BRANDON: All right, guys. Hey! Woo hoo. It's
time for class, woo hoo! Today we're going
to talk about characters.
CLASS: Yay!
BRANDON: Yay! It's kind of interesting, because
a lot of times when I do this class I start
with character. But I just kind of play it
by ear each time. We're going to do two weeks
on character.
We're going to start today with me kind of
talking about what the purpose of characters
are-- is. Which kind of sounds a little silly.
We all know what the purpose of characters
is. They're the people who do the stuff in
the stories. But characters fulfill different
roles, and the way that you use your main
characters, in particular, is going to form
a lot of the shape of your story and your
plot. Today we're going to kind of just talk
about this idea of characters as elements
in your story, and how do you do things like
make your reader care about them.
When I was an undergraduate studying creative
writing, this is one of those things that
I kept asking and never got answers on in
a lot of my classes. A lot of my classes,
I'd say, all right, that's great, telling
me about searching for my soul in my writing.
Wonderful. Want to do that. How do I make
people like my characters? How do I make people
care about reading my story? Because a lot
of the stories I'm reading by myself and the
other students, I don't care. How do we make
people care?
As I've thought about this and how to kind
of talk about it, I've divided it into kind
of three ideas of how we make people care
about our characters. This kind of gets down
to the core reason you're using a main character
in the first place. Like, you theoretically
could tell a story without characters. There
are some writers, who I will not name, who
seem like they would much prefer to be able
to write like that.
I'm not naming names. We're not naming names.
The first thing that I think a character does
for you, and one of the ways you make people
care, is you establish empathy. If you want
the reader to care about your story, one of
the ways you do it is this. Now, this is really,
really important, because I think that a lot
of people who write science fiction and fantasy
come to it from a world building background,
and you spend a lot of time on your world
building. You think about how cool it would
be if X, Y, or Z happened. You come up with
a creative and innovative magic system and
all of these things.
But a magic system is only as interesting
as the people using it. An action sequence
is generally going to be meaningless if you
don't care who lives and who dies. Not always.
There are some that the spectacle of the action
scene itself is what propels you through it.
But in general in a story, if you don't care
who lives and dies, that action sequence loses
a lot of its power for you.
The setting is generally only as interesting
in that it causes problems or an interesting
place for your characters to travel.
Creating characters that we care about, so
that all of these other pieces mean something,
is really important, and one of the most important
things that you want to learn how to do in
your writing.
Now, character is one of these things that
for me, I had a lot more trouble talking about
character when I started teaching. And even
still, the pieces of what makes a character
work are a little more ephemeral for me. I,
as a writer, I've told you before, I generally
outline my setting and my plot ahead of time,
and my characters I cast, meaning I say, all
right, I'm going to try writing a character
in this world. I'm going to see where this
person goes, what their passions, and dreams,
and hopes, and fears are as I write them,
and if that works, great. I'm going to keep
going with that, and that becomes my character.
If that doesn't I put that aside and I try
something very different. Over the year, I've
gotten so that I do this less and less. But
I still, like for instance, my two big series,
Mistborn and Stormlight, both basically started
with me trying different characters, and then
putting them aside and trying new characters,
until I arrived upon the ones that worked.
We'll talk a little bit later about what made
me decide they worked, as opposed to other
ones.
But in your story, as you're starting off,
one of the first things you want to try to
do is establish empathy. This kind of gets
into the things I'll talk about a little later.
You might have heard me talk about them in
previous years, where I have these sliding
scales, where I talk about what makes readers
interested in a character. One of them, of
these sliding scales, that correlates to establish
empathy, is likeability.
We establish empathy for a character through
a couple of different methods, one of which
is, we show that they are like us in some
way. Showing that a character is relatable
immediately establishes empathy. Another way
that we do it is we make them nice.
Now your definition of nice may vary, but
we're kind of talking about this idea of,
there's a famous screenwriting book called
Save the Cat. The title of Save the Cat, where
it comes from, is this old idea in Hollywood
that if you want someone to like a hero, you
have them save a cat, and if you want someone
to hate a villain, you have them kick a dog.
The idea being that if someone is likeable,
if they have normal human sympathies and things
like this, then it will establish empathy.
This is why so often when a writer makes a
villain, and they're very villainous, but
you want to humanize them a little bit, you
will show them doing something like us, show
them being-- they are this monstrous tyrant
who wants to destroy half of the universe.
But they still love their family in their
own twisted way. That is like us. That's a
normal, relatable, human sort of thing, or
giant purple monster sort of thing.
Let's see. There's one more I have in here.
Another thing that you can do to establish
empathy is show people liking them. This is
really handy. We will instantly like someone
who is liked by other people. This is how
it works. This is showing a character having
a family, or showing a character having friends.
We immediately say, well, somebody likes them,
maybe I will as well. So establish empathy.
I want to make it clear as I go through these
things, you do not have to do each of these
things for every character. These are just
ways to get us emotionally invested in your
story using character. Number one, establish
empathy.
Number two is-- let me get this wording right,
establish rooting interest. What I mean by
establishing rooting interest is that you
are going to show that what the character
wants is interesting to us. This is basically
giving the character a motivation. You're
going to show us what the character wants.
Characters who want things are naturally more
interesting to us than characters who don't.
This is why Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
is so interesting, because it has a protagonist
who doesn't want anything, really, other than
maybe a nice cup of tea.
What's that?
STUDENT: British.
BRANDON: Yeah, British. But the story is doing
that intentionally to be a farce by showing
here is a protagonist who refuses to protag.
Establish your rooting interesting. You want
to have a character want something, even if
it is just a cup of tea. You want a character
who wants something out of life that they
generally can't have. That's another thing
is, what do they want? Why can't they have
it? This is going to kind of spiral into their
flaws, or their handicaps, or their limitations.
Why can't the character have this thing that
they want?
You also can generally establish, in rooting
interest, you can establish the personal connection
to the plot. Luke doesn't really want to become
a Jedi. He doesn't really hate the Empire,
till they kill his parent figures, and suddenly
it's personal. That phrase, "suddenly it's
personal," there's a reason why that is become
a cliché of storytelling, because one of
the things that you do in establishing rooting
interest is you make sure that there is a
reason that your protagonist is connected
to the plot.
