy under the table. And it's a moment that is such an effective character
intro that people still talk about it and argue
about it later because it's not trying to
do too much all at once. It's just zeroing in on, Hey, here's something great that you want to know about
this character. And once you see
this, you're gonna be curious to find out more and I'm going to
show you more later. But right now, we're just
going to focus on this. You can totally do
that through pop. Like a lot of James Bond
movies open this way, that first scene, It's not even really related to the
plot of the rest of the story. A lot of times it's a
moment where you just see Bond being bond.
He's using gadgets. He's an action star. He's doing all these
different things. A lot of times you might see
this done through drive, like you might open a romance
story with the protagonist showing why they want the
relationship that they want, or why maybe like whatever
it is that they are wanting or the way that it is
going to affect the story. A lot of times you'll
open with seeing that and immediately you'd maybe you don't know so much about
their backstory just yet. You don't even know so much about their pop
or some of their vibe, you're gonna get that later. But in the intro, you were introduced
to their drive, what they want, what's
moving them forward. And that again, can
be really compelling. So as you're planning out the character arc for your
character as a whole, just choose whatever
you think is one of the more compelling
things about that character. And build the moment
that they come on the page in a way that
allows that thing to shine and be highlighted
so that you get that immediate kick of
Wow, that's really cool. Like, well, that's really interesting or that
is really noticeable. Now that I'm engaged in that, I'm going to keep
paying attention on because now I had
that sense that there's more to this
character that I want to see played out. And i'm, I'm on for the ride. Let's see what there
is to see about this character as the
story progresses.
11. Scenes: Spotlights: So once you have a great
character intro in hand, you can begin then
building out the rest of their character arc through a series of character
spotlights. So let's talk a little
bit more about those. When I'm planning out
of character arc, one of the first things I do is I sit down and I just make a big laundry list of all of the most significant
elements of that character. I think about there pop, i think about their flaw, I think about their
drive and their vibe. And I list out the
main components of each of those areas. And then I just
start brainstorming interesting moments or actions, or choices or scenes
that would do a really good job of
highlighting those things. It's, I find it a lot
easier to think about it from that perspective than to feel straight
jacket it into like, well, I already know the plot. Here's all exactly what's
going to happen in the story. You may not even necessarily use all of the scenes
that you come up with. But I have so many times I've thought of really
actually great moments that if I was only thinking
about each scene as one progression of
the story as a whole. I might have missed,
because a lot of times your character
spotlights are not an entire scene
all to themselves. A lot of times it's something
else that's happening in the scene that gives that
character a moment to shine. Ideally, as you're
building out your story, you want to make sure
that you not only have a good sequence
of a character arc, but that you've covered
all your bases. It doesn't do you any good to come up with a great flaw for a character if all
you've done is think about it and maybe you even have characters talk about it. But we don't get to
see it in action when you hear writing advice
that they show, don't tell. I think sometimes this is where that can really
come into effect. It's one thing to tell
me that a character is impatient and that's one of
their big character flaws. But if you just say all
the other characters are all talking
about it and they logo, I know I'm too impatient. I need to get need
to learn discipline, but we don't see it. Then. It's just a lot of
noise on the surface. But if you're planning
out a character arc and you know that that is
one of the characters predominant flaws that
they're going to need to grow through to reach
the resolution. Plans. Some situations where
you can see them being that thing and it doesn't have to be,
again, the whole scene. It can be in a scene
where something else is going on and they're
they're going Come on, let's hurry it up because
they're being impatient and they're showing you
that thing in action. So as you plan out your
character arc for your story, think about all the
different elements that you are most interested in, about them into the
different categories. Brainstorm scenes or situations where we can see those
things in action. And then once you've done that, then you can start getting
a feel for where would be good situations in the
overall arc of the story? Where I could stick that in. Could I add in a nice little
character spotlight for this secondary character in the scene where the
protagonist is doing this. But there, there
could I give them a moment where I could
