Check out part one here.
Storytellers say that conflict is the substance of all stories, but I disagree. I say that plot and conflict are meaningless if the audience doesn't care about what happens to your characters.
Great characters are the heart and soul of any great story. Without them - we'll just be staring at the screen, feeling nothing.
How do we make the audience care about our characters?
In order to make the audience care about our character, we need to make them sympathize with the character. To sympathize means to build an emotional connection to the character. This is what will keep our eyes glued to the screen (or book).
Two common mistakes people make when trying to establish sympathy are:
- They try to make their character as detailed as possible. They think that by making their character ultra detailed, the audience will find the character more realistic and hence relate to them better. In reality, filling your character with superficial traits will only make them flatter than a pancake.
- They make their character over-the-top miserable: "Jim lost both his parents, has no money to support himself, struggles to find a job, sucks at life and has an incurable genetic disease. Yeh, don't do that... Instead it's better to focus on one of these traits and go into great depth.
So how do we create sympathy properly?
There are numerous ways a writer can establish an emotional connection to the audience:
Some have proposed that giving your characters a flaw to overcome will make them more sympathetic. Others have proposed that a strong sense of justice will make us root for the character.
These methods are all great and they all clearly work, but when I was writing my visual novel, I felt that these methods alone weren't enough. I found that the best method for me personally was to create a void within the character.
I did this by withdrawing certain needs or wants from a character - make them missing something from their lives, be it food, warmth, shelter or compassion, esteem, potential.
Take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs for more information:
We've all felt loneliness before, no matter how popular we may be. We've also felt hopeless and loss at some point in our lives - we've all experienced failure at something, despite giving our best efforts.
These experiences are universal to humans. Creating this void will make the audience immediately relate to the character, because they share a common humanity. The audience will feel for the character and start rooting for them to win.
This is different from a goal, because it's usually less specific and the character doesn't actively pursue it like a goal. An example of a goal would be: 'to escape from prison,' something the character acts on. On the other hand, an example of a 'void' would be 'lack of freedom,' something which might just be there, but the character doesn't need to pursue it. There could be three reasons for this:
- Pursuing the void is futile and they've accepted to live with it
- They don't know that the void exists. They mindlessly pursue another goal, thinking it'll make them happy when in fact, filling the void brings true happiness.
- And finally: they must pursue other priorities (like the classic 'abandon love for justice' theme which usually appears in detective movies).
A character who always gets bad grades no matter how hard he/she tries will always be more empathetic than a character who's goal is to simply get good grades. Audiences can relate to this 'lack of potential' and will start rooting for the character to succeed.
Some of my favorite examples are:
Image Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
I love your perspective on writing!
I think that the most engaging hero's journey is that where we feel like the protagonist is not merely accomplishing a goal, but trying to "complete" himself. Luke Skywalker immediately comes to mind.
Keep on rockin'!
Thank you so much!
You're absolutely on point with Luke Skywalker - he's a character who undergoes through major character development to become a more "complete" person.
The great thing about having 'holes' in your character is that they don't even need to be fixed or filled in by the end. The goal needs to be achieved pretty much ALL the time - making that the one predictable element, but the holes in your character can remain to the very end.
When it comes to movies, I think the characters from Blade Runner are an excellent example of this - all of them you can feel have something missing in their lives - Deckard, Roy, Rachael etc.
Absolutely! When Gaff tells Deckard the "Too bad she won't live" line, I always feel like their journey has come to a sort of an end, but nothing was really accomplished. It was just a story that made us feel and think, but the characters weren't fixed, their lives didn't actually get better, etc...no "completion".
Such a beautiful ending. It feels like he found happiness for a second then it gets taken away :( Now this makes me want to write a piece on how to write endings lol...
Lol:) continuous inspiration...gotta love that!
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Well done! I’m glad that I have already been doing this without previously thinking about it. I guess it came from the tens of thousands of pages of sagas I have already read...anyway this could be a good helping hand to anyone who struggles with characters creation! Minnowsupport vote from me will soon arrive! You have earned my follow my friend and that does not happen often:P
Thanks for your support! Really appreciate it! It's always good to be aware of these things in writing :)
This fits in well with my interests, and what I like to read about on Steemit. It's a great post. Following you now, and will take a look at your other posts when I get the chance :)
Glad you found it useful and thanks for the follow :)
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