Number three up here is progress. This is
relating back to the plot stuff we said. Establish
the progress, the sense of progress that you're
going to have with the character. In other
words, how are they going to change. You do
this by showing a flaw that they have, or
you establish some sort of journey they're
going to go on. This is dovetailing into all
the stuff we talked about with plotting.
The goal for this one is, oftentimes this
will be driven by a sense of mystery or a
question. Will they be able to become the
thing that we know inside they can become?
Will they be able to-- Will Spiderman become
a superhero? What's his journey? What's our
arc? How are you going to signpost this character
changing? What is supposed to change?
Boy, I wrote that one bad. That says, "going
to change." We'll fix it in post. We actually
won't.
So these are your primary tools in creating
a character that we want to read about. You
are either going to make us like them, or
you're going to give them a motivation that
sounds really interesting, or you're going
to show them on a journey where they themselves
are changing and we want to see what happens.
You can do all three. You can do one of the
three very well. If I'm relating these, a
few years ago I came up with this idea that
I could really describe a lot of characters
on a sliding scale with three different toggles,
three different sliding scales. I wrote one
over there, but I'm going to do it on this
board. The first one's likeability, the second
one was proactivity, and the third one was
competence. And that characters tended to
fall somewhere on a scale of these three ideas.
I relate these three ideas to these three
goals of making you want to read about a character.
Now, these things intermix, and they are not
distinct from one another. Your proactivity
and your competence are generally going to
go hand in hand, for instance. But the idea
is that your likeability is how much empathy
you establish for the character in your story.
Your proactivity relates to their motivation
and what they're doing to achieve that motivation.
And their competence has to do with where
they are on that kind of progress scale of
getting better at whatever they want to do.
Do you understand that when I say competence,
I'm not necessarily just meaning how good
they are at swordplay? A person's-- if you
were writing a story about someone that was
very shy, that the arc of the character was
that they were going to become very outgoing
and then run for the presidency. Well, the
core competence for the character is that
shyness versus introvert/extrovert thing,
where they are learning how to stand up and
talk in front of people, which is still a
competence slider. Yes, they're not learning
how to wield a sword or use the one power,
but they are still growing in competence in
some area that specifically involves the plot.
What I realized is, I could have characters
moving on any one of these actual scales to
create a sense of motion and progress for
the story. For instance, a character who is
growing less and less likeable through the
course of the story can be a really interesting
story. It's a different story, however, than
a character who is growing increasingly in
likeability through the course of a story.
In the same way, a lot of characters start
off inactive and become proactive, and that
is the way that they are moving. A lot of
characters start off with no competence and
move up in competence. You don't usually move
down in competence, but there are a few really
interesting movies about someone losing their
competence. The idea is that your motion here
is part of how you're telling your story.
Now I want to stop here and mention something
that a friend of mine, Howard Taylor, calls
an iconic hero. This is a phrase I think he
got from Jim Zub. The idea behind an iconic
hero is a hero who does not change on any
of these three, or if they do change, they
change very slightly on one of these three
through the course of a given story. These
are your-- James Bond is usually the classic
example of the iconic hero, though with various
reboots they will move him down in competence
and then slowly move him back up again. So
it really kind of depends on which story you're
talking about.
Same thing with a lot of the superheroes.
A lot of the superheroes, it's like, we know
where they are on this line, and we're going
to have an adventure with them experiencing
this. An iconic hero generally is going to
have one or all three of these ramped to the
top so that they cannot move anywhere else
because they are already as competent and
capable as they can be. These can be fun to
read about. You don't have to have progress
on these scales in order to have a story.
But I have found the majority of stories I
really like are involving a lot of motion
on these scales by different characters.
For instance, we have Star Wars, one of my
favorite movies, the original, where we have
lots of movement here. At the beginning of
the story, where would you say Han Solo is
on these three things? Likeability, where's
Han on likeability? We kind of like him, but
we're like, yeah, right. Where is Han in proactivity?
Depends on which of these things you're talking.
But yeah, Han has to kind of pushed into things.
He does shoot first. But where it comes to
you need to give him a lot of money, he's
just sitting there. Where is Han in competence?
Han thinks he's up here, but he's actually
down here. Right? That's the fun of Han, is
he probably knows where he is on the other
ones, but he's not-- And through the course
of the story, we are going to boost his likeability.
We're going to boost his proactivity a ton
by making him come back and not having to
get paid to save everybody. And his competence
basically stays the same, but, you know, that's
Han.
Where is Luke? He's pretty high in likeability,
I'd say, from the get-go. That’s Luke’s
job is you come into the story; you see him
looking at the twin sunset. You have him fixing
things for his parents and wishing he could
be whatever. The whole point of Luke is to
establish empathy. His goal is-- we go, Luke
is supposed to be up there. Whether you actually
like him or not, this is what his role is
supposed to be.
But where is he in proactivity. He thinks
he want-- he might actually be a little bit--
no, he's probably down here. He thinks he
wants to go off and be a fighter pilot. Has
he actually done it? No. He has to get booted
out of things just like Han does.
Where is Luke's competence? Yeah, yeah. He's
a good pilot. He doesn't have to learn that.
It's kind of like Luke has two. He's up here
and down there. You'll see this in a lot of
things, where a character's really good in
one area, but really lacking in another. The
main place he has to learn, though, is in
the Force. His growth arc is for him being
in the Force from here to, like, here. Then
the next one goes here, back down to here,
and then the next one it's like here. Well,
he's already there. Then he's up here. This
is the idea with Luke's character.
Where is Leia on likeability? Yes. Leia's
pretty darn high on likeability. We start
out as little ship being chased by big ship,
and things like that. Where is Leia in proactivity?
CLASS: High.
BRANDON: Very high. Yeah. Leia's the only
one who does anything in the movie. Everybody
else has to be shoved into it, even Obi Wan
Kenobi, by Leia. Like, Leia and R2 are basically
the only people who do anything in the movie.
And where is Leia in competence?
CLASS: Yeah, in her realm, she's probably
pretty high. Leia's pretty iconic, wouldn't
you say? The story is not necessarily about
Leia changing. It's about the growth in these
other things.