highlight this pop or this vibe with maybe some
really great dialogue that brings out that
element of their vibe? Or could I create
a situation where the antagonists
flaw can be really shown well by having
a moment as part of this larger plot
movement where I also, because I do this thing,
if I'm thinking about it, I can create an opportunity
for the reader to see they're kind of
redeeming flaw also at play. And then again, that raises,
is that contrast of, oh, how are they going to like, that actually kinda makes them compelling or good or like, how are they going to
overcome that to keep being really antagonistic
force or whatever it is. If you've planned it
for your character, make sure you plan a
spotlight where we get to see it happening on the
page or on the screen. And as you then build
that out in sequence, That's how you
start to construct a great character
arc for the story. As each character Spotlight
shows us as the audience, something new or something interesting about the character. And also ideally the second half of your character
spotlights as they should be doing something to
move your character forward. So it's not just
show us something, but also show us
something happening. Ideally, as you're planning
each character spotlight, you want to think about what is being revealed for
your character, but also like, how did they
come in and how do they leave when they come into that character spotlight
there one way. And it, even if it's
in a small way, how have they changed or in what way have they
moved forward as a character by the
result of what happens in the character
spotlight that they're in. So that we can experience that character growth and character movement across
their character arc. If you, if in each of your
character spotlights, you plan not just
to show something, but also to move that
character forward in some way. And then you build
each of those pieces. And you can see, well here, they learn to this and here
they grew in this way and here they overcame this obstacle and on the other side
of it they were, now, they had started out this way and now there
were just a little bit more this at the end and you can name what
those things are. Building it out that
way will create for you an incredibly dynamic and
compelling character arc that you can fit into the
overall plot of your story.
12. Scenes: Payoff: So finally, let's talk about character payoff
as the capstone, if you will, of the character arc that we've been telling. So while character intros
are broadly pretty consistent across all character
types, character payoffs, in contrast, are
extremely different, depending on what type of character Yard
Building them for. The character payoff of a
protagonist is really different from the character pay off of an antagonist are of
secondary characters. So let's take each one and
sequence when you're writing the payoff for your protagonist
as much as possible. Again, you want to
build that right into the heart of the story. Having the pay off of
their character arc be the pay off of the climax
of the story and the moment, whether they, where are they
break through or don't on their flaw and whether they achieve or don't Their
want are there dr. Like that. E is in a
lot of ways the story. A lot of times the character pay off of your antagonist and your protagonist will happen at the same time because
they are in opposition. So if you'd get
the character pay off and the resolution for one, you need to have it for
the other one as well. It's not always the case, but pretty often if you
look at most stories, the antagonists
resolution happens as the protagonist
achieves their drive. Because once that
has been achieved, there's no longer
an open question of whether the antagonists can also achieve their drive
because they're in opposition. But really when you
boil it down, for me, the main question I'm
asking myself when I'm thinking about a
character payoff is what would be the absolute
most satisfying thing for the reader to experience as the end of this
character arc. And satisfying looks a
lot of different ways. If it's the antagonist, very often satisfying is seeing this overwhelming force of opposition brought
down and beaten. That, that kind of
catharsis of like, oh, it seems so impossible. But here we get to see the
moment where it happens. That can be, that is satisfying and in some ways can be just as if not more satisfying as hooray the victory
for the protagonists, like they achieved their thing. The same question applies
to secondary characters. If it's the mentor character. Sometimes if you see a lot of mentor characters like don't make it to the end of the movie because there's a dynamic of that mentor role where if they're there all the way along, the protagonist is relying
on them a little too much. So usually in almost
all situations with a mentor type figure, either their payoff is that they are removed from
the story in a noble, sacrificial or satisfying way. Or they recede into
the background and the pay off of
that mentor arc is seeing them approve of or affirm the protagonist as
they have arrived at there, they give the thumbs
up at the end. And that's the
satisfying payoff is because the feeling of approval and recognition
