Brandon Sanderson Lecture 4 - Character creation examples part 2 - 6/6

The Bechdel Test - do you guys know what it is? You should look it up. There's a feminist webtoonist who noticed that it's fairly common in stories, particularly in films, that there will be one female character and a whole bunch of guys, and the woman will never talk to other women except about romantic interests. The only scenes of a woman talking to another woman, so... They started calling it the Bechdel test. "Does this book or movie pass the Bechdel Test?" Is there more than one woman in the book? Does that woman talk to another woman about something other than a man? And you will be surprised at how often this comes up. Very frequently... you know, you should study a little feminist theory, but... very frequently in storytelling, we're aware of not trying to make a single weak female, so writers, particularly male writers, will write into it one superstrong, superfemale lead, who there's nothing wrong with... remember this over here... nothing wrong with her, she's kind of perfect and... the guys will be befuddled all the time and they'll be making mistakes and the girl always has the right answer and things like this. Honestly... ok don't let this get around, but the Missionary Guide did this. Do you guys... you guys are hardly old enough for the discussions, they're like these tapes that went along with the discussions... [One student is laughing] You're laughing, you've listened to these tapes. Student: Yes. Brandon: It's like the elders come on and they do a horrible job. And then the other elders come on and do a horrible job. And then the end is: let's see how the sisters do it, and then they come on and do it perfectly. Which is actually over-reacting to PC'ness. You see this with minority characters too. What how often nowdays in a video game or movie there will be one black character and they will be super awesome. They will be the most awesome person around, but they aren't allowed to be the main character. They're either like, the General, or they're... whatever. They're God, in the Bruce Almighty movies. They're this awesome minority character... maybe the "Magical ***," you can read about that one. But they're the super character, they're the only one, they're alone in this world, this sea of white males. There's like one minority and one woman. And neither of them have any real problems with them, and they'll probably save everybody a couple of times. But the story isn't going to be about them. This is the modern level of how we're.. we can't be reacting against.... we're being PC... we're making sure we're including minorities but they don't ever get to be the leads. Student: Just going back to the female, why couldn't she have a burning passion or desire to map the world she's in, but because she's stuck taking care of her siblings her only option to get to hear about the outside world is through the weaponry that she sells to people who are actually travelling. Brandon: Ok, I like that. Travel. That's not a secret, but that's another passion and I'm liking that as a conflict. You can actually make this a secret if you want to. She's not telling her family that she feels really tied down by them. Student: Travels and enters beauty contests. Brandon: Ummmmm... No. But nice try. She secretly has this desire to travel. I'm keeping this one a little bit more normal because the others are getting a little weird. This is a really cool one. This is a really good start to a character. Student: Maybe she made a weapon for a war but she doesn't like the way that... [inaudible] Brandon: Or maybe she's got the opportunity now to go and visit one of these battles and she sees what she's been doing, and she's like Tony Stark, she's like "holy cow... so I'm gonna build an Iron Man..." I don't know. Let's go on to this one over here. Oh you've one more thing. Student: I just have a question, when you create characters do you map them out like this to... Brandon: I often will. To add flavour I will start asking myself harder questions about this. I will go deeper than this. We don't have time for a lot of this. I'll tell you some of the other questions we're going to ask. In fact, maybe we'll do this guy's secret passion then I'll do one different question for each person. So, what's the 6 year old's secret? I don't think a 6 year old can have a lot of secrets. Let's not do the 6 year old having a deep dark secret. Not everybody needs one. Student: I liked what he said before, making him so he can read peoples' minds. Brandon: Ok, alright. Clairvoyant. Cool. So where would I go deeper in this? How I would start to go deeper is I would start to build other characters into their lives that creates friction with them. Or I would start to look at setting elements that would create friction with them. I would start trying to add depth to them by... you know, the girl croquet player... Do we have political meanings? What kind of personality type we're going to look for. We're going to use the color test... I don't always use the color test but occasionally... ok we're going to make her red. You know, that color thing. Or I'll use this or I'll use that, or just something to say I'm making a personality archetype to this person. So lets give her a personality archetype. What kind of personality is she? Student: Introvert. Brandon: Introvert? Ok, what kind of introvert? There's lots of different types. Scholarly introvert, shy introvert, doesn't-really-notice-the-world-around-them introvert. Obesessive introvert? Ok I like obsessive. There you go. We get a personality archetype. That's going to help right there. So... 52 year old guy. Let's add an unusual political or religious philosophy to him that does not meld that well with everything else he holds. Ok he's racist! He's racist against, say, an alien species. Student: Xenophobic. Brandon: No... xenophobic's been done too much. Alien races is better, more realistic. Well, not realistic, both are realistic. But if