I find it a lot of fun just kind of thinking
about where do various characters fall on
this, what characters are horribly unlikeable,
but hugely proactive and competent, so we
read about them anyway. People like a lot
of villains, like say, Joker. Generally it's
like, we've got someone who's hugely proactive,
middle competence, but makes up for it in
proactivity, and generally not very likeable.
But we want to read about them because that
proactivity just grabs ahold of us. They have
really interesting motivations. Usually when
someone is high on the proactivity scale and
they are not going to be changing on that,
you establish a really stellar motivation.
What is Leia's motivation in Star Wars? Save
the galaxy, right? She has huge motivation
that only gets higher through the course of
that story, in that she's basically the only
one trying to save the galaxy, the only one
left after everybody else gets killed.
But Luke, what is his motivation? He wants
to go off and-- he wants to look at the twin
sunset and get out there. Instead of establishing
this really strong motivation at the beginning
of the story, we have to lean back on empathy
for Luke.
Han's motivation? Get money. So we lean a
lot on Han's competence at the beginning.
He's the person that can shoot the other guy
before the other guy can shoot him. He's the
guy who can get this ship to run past the
enemy blockade, or whatever, that's trying
to stop them. He is the guy who can get them
where they need to go. We like Han because
he's competent, and that competence makes
him cool. Now we find out that he maybe has
an overinflated opinion of how good he is
at some of these things, just by his actions,
like chasing an entire group of Storm Troopers
by himself.
But the idea is that we're going to have each
of these characters doing a different thing
for us in the movie, and we start off strongly
with each of them kind of in a different realm.
This is a great way to do your storytelling.
This is why so often you have the young hero
who kind of needs to be forced out, but has
a hidden competence and is really likeable,
and then you also have this old, wise mentor,
who is highly competent, but maybe is not
necessarily as likeable, as relatable. Not
a lot of people relate to Gandalf. They do
kind of, because Tolkien does a decent job,
and Jackson does an even better job, of making
him likeable. But this idea of, I'm more like
the guy in the shire than I am like the powerful
wizard, is generally the way that stories
work.
There's a reason, I often say, why Spiderman
tends to be a lot of people's favorite superhero.
It's because he starts off very establish
empathy likeable. Rather than starting the
story with him having all these powers, it
hits empathy, empathy, empathy. He reads comic
books and plays video games, target audience.
He gets bullied at school, target audience.
He's a nice guy who's in love with the girl
next door but is too shy to go talk to her,
target audience. Then what is his journey?
Competence skyrocketing through the roof.
Extremely likeable at the start, and we're
just going to show him becoming awesome. He
starts as Frodo. He ends as Aragorn. That
journey, getting to see Frodo become Aragorn,
is a really powerful story to tell.
Why do I hit on this? Why do I talk about
this? What is the point? The point is to start
you thinking about your characters and the
story you want to tell, and their role in
that story.
Stories work by a sense of progress. Plots
move because we see things changing. And you're
going to want to decide with your characters
if how much them changing is a part of what
you want to make people turn your page, or
if instead you are just going to have your
story be competence overload and watching
really cool people do really cool things.
Oceans 11, really cool people doing really
cool things. Is there a journey in that? Not
really. We are just going to be awesome and
wisecracking, and we're going to accomplish
cool things.
Different types of stories then, for instance,
Spiderman, where almost always there is an
overlap of a change in character motivations
over time, signified by a change in proactivity.
What does he do at the start? Let's the villain
get away. How does that change his motivations?
It makes it personal. Suddenly he needs to
be more motivated. And usually you will often
interweave a change on proactivity with a
change in competence overlapping one another,
to the point that by the end the character's
motivation has shifted. We call this in storytelling,
screenwriters talk about this a lot. At the
beginning of a story, you often show a difference
between what the character wants and what
they need. Spiderman wants to be famous and
cool; he thinks. What does he need? He needs--
what he needs is to understand that with great
power comes great responsibility. He needs
to understand that the things he wants should
be used for good instead of evil, and he needs
to have a motivation shift. You see this very,
very commonly in this type of story also,
where what the character says they want in
the beginning is not actually what they need.
That contrast can create interesting character
conflict.
Now the last thing I want to talk about this
before we move on to another topic is this
idea of flaws, limitations, and handicaps.
I think that Sanderson's Laws, the humbly
named Sanderson's Laws, have a lot of application
to characterization. If we're going to look
at Sanderson's First Law as this law of foreshadowing,
I would say that if you apply it to characters,
we are looking at motivation. A lot of times
when characters go wrong, when I'm reading
works by new writers, or when one of my books
has gone wrong and I'm getting beta reader
feedback that confuses me, it is because I
have not properly established character motivation
at the start of the story, so that when they
later make a decision or accomplish something,
it feels in line with who they have become
and according to their motivation.
A lot of times if dialog feels stilted, if
your readers are like, something's wrong with
this dialog, it's not a one-to-one, but a
lot of times what's happened is you have established
a character as one type of character. Their
motivations are a certain set of motivations.
But when you get to this conversation you
realize, "I need an argument here. It'll make
the conversation more interesting." So you
have an argument between them and someone
else and the reader's like, "This feels stilted.
This feels cardboard." What they really mean
in that instance is you are having a character
act contrary to their motivations in order
to move the plot in some way.
Sometimes this means you need to revise that
scene so they work according to their motivations,
and you will have a better scene. Sometimes
it just means you need to back up and establish
motivation. One of the things that's fascinating
about characters, about human beings in general,
is that we tend to wear a lot of hats, and
we often have conflicting motivations that
are driving us in different directions. You
probably have these as well. You have a, perhaps,
duty to your fam and what your fam wants of
you, and your own sort of duty to your own
inner desire to become a novelist instead
of a doctor.
Brandon going to college had both of these
motivations working on him. At home they're
like, "You're going to be a doctor, right?"
And he was saying, "Yes, I'm a biochemistry
major. That's kind of the point." But inside
I was screaming, "No!"
You have a lot of these. Often times, the
intersection between our family life, our
social life, our religious life, and all of
these things create conflicts. If you can
properly show this out of the character, readers
will not feel that the character is acting
against their motivations. Readers will accept
this. In fact, sometimes it is dangerous to
give a character only one, single motivation.
My example of this is a-- worked much better
10 years ago when I taught this class in the
early years. Any of you watch Lost?