from the mentor is part of what puts the cherry on top for the protagonist's arc. If you're thinking
about a character pay off for a secondary character, different types
of roles continue to affect the way that
the payoff plays out. Like, I think, of
Benny from the mummy, which is one of my
guilty pleasure movies that I really enjoy. He's a great example of a
very satisfying payoff for a secondary character
that totally validates his character
arc all the way along. Because in the beginning
he's sort of like annoying. And then progressively the
choices that he makes aligns him more and more with the antagonist and
the bad guy forces. And he does so in this
increasingly like irritating and trader is way when it gets to the end
and he finally is killed. There's a catharsis there. It's like, Oh yeah,
It feels good to see a person who's made this series
of bad and nasty choices, get their comeuppance and
actually have that paid off. Like that's what
satisfying looks like for that character arc. So whether it's a
happily ever after or a gruesome
demise or whatever. The actual specifics of
your character pay off our, spend some time thinking
about what will pay off the audience
for the time that end, the care and the interests
that they have invested in that character all the way along so that you
don't leave the, on the note of like either a dud or a
Min, like peter out, or even worse, sour note of a payoff that is in
contrast to or is it like unsatisfying
or feels like it runs counter to the
whole character arc that we've been following
all the way along. And then we got invested
in and then we don't get this payoff that
we thought we were going to get or that
we were leaning towards in a way that
it can be really unsatisfying a week or
unsatisfying character payoff can really spoil all
the good work that went into a great character
arc all the way along. So it's really important
to think about and to put some energy into planning out what that is
going to look like. And when you do, you
will have finished off not just a good
character arc, but kept it off with
a moment that sort of brings it all full circle and pays off that character in a way that will keep us thinking about them and
talking about them for a long time after
the story ends.
13. Scenes: Arc: So now let's move into the third and final section of this class by talking about character arcs and the three
different types of scenes or moments that you use to
create your character arcs. Character arc is the movement of a specific character from the beginning of
the story through the content of the story to
the ending of the story. And it's composed of
a series of scenes. And oftentimes even moments
within scenes that keep moving the ball forward for that character in clear
and intentional ways. Ideally with a character arc. Every time one of those
moments happens, we, as the audience
should come away with that understanding that the
character has progressed. Something has changed, even
if it's in small ways, they've learned something,
they've experienced something. Maybe the relationship between two characters has evolved
in some specific way. If it's an argument now
they're at more opposed. If it's a revelation, maybe they understand
each other better. If the character has learned a new skill now they have
that skill for later. And essentially what
you're trying to do with the character arc is
intentionally and effectively play out
a solid sequence of those events that take
you from where they were at the beginning to who
they need to be at the end in order to
accomplish the resolution of the story and their
specific resolution within that story that
you have in mind. So to do that, you kind of have three primary moments so
that you are drawing from. The first is your
character intro. That is the moment that we meet the character
for the first time. And there's a couple
of things about the character intro that are important to keep
in mind in order to have it be as effective
as possible and to set up your character arc in as
effective a way as possible. Once you've done your
character intro, you then create a series of what I call
character spotlights. The character spotlights aren't all of the moments
that a character is in because sometimes
the character is just in the scene
and that's okay. Sometimes they are
just, they're they're, they're not necessarily doing something incredibly specific, especially if you're talking about a secondary character arc. They might be in the scene, but not driving the scene, but character spotlights
or the moment where that particular
character gets to do something really significant
for their character arc, or shows us something really significant
about themselves, where we get to see
their flaw in action, or we get to understand
their drive better. Or we get to see some
element of their pop being displayed in a
really compelling way. When that is happening, you're using what I'm calling, what I call a
character spotlight to highlight that element
of that character. And again, ideally to
show us how at the end of that spotlight the character has moved or grown or
progressed in some way. Maybe they're closer
to their goal or maybe they're further
away from their goal or whatever it is that
you're trying to accomplish as the result of