he has a certain alien race that he really doesn't like... that he just hates, that's going to add some really interesting things. Now this is getting to the point that we've got a lot of things for this guy to focus on, so I would back off from personality quirks at this point, and I have to start working on plot sort of things. Because you don't want every character... you want to have a mix of different things. You don't want them to feel like they're everything but the kitchen sink. And this guy's feeling pretty schizophrenic to me right now. So really, I would start looking at ways to tie this all in. We don't want to go too far afield. It's good to be passionate about things not related to plot but if we just have a list of random things you're going to forget about them as you're writing, it's going to be very hard to be consistent, so I would start trying to tie a few of these together. That would be my next step here. Ok, 28 year old female. What else can we do for her? I'm going to start with her with a plot hook. Let's say, what happens to her? She's got her life with all this, and what happens that changes and shakes up her entire life right at the beginning? Student: A sibling that she's trying to take care of runs away. Brandon: Oh hey! That's a pretty good one. You've got a little bit of a Pride and Prejudice thing there. Student: Along with that, someone just mentioned, maybe she got a special commission to build a special weapon, and maybe it's the first time magic has been implemented into it, and the sibling takes it and goes. Brandon: There you go, now that's a great one! Her younger sister steals the magic sword. Ok I like that a lot. That's going to be great with her. So she's got to chase her younger sibling, maybe her... whatever you want to come up with you have to then build the younger sibling to make sure they're not flat. But you've got a nice story there... why would she run off with a magic sword? Our character has to chase her into the middle of a battlefield where the girl's going to sell the prototype to the wrong side or to any side, or something like that. Plus she's getting chased by the person who commissioned it, that thinks she stole this... You've got a great story happening there. Ok, 6 year old. How are we going to make the 6 year old proactive? That's a big challenge. Student: He tries to affect the world around him based on the things he hears in peoples' minds. Brandon: Ok. He's got a superman complex. You guys know superman complex? Studying deviant psychological behaviour will be really useful for you guys. This is the kind of personality quirk that is... you feel like you've got to rescue everybody. It's almost borderline codependent, where you feel like everything... your job is to make everyone happy. You don't focus on yourself, you focus on everyone else to the extreme. That could be an interesting thing to work through with a 6 year old who's got this amazing power and feels like he should be able to fix everything. That could be a good story. Your next step... we have to end so we won't actually do this... but your next step would be, if you really wanted to, go do this sort of thing with your friends. Or just take these characters. And the way to practice is to have each of these characters walk through the same scene and have them notice different things. Have them describe it in different ways. The female, our necromancer is like "where are the ley lines in this city that I have first come to, can I feel the power? Are there any powerful necromancy?" They'll notice the gothic architecture and say "wow that's a warding against this sort of thing." Or she may notice the billboards, or the... because she's the croquet person or whatever. I would probably actually make her a sports star. I may not use croquet, I may use something else because croquet's a little bit... quirky. [Student says something inaudible] If I were going to do her I would probably change to something like polo, so that there would be more of a reason for her to tour, and things like this. String theory guy, he walks through the city, what is he going to see? He's got a really scholarly background so is he going to know the different types of architecture? Or is he going to see the old city, or is he not going to be caring about that because he's so science fictiony? Is he going to be interested in the technology or types of phones people are carrying? The woman over there is going to see weapons and know they're great, she's going to see metals. Whereas the kid is going to be, like... "red, red, red! I want the red teddy bear!" And that mean he's fascinated by colors, or something. Your goal is to build these characters and then try and describe the world in a way that is unique to them, and have them all go through the same scene, and, without infodumps, show us all this stuff about them without ever telling us, in a single line, their passions by what they notice in the world. Never say "She was a necromancer." Have her say "that's a ward against necromancy. I won't be able to enter that building." Suddenly we know she's a necromancer! And that's a much better hook. You can start this book by saying "Jill stood outside the building, confronted by an ancient necromancy ward, realising she wasn't going to be able to go with the rest of her school group into the state capitol, because someone had warded it against necromancers." You start your sentence like that... Can you imagine the next YA book starting like that? There's a great hook line for you that tells us we've got a 17 year old necromancer on a school field trip unable to enter the state capitol. So she's going to have to fake a heart attack or something. Do this with everybody and see if you can get across... master of string theory, see if you can get across love of siblings and family, without actually having to say "she loved her family deeply." Ok? And that's your challenge. Do this with your own characters in the next scenes that you're writing.