STUDENT: Yes.
BRANDON: OK, there's, like, three of you.
So in Lost-- oh, nice. In Lost there is a
character named Michael, I got his name right,
right? Who has an extremely strong establishment
of empathy, in that he is a father who has
kind of been a bad, deadbeat father and has
decided to be a good father now. He loves
his son. He's got a lot of empathy, and he's
got an established motivation. This man loves
his son and wants to be a good father. You
would think that would be a recipe for a really
strong character. He is everyone's least favorite
character. The Lost guy is nodding his head.
Everyone hates Michael. Maybe not everybody,
but almost everyone. And this is really strange.
It's a great case study for you to study,
because in the show, Michael's son gets captures
and kidnapped by an evil, mysterious group.
And you would think, all right, we've got
a father who's trying to be better. We see
him moving up in likeability. He's got an
established motivation. He loves his son and
his son's been kidnapped. This is a really
powerful story, and everyone hated it. Because
Michael became one note.
The characters would get together to plan
what they needed to do for the next step of
whatever they were trying to accomplish, and
it would be like, character one talks about
this, character two talks about this, Michael,
"My son!" and then the next character. And
then they go to another situation and they'd
all be doing something else, and he'd yell,
"What about my son?" They're like, "What do
you want for lunch, Michael? We have sandwiches
or--" "My son! Where's my son?" Right? It
became so one note that everybody hated it.
Now this is-- I point to two problems with
this. The first one being one-note character.
A one-note character whose emotional state
does not change or vary will get very tiring,
unless you do something else to make sure
that there is a lot of progress going on,
and that's the bigger problem. We never really
saw any progress that he was making or that
anyone could make toward saving his son, and
so because of it, it felt like every time
he yelled, "My son! But my son!" was just
reminding us that we hadn't made any progress,
that nothing was happening, that all it was
is, yeah, Michael's going to yell about his
son. And it got very distracting and annoying
because all sorts of exciting other things
were happening. And we thought, we're like,
"I should care about this guy's son. I really
should. But he's boring, so I don't want to
hear about his son." And this is a kind of
flaw in approaching how that story was written.
Now Lost, particularly Season 1, is fantastic.
I would hold up a lot of that writing against
a lot of other television show writing and
things like this. But it did have this one
kind of glaring flaw. Was that Season 1 with
Michael? Yeah. Right off the bat.
You kind of contrast that to a character who
should not be very likeable to us. He is a
drug addict who is doing almost everything
he can to get more drugs. He's played by a
Hobbit, which does help, I'll admit. But you
shouldn't-- he should be kind of low on likeability
and things like this. But he often ranks as
people's favorite character in the whole season.
This is Charlie. Did I get his name right?
Charlie was my favorite character. In a lot
of ways, he shouldn't have been nearly as
likeable as he was. But he was proactive,
and he was trying, and we saw his progress
through the course of the season, where at
the end of the season he turned down the drugs.
They found a big stash of drugs and Charlie,
like, he had some mistakes in the middle,
but then they sent him on another one in Season
2. He relaxed. But at least in Season 1 there's
this really great arc, and we saw progress,
motion, and proactivity. So the character
that on paper you'd be like, "Who do you like?
The drug addict who's hiding his drug addiction
from everyone else, or the man who loves his
son and has lost his son?" On paper you would
like this guy. Charlie was way, way better
a character and everyone loved him.
Study situations like that. When you see a
movie and you know you're supposed to like
someone and you don't, ask yourself why. When
you read a book and you're really interested
in the antagonist plot line and you're bored
by the protagonist plot line, ask yourself
why, and how does it fit into the ideas of
empathy, rooting interest, and progress in
that character. But regardless, establish
motivation, Sanderson's First Law.
Second Law, flaws, limitations, handicaps.
Now, we talk a lot in building characters
about character quirks. On one hand, I like
this idea, that we talk about character quirks,
stretching ourselves to do something a little
more interesting and a little more different.
But sometimes it is too easy to mistake a
quirk for a personality. The way that you,
at least I divide between the two, is I make
sure, when I'm coming up with flaws, limitations,
handicaps, these sorts of things, that they
are going hand in hand with something on this
board. When I add interesting quirks to a
character, I want to make sure that those
quirks of character are somehow fitting into
this.
Now a lot of times you can do this in a simple
way. For instance, if you're going to have
the quirk, the character is a stamp collector.
This is an action adventure story. The character
is probably not going to-- stamp collecting
does not play a lot into the actual main plot.
But what you can do is you can establish this
character being proactive in a very small
sphere when they can't be proactive in a large
sphere. If you start off the story and show
the great lengths they will go to to get this
stamp that they really want, and then you
show they collect the stamps because they
don't get to travel because they don't have
the funds for it, or maybe they're too sick
for it, and they dream of traveling, and they
open their book, and they put the stamps in
of the places that they would have gone if
they didn't have this handicap. Then suddenly
you have a character who has an interesting
quirk, and you have established a huge amount
of empathy, and you have started to establish
motivation.
When they get invited on an adventure and
have to go on it despite their handicaps or
limitations, you know this character is like,
"Wait a minute. We have to go to Morocco?"
And you've seen they don't have Morocco yet
in their stamp book. And even though they
don't think they can do it and they're mostly
not proactive, and they're a character who's
mostly been sitting in their house, you will
be like, "You know what? I can believe this
character will take this jump to go to Morocco
on this crazy quest with whoever," Nicholas
Cage, let's say. Because that's what Nic Cage
does. He shows up and takes you to Morocco.
Or . . . or to the Cthulhu mythos, so stay
away. But regardless, you can make that leap.
And if you've got a quirk that can somehow
connect all of these things, you are going
to have a much stronger character. Rather
than, oh, so random, this character is a taxidermist,
and it doesn't really matter. It doesn't spiral
in. They just like taxidermy. Yes, that could
be interesting. But if you can connect it,
it's going to be better.
I think the same way about flaws, handicaps,
limitations. Now, I do divide in my head what
these three things are as different things.