that particular highlight. And finally, once you've built your character arc through a series of characters
spotlights, you reach the third piece, which is the character pay off. And again, there are a
lot of elements about how to build a character
pay off in a way that is really satisfying and will resonate with your reader that satisfying penny
dropped moment of a-ha. That's why I've been on this
journey all the way along. Why we'd been tracking with this character
all the way along. They had that moment. And the nature of that
moment will depend entirely on the nature of the
character we're looking at. So when we get to the
video on character pass, we'll talk a lot
more about that. But those three elements are how do you build out
a character arc? One of the things that's so helpful about
thinking in terms of character arc as opposed to
just the plot of the story. Like here's one plot
for the whole story, is that it helps
you make sure that all of your characters are interfacing with the story in effective and
compelling ways. And it keeps your
character's front and center in the story. Makes for a more
character focused story, which is generally speaking, just going to make a stronger
story in the first place. If you think about all of
your character arcs and then you're kind of weaving them together or layering them
on top of each other. By the time you've done that, you really have a lot of your story right there,
ready for you to go. There's other stuff, There's other scenes, there's
other moments. Plot includes elements outside
of just character arc. But when you have a clear grasp of the character arc for
at least your protagonist, your antagonist, and your
primary other characters like the main secondary
characters in the story. And you know what
those are gonna be to get from a great intro through a series of goods spotlights to a very
satisfying payoff. Once you've done
that, you really know most of your story. And then the process of
actually putting those things that overlapping them within scenes makes for a more
compelling scenes. Just strengthens your plot
as a whole and your story as a whole to create that really compelling sense
of there's so much going on, There's so much for
me to be invested in. There's so much
for me to, to care about and follow all the way through and then to feel that satisfaction
at the end of wow, what a great conclusion, what a great resolution. All of those things that I
was tracking with there, they got paid off well at the end in a really
satisfying way. So now let's go take
a look at each of those three elements
of character intro, character spotlight
and character pay off in a little
bit more detail.
14. Class Wrap up: As we reach the
end of this class on writing unforgettable
characters, I wanted to leave you with two
encouragements to help you take everything that
you've learned and really apply it and carry it
forward for yourself. The first is to make sure you set aside some
time to complete the class project and use the worksheet that I've
included here too. Take all the pieces that we've learned about in this
class and put it into practice for yourself
and creating a character that pulls all
those things together. There's a huge difference
between theory and practice. And as we've talked about a
lot throughout this class, a lot of these general ideas really get relevant
when you start to take the general concept of
something and need to apply it to creating
a specific character. So have some fun with that. Maybe even do it a couple
of different times for different character types. Once you do be sure to share it, I really enjoy getting to connect with and learn
from other writers. So I'm looking forward
to all of the ways that we can engage with
and learn from each other by reading each
other's character projects and learning from each
other in that process. If you'd like an extra
resource to help you expand on your
character project, you can download a free
character Q&A worksheet that I've created
from my website, which is going to basically
just help you play 20 questions with your character as you're developing them. And maybe help you pick up on some interesting or different approaches that you might not necessarily have
thought of to help you flesh out your character and
make them even more dynamic. The second thing I
wanted to encourage you on is not just to stop here. Characters are critical to a
great and compelling story, but they don't
exist in a vacuum. There's so many different
elements that make up a great and successful story, like the plot, setting, the style of the
story, and so on. So if you want to give these great and amazing characters that you're
gonna be writing, the best possible environment is to flourish in and succeed
in within your story. That I'd encourage
you to check out those other classes that I've created on those topics here, on Skillshare to round out the full picture
of a great story. But with all that being said, thank you so much for
spending this time with me at going through this class on writing
unforgettable characters. I hope it was useful to you, and I hope that you
take everything that you've learned here and go out and write someone's
next favorite story.
Justin Fike, Author and Writing Nerd