You do not have to use my definitions. But
kind of as a reminder, a flaw is something
that the narrator is indicating that is wrong
with the character that they should have fixed
by now. Something that they were capable of
fixing before, hadn't quite managed to do
it, and through the course of the story you
are indicating that flaw, they are either
going to learn to fix this thing, or it's
going to be their downfall. Their great hubris,
if you're in a Greek play, is kind of classic
for this. But it's a thing that they have
control over.
A handicap I put as something that must be
overcome, absolutely must be overcome, but
is something that is not the character's fault
and they have no power over whether this thing
can be changed. Now some handicaps through
the course of the story will be evaporated
by the story. But the point is, the character
up to this point, you don't blame a character
for being born blind. This is a handicap,
and you frame the story a very different way.
A limitation, for me, is a thing that is not
to change, not to even overcome. It is a constraint
you work within that you don't necessarily
want the character to overcome. The fact that
Peter Parker loves Aunt May and doesn't want
her to come in danger is a limitation of your
story, and that should generally not change
through the course of the story. But it is
something the character would have power over.
You just don't want him to change it, right?
That is kind of how I divide these three things
in my head.
When you're building your character, I would
recommend that you think about limitations,
flaws, handicaps, and ask yourself how does
that create motivation for the character,
and how does that create story? Just like
with magic systems, most of your stories are
going to hit the character in a place where
they have a flaw, a handicap, or a limitation.
Most of your conflict is going to arise out
of the face that they have flaws, handicaps,
limitations.
Let's stop and ask for questions. That was
a big old firehose of stuff. So let's see
what you guys want to talk about and let me
ask. Go ahead.
STUDENT: How do you deal with this when you're
with multiple character point of view/
BRANDON: Excellent question. How do you work
with multiple character point of views in
this?
One of the first things I will decide is how
much viewpoint time I'm going to give to each
of these characters, and the more viewpoint
time you have, the most nuanced you can be
in a lot of these things.
I'll get to you in just a sec.
One of the best ways to make a character feel
real is to not be writing them to a role.
This is something I learned early in my career.
I often share this story, so I'm sorry if
you've heard it before. But early in my career,
I had a big problem writing female characters
in my books. This was before I got published.
I would get feedback back. They'd be like,
"This is a really exciting adventure. All
the women feel like cardboard cutouts that
you have set into your story that people barely
interact with, that are part of the set dressing."
And this bothered me a lot. That's half my
characters. Well, that's 10% of my characters,
because I was a young man writing books who
hadn't realized that yet. But it should have
been 50% of the characters.
I thought about it a lot. I worked on it.
And it was not, like, one revelation that
made me get better at it. But one of the big
things that changed for me was I started to
realize I was writing characters to roles.
I would say, this is the hero. Therefore they
have this. This is the love interest. That
is her role. I am going to write her as the
love interest. This is the goofy sidekick.
I am writing the goofy sidekick to a specific
role. This was really limiting my ability
to make the characters feel real.
When I started to kind of embrace this idea
that every character is the hero in their
own story. Every character, they're the protagonist,
I should say, in their own story. They may
not be the hero, but they are the protagonist.
Every character sees themselves as the main
character. Every character has passions, desires,
dreams, hopes, all of these things, that would
have continued on existing if the main plot
hadn't run into them like a freight train.
And it became very important to me to start
establishing who all these characters were
and who they might have become if the plot
hadn't taken over their lives.
Now, that's all a big preamble to the less
time you have with a character, the more difficult
it is to write them to anything but a role.
This is kind of going to be a give and take,
a push and pull, that you have with your characters.
If a character's only going to be "onscreen"
for one chapter, they aren't going to have
a viewpoint in that chapter, what can you
do? Well, in that case, you generally-- your
best bet is to give them one identifying characteristic
that does not seem to dovetail into their
role. It can force yourself to kind of write
them to a personality rather than just to,
this is the person who comes on stage, gives
the hero their sword, and then walks off stage.
But, right, how do you do this for multiple
characters?
When I am building a story, I'm always kind
of looking for friction points between the
setting and different parts of the setting,
between the setting and the main plot I'm
coming up with. And I'm saying, what if I
put a character at that friction point. And
I'm trying to make sure that each of my main
characters has multiple motivations that make
sense and is going to be moving somewhere
on these sliding scales, is trying to accomplish
things. And I ask myself what are they trying
to accomplish before the plot happens, and
how do they work into what the plot is doing,
and how can I make sure that they have a personal
connection to the plot. This is much easier
if you have multiple viewpoints. If you don't,
you can still do it. Takes a lot of practice.
All right?
Go ahead.
STUDENT: Why would characters have motivations
and not goals? Why use motivations over the
word goals?
BRANDON: Right. A couple reasons for this.
Goals can be accomplished and then your story
is done. Motivations continue. Motivations
are much easier as you as an author to kind
of get in your head who this character is.
A goals would be something like win the championship.
The motivation is why do they want to win
the championship. Giving them a goal is OK.
Giving them a motivation, letting the reader
understand why they want to live the championship
is actually where most of your story is going
to lie, because it can then intertwine with
things like the character's sense of progress
and stuff like that.
You don't always have time for this. For instance,
if we go back to Star Wars, which I use a
lot, we don't really know in the movie why
Han Solo-- well, we do. He wants to pay off
Jabba the Hutt, so he won't die. Right? That's
motivation. That's not as strong as why did
he become a smuggler? Why did he do this?
And all of that sort of stuff, they just couldn't
get into. But they gave him a goal. I need
to get money. Why? To pay off Jabba the Hutt.
His goal then changes. My friends are more
important than paying off Jabba the Hutt.
Gee, I hope this doesn't come back to bite
me. So goals can shift. Motivations kind of
become a core of who the character is. And
I just think it's better overall to be asking
yourself those why questions. You don't always
have to establish them, like I said. But asking
yourself why does Luke want to get off world?
Why does Princess Leia want to save the universe?
That one doesn't work as well because, basically,
destroying all life in the universe, bad idea.
But there we go.
Other questions? We'll go back here.
STUDENT: How can you use your story to teach
your character the lessons they need, instead
of having the character learn the lessons
they need and making the story go around that.
BRANDON: Right.
STUDENT: Say you've got a character that you
couldn't control. They controlled themselves.
How could you write a story that would help
them learn?
BRANDON: All right. Repeated for the internet
audience, how can you make the story get the
characters to become who they need to be?
And there was a second part of this. If your
characters don't want to do what you want
them to do, how do you make them do what you
want to do?
This is-- let's do that second question first.
People often ask me what do I do if my characters
just don't want to do what I want them to?
Which is an interesting question to answer,
because it's a very discovery writer question
for a very outline writer author, even someone
who kind of discovery writes their characters.
I generally don't think in terms of my characters
doing things I don't want them to. But I understand
the mindset. What you're meaning is, generally
you're writing along, and you're like, "This
character's developing to be someone that
wouldn't do what I have planned for them to
do." Or "They're going in a really interesting
direction, and I really like this interesting
direction, and I kind of feel like I want
to keep writing on it. But it's going to go
way off topic from what everyone else is doing."
Or things like this. And I get that sense.
I understand that.
When I get into that situation, what I do
is, I back up and I say, "All right. Let's
take a hard look at this story. Do I need
to rebuild my story to fit who this character's
becoming? Is the story a stronger version,
is it a stronger story, if this character
continues on this path? Or is this character
going to completely take over the story, and
it's going to turn it into something completely
different?" I will either pull out the character,
set them aside, and rewrite a character from
scratch, or I will rebuild my outline completely
to match where this character is going.
I do the second more often than the first.
Because if I'm really interested in a character,
personally, I am really good with plot and
setting. I know I can rebuild that plot and
that setting. If I've captured something in
a character that's really working, I generally
want to see where that character goes, and
I rebuild my plot for them. That's a different
question than the first one, which is how
do I arrange the situations so that they will
teach the characters the thing I want them
to teach. I would say, you need to hit those
characters in the places it will hurt. If
what you need is a character to stop being
selfish, you need their selfishness on screen
at some point to cause that character a lot
of pain, or the people around them a lot of
pain. If you want a character to make a difficult
decision later on, show them failing to make
that decision early on and show the consequences.
Hit your characters hard in their flaws if
you want the story to encourage them to change.
Right here.
STUDENT: How do you flesh out and make non-viewpoint
characters interesting if your main characters
either don't know their motivations or are
misunderstanding them?
BRANDON: All right. If your main character,
your viewpoint character, doesn't understand
a side character's motivation or misunderstands
them, how do you make sure that that character,
that side character still works?
Well, the epic fantasy author's answer is
add a viewpoint. That is usually bad advice
for most genres. In this case, do as I say,
not as I do. Because I will write a 400,000-word
book and just add some viewpoints in. Even
in my 100,000-word books, I'll sometimes just
add viewpoints in.
Mary Robinette hates that, by the way. She'll
read a story by me and be like, "Why is there
this random viewpoint. It does not make--"
I'm like, "Uh, um, yeah. Shush, shush."
But how do you do it without adding that viewpoint
in? I would take one of a couple of things.
Hanging a lantern on it is that stage play
term that lets you make a thing that you think
might be a bug into a feature. Hang a lantern
on the setting piece that doesn't look as
good as the rest of them, indicating to the
audience that you will someday make use of
that as a plot point.
In this case, having a character who is not
the main character and not the side character
say, "You really don't get them, do you?"
And then the main character say, "Yeah, I
totally get them. Such and such and such and
such." And the other character being like,
"Oh, man. Oh, man. Someday you are going to
be super embarrassed that you just said that."
That sort of thing can be really handy.
What you don't want, why this can be bad is
if the reader-- I've told you guys about gorillas
in a phone booth, right? I haven't. OK. I've
told the little class about it. Gorillas in
a phone booth is a thing I learned. This will
relate, I promise. A thing I learned in college
from one of the people in college with me
in my master's degree. And it stuck with me.
He was reading a story of mine, and he said,
"This part feels like a gorilla in a phone
booth." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Imagine
you are watching a movie, and a character
is having a conversation with his girlfriend,
and they are kind of arguing over finances.
And then he walks by, looks up, and there's
a gorilla in the phone booth. People don't
have phone booths anymore but pretend we're
like 20 years ago when these were a thing.
There's a gorilla in the phone booth, and
then he keeps on walking and going.
What the gorilla in the phone booth does is
it draws the reader's attention to the point
that their mind keeps coming back to it and
makes them unable to focus at the task at
hand. Once you've seen the gorilla in the
phone booth, it is so irreconcilable with
the story you thought you were seeing that
your mind keeps going back and you suffer
an extreme detachment from the main story
in a way that is very bothersome. This often
happens with readers if they think you as
a writer haven't noticed something or have
made a big mistake. And it starts to be this
little thing that pushes them further and
further out of the story, even if it's a small
thing, where they're like, "But X! But, but
how can you not notice this?" Other times
it happens because you mention something that's
really interesting as a tease, but then don't
give enough information about it, to the point
that readers keep worrying about it.
I've read, to kind of paraphrase, some student
works where a person gets stabbed in the hand,
and then has a conversation with another person
about something completely unrelated. I'm
like, "They are bleeding all over the floor.
I cannot pay attention to this other conversation,
no matter how important it is, because they're
bleeding to death!" You want to avoid letting
your side characters do that to your story.
Hanging a lantern on it is one of the good
ways where you are basically saying to the
reader, "This isn't a flaw in the story. I
know. I am going to deal with it eventually."
What that does is the reader then is like,
"Oh, thank goodness." They file in the back
of their head that "this is a plot point.
I noticed it. I'm smart. It's going to be
relevant later on. Thumbs up. Let me focus
on what the story is on right now." It can
be very handy with these sorts of things.
This gets very complicated when you have an
untrustworthy narrator, which is kind of what
you're going with here, right? This happens
all the time in The Wheel of Time with Mat
Cauthon, where Mat assesses a situation and
it is completely wrong, humorously so. And
you as the reader are supposed to understand
this. Dramatic irony, the reader understands
things that the characters don't. This can
get very tricky. It can be very hard to write
this sort of thing. But if you get it right
the readers are going to love it.
There's a couple hints on that.
All right. Go ahead.
STUDENT: What's the most of this that you've
done in post?
BRANDON: What's the most of this I've done
in post? Good question. I will often, I would
say half of the time, throw away the first
through third chapters of a book. And part
of the reason for this-- I did this in Skyward.
Skyward, when I was starting off, in fact
I keep meaning to post these. Adam, we'll
get these up, right? The alternate beginnings.
Skyward has three different beginnings, and
they were all about me trying to get likeability,
proactivity, and competence down for the main
character Spensa at the beginning, also in
tone and all these promises. A lot of times,
by the middle of the book I understand what
someone's arc is pretty strongly, and I know
where I'm going, but the beginning has been
really rough and doesn't match who that character
has become. I just consider it-- like, I know
I'm generally going to throw away the first
few chapters. In that case, it wasn't the
prologue. It was chapter 1 and 2. But we'll
get them up. You guys can read them. We did
get the outline up, right? Did we post that
up here?
ADAM: It's on the brandonsanderson slash--
BRANDON: Right. But we were going to write
it on the board. OK. Yes. Adam's going to
write, on the board, where you find the outline
for Skyward. I promised you I'd get that up,
and we keep forgetting to put it on the board.
So those internet people who've been asking,
you'll be able to find it here. We'll try
to get the other beginning chapters of that
up. Though basically the idea is here that
I'm totally OK rewriting my beginning if my
ending is working.
One place that I've changed it dramatically,
I think I've talked about Mistborn 3, where
there was a character who was not proactive
at all. This is a character who was going
through a depressive-- deep into depression
because of things that happened in the middle
book, and their plot was excruciating to read,
because they were just depressed the whole
time. I realized a sense of progress, even
downward, is way better than nothing at all.
I ripped out all of those character scenes.
I wrote them all from scratch, and in this
one the character had an action they were
doing that each thing they discovered in this
action brought them further down. There was,
like, a countdown of, he's read 200 of these
books and found no answers. He's getting more
depressed. And that slide worked way better.
That's one of the biggest ones I've done.
The other, of course, big one I talked about
in class is when I ripped out half of Dalinar's
chapters from The Way of Kings and I replaced
them with Adolin chapters, because the character
was feeling schizophrenic, because he was
both confident that he was right, that the
visions he was seeing was leading him toward
something important, and totally frightened
he was insane. And these did not jive at all.
What it turned into was he had a huge problem
with all three of these things. He was less
likeable because he was wishy washy. And he
was less proactive because every action he
took was undercut by him worrying he was insane.
Moving that out to two characters so that
the external voice was saying, "I really think
you're insane, Dad," made Adolin way more
sympathetic, because we've all had family
members and loved ones who've gone through
an illness and we're really worried that this
illness is hurting them and changing them,
and what do we do? It made Dalinar more empathetic,
because we've all been the person that people
haven't believed when we've had something
that is a major thing. We're like, "I can
go be a writer. I'm not crazy. I'm a prophet."
Well, maybe we haven't had that one. But that
idea, splitting those out, added the likeability
to both of them, and it let them both be proactive
rather than back and forth. Those are probably
the two biggest changes I've made in any of
my books.
Yeah, go ahead.
STUDENT: How do you separate your characters'
voices?
BRANDON: How do I separate my characters'
voices? What a fantastic question. This goes
into what I think I've told you guys before,
the grand skill of telling science fiction
and fantasy, of writing, which is the ability
to world build through the eyes of characters.
Your go-to here should be letting the character's
background, their motivations, and their personality
influence their descriptions and their diction.
Now, the kind of-- you can go way too far
on this. But an example of this, Robert Jordan
has a character who is very high. She is the
Amyrlin Seat. She is leader of the magic users
in this world, basically the highest position
you can be. She came from a bunch of fishermen.
Her parents were fishers. So she still uses
metaphors about getting fish and about things
like this, which makes her a delight to read,
because this character that you expect to
be regal and queenly is talking about getting
fish because that's her background. That's
a good example of using the contrast there
to get someone across. But letting someone's
background influence the metaphors they use.
It should be more than-- for instance, the
cliched way to do this is the character who
has a scientific mind doesn't use contractions.
You've all probably read this or seen this.
The very smart person says cannot instead
of can't. Totally valid. You can totally do
that. But it should go further than that.
You should be saying this character has a
training in the academy. They have a PhD.
They're going to speak differently. They're
going to be rhetorically grounded. They're
going to use-- they're going to arrange their
arguments in such a way to use rhetoric. This
character does not. This character comes from
living on the streets and going with their
gut. Their argument is going to be, "You're
wrong. I know you're wrong because I've stabbed
three people like you. And they all died,
and I lived. You're wrong." This person's
going to be like, "You're wrong because of
this and this and this. Can't you see how
great my logical arguments are?"
That is way stronger than this character uses
no contractions and this character uses slang.
You should still have this character use slang
and this character's diction reflect the academy,
but the way that they argue, the way that
they see the world-- A character who grew
up like I did with an upper middle class background
is going to have a very different perspective
on how likely they are to achieve their dreams
and goals than a person who has a lower, low
class upbringing. These things should reflect
in your characters. Try to get this across.
In fact, one of the best things you can do
to learn how to write stronger writing is
learn how to make your dialog work without
dialog tags and without any descriptions around
it.
Now, you rarely will put this in a book, but
if you can write a scene where three or four
different characters are having an argument,
and we can track who is who with no dialog
tags, then you're starting to get there. If
we're like, "Oh, look at this. This person's
paragraphs are always huge and well thought
out, and this person's paragraphs are always
short sentences with lots of exclamation points.
And this character always stutters and pauses
and has lots of ellipses. And wow, I can follow
them all because of the diction, and of course,
they're arguing for different things from
different directions. And this one just used
a metaphor about iron working, where this
metaphor talked about burning pages." When
you can do that and let your dialog be that
strong, you are getting there.
One of the things that I see, and I do this
too much too, in a lot of writing, is being
sloppy by letting your-- the things you put
around the dialog do the heavy lifting. "I'm
not very happy with you," he said angrily.
Rather than, "How dare you!" One is stronger
than the other. Your natural instincts, most
likely, will be to write, "I'm not happy with
you," he said angrily.
This is one of the reasons why a lot of writing
textbooks and things will say get rid of the
adverbs, that you should not be using adverbs.
I do not go that strong on it. But they also
say, don't use sad bookisms. Don't use things
like he exclaimed, or he shouted, or things
like that. Again, I don't go that far. You'll
have to decide where you want to be. J. K.
Rowling loves both of those, and she's the
best-selling author of our time. So take all
this with a grain of salt.
But if you can move that "angrily," if you
can cut that and make sure the diction sounds
angry, your writing goes up a notch in strength.
If you can show in even your descriptions
that somebody really hates this other person
by the way they describe how fiddly they are
with their hair and how, of course, their
perfect shoes are polished, and things like
that, rather than saying, "She really hated
Amy, because she was a prep." If you could
never have those lines in your writing and
everyone gets it, it's going to be way, way
stronger writing.
This is a continual, life-long quest for most
writers that we always are trying to get better
at, and very few actually get where it's really,
really good, and particularly not in first
drafts. But that's how you do it. And if you
can do that, if you can do the things I'm
just talking about here, then you are going
to sell books fast. Because if you're opening
chapters are full of almost no information
dumps, full of character dialog that snaps
off the page and tells you who they are by
the way that they talk and gets across and
evokes setting and character just through
these sort of contextual clues, then you are
doing better than 99% of the people who are
submitting books or self-publishing their
books and trying to make it. If you can practice
one skill, do that one. All right?
OK, time for a few more. Go ahead.
STUDENT: I'm wondering, how do you craft good
villain motivation?
BRANDON: How do you craft good villain motivation?
This depends on the type of villain you want.
Different stories use different types of villains.
And really it's going to depend on how far
up or down on the likeability scale is your
villain. A villain who's very low on the likeability
scale, but very high on the other two will
be different than one that you characterize
a little bit in the middle. An iconic villain
such as Sauron is very different from a character
who is struggling and changing like Gollum.
Gollum is a character who's changing in likeability
and proactivity through the course of the
story in various different modes, and Sauron
doesn't. Sauron is a giant, burning red eye
that's going to destroy the world. That is
it. Yes, I know the extent-- blah, blah, blah,
Silmarillion. In the actual story, it's a
giant eye that's going to destroy the world.
Those fulfill two different roles and they're
both perfectly valid. But if you want a villain
with motivations that make sense, you're going
to have to work harder than you worked with
someone like Sauron. Gollum's a great example.
It can be a fantastical thing. He just really
wants this ring. He doesn't even really know
why. He's been corrupted by it, but he really,
really wants the ring, and we can see that
he wants it. He has an established motivation.
The fact that he's changing and wavering back
and forth is what makes him work.
I think I told you guys, right? I made my
Mom go to Lord of the Rings films when they
were coming out 20 years ago. And she had
never read a fantasy book before. This was
before I published any, so she hadn't read
any of mine. And I took her, and she had two
takeaways from those films. The one was, "Boy,
I sure hope Aragorn ends up with that nice
elf girl. I like her." And number two, "Little
Smeagol, please be good." And she would say
that after, like, the second movie. She's
like, "Smeagol’s going to turn out to be
good, right?" She was hooked by him. I know.
It was kind of heartbreaking. Yeah, he gets
to have his ring. So those characters do different
things. Different adaptations of Joker do
different things.
You're going to ask yourself, you do basically
the same sorts of things, and you do want
to-- you can distinguish in your head between
villain and antagonist. It's sometimes helpful
to split those two apart. Antagonist is someone
that is working against the goals of the main
character. Villain is someone who is doing
expressly evil things. Those are my definitions.
You don't have to use them. But, for instance,
the principle in Ferris Bueller's Day Off
starts off mostly as antagonist, slightly
villainous, and then gets more and more villainous
through the way the story progresses.
But you can imagine Tommy Lee Jones in The
Fugitive. Tommy Lee Jones is the antagonist
of that show, but he is not the villain. The
villain is someone else. But most of the time
with that is Tommy Lee Jones. So you've got
to be kind of separating those two out. If
you want your villain to work, make sure their
motivations, if you want a villain whose motivations--
someone we empathize with, just give them
realistic motivations just like the hero or
protagonist, then put them at cross purposes
with the protagonist for some reason, and
it'll rip our hearts out.
Yeah, go ahead.
STUDENT: How do you have an antagonist who's
not inherently evil, but is very competent
and proactive, but you don't want the readers
to like?
BRANDON: How do you make a character who's
not evil but is very proactive and competent
that you don't want the readers to like? Well,
you can show someone not being evil, but also
not being good. This is generally the realm.
They're not kicking puppies. But they also
are Javert, classic example. Javert wants
to catch Jean Valjean. But he has no mercy.
He's not kicking puppies, but he is not merciful
at all. We do not like Javert until we start
to see him humanize, and then he no longer
can exist in this system because he has fallen
out of his role, so he has to jump off a bridge.
But Javert is a classic example.
The Fugitive, Tommy Lee Jones is another example,
though we like him because of this. So you
can do this. Anyone cross purpose, if you
do this right for your protagonist, and you
put the antagonist cross purpose of them,
even if it's understandable, then we will
not want them to succeed. Even sometimes if
your hero is the antagonist, as the heroes
are in Infinity War, you will want the protagonist,
who is the villain, to be successful because
of the way they are protaging, and the way
their motivations are established. And so
you will watch a movie where the heroes fail
and the villain wins, spoiler, where the protagonist
wins, and the antagonists lose, but the positions
are reversed.
All right. Let's do one more. Go ahead.
STUDENT: How do you write a character who
doesn't understand their own motivations or
is lying to themselves?
BRANDON: Right. How do you write a character
who doesn't understand their own motivations
or who is lying to themselves?
This is where, number one, small successes
at the beginning are really handy for establishing
this. Having the character be proactive about
something that isn't involved in the larger
scope, and showing us they can be, and showing
us what they actually need through that, and
then having them verbally say, "No, that's
not what I need. It's what I never needed,"
is a really good way. First impressions are
really important. If you impress upon us that
this character is really proactive in their
small sphere, but they don't think they're
competent enough to out into the wide world,
we will believe what you showed us, not what
they say. So make sure your shows are on point.
The other way to do this is to have a character
that we do trust, who is a trustworthy narrator,
tell that character the truth, and make sure
that we see that and empathize with that,
so that we are knowing this character's going
to learn and change. All right?
All right, guys, we'll do Character 2 next
week. Write down any questions I didn't get
to, and we'll do it in two weeks.
