Character design: Choices

(gentle music) - Welcome back. So you've made your creative brief, and now we're going to look over it and think: Who my character be that would appeal to this reader, who would fit the goal that I have? So in my case, to make a compelling detective character, who has a growth mindset? So do I know anything about this person? For me, I know that this person is probably in her mid 40s, and that will just be something that she has in common with my potential reader. And I want her to have some sort of way to access these interesting artists that I was talking about. I wonder if she could be a museum curator, so that would be an interesting job for her. And I want there to be some way that she relates to the reader that I'm imagining, some way that maybe the needs that they have or their emotional state would be similar. I wonder if she could be, instead of just having, because we're having her be detective, right? So instead of having that be her job because she's a curator, what if she's moonlighting as a detective? I'm not sure why she'd be doing that, but let's say she's moonlighting. And what that would do is give her the opportunity to be earning some extra money. Maybe she has this idea of starting her own business, and so she's earning extra money, moonlighting, solving some art crimes because she has access to these people through her curator work. So that's what I know so far about my character. Not a lot, but a little bit, and it's enough that I can take what I know to go into this next game, which is called choices. What I want you to do is go ahead and write down anything you know about your character, just three, five things. And then once you've done that, come on back, and we will go through a series of choices to get to know our character a little bit better. So you'll use the foundation that you've thought of for your character as you consider the choices I'm going to present to you. I'll present one choice versus another, and your job is just to make a choice. So here's an example: Would your character prefer to be too hot or too cold? Now, most of us wouldn't prefer either of these scenarios, but by forcing ourselves to make a decision for our character, we gain interesting information about this particular person. So if I'm thinking about my museum curator and asking, "Would she rather be too hot or too cold?", I think she would rather be too cold because she would be able to bundle up. And I also think that maybe she likes to go in the bathtub and just spend some time soaking, that maybe one of her favorite ways to process information after she has gone out and found some clues for a mystery. And so that would be a fun detail for her and would also be one of the reasons why she would be a little bit more okay with being too cold, but not so much with being too hot. And I also probably know that my character wouldn't want to live in a place like Hawaii. Maybe she would prefer a place like Seattle or Portland in the northwest part of the United States. So just by making that one choice about too hot or too cold, now I have a variety of things that I know about my character, and that's the goal of this game. So as we go through, I'll present you some choices. You'll have a chance to make your choice, and then you can make some notes on your character one planner. Just take shorthand about what you have decided. And after we've gone through the game, you'll be able to extract any information that you found and put it onto your list of what you know about your character. Are you ready for your choices? Does your character prefer bright colors or muted ones? Next question, would your character invite everyone they know to a party they were hosting or just a few close friends? Next, if they saw someone who needed help, would they help themselves or call for support? Here's your next question: Are they more likely to buy a gift for a loved one or to make one? And final question, when they're sad, would they go somewhere loud to avoid their feelings or sit somewhere quiet to feel them? That's all the questions I'll ask you, but if you want to take a moment or two to ask yourself some more questions, you absolutely can. These kinds of questions are not necessarily yin-yang types of questions. They're just two possibilities that help you see what your character's preference is, and interests and needs and desires all are. Once we've made our choices, we can then add anything that we know about our character to our list. So when I was thinking about my character, either buying gifts for someone or making them, I realized that she, every year for Halloween, makes Halloween costumes for her two nieces. So I discovered that she has nieces and I discovered that she's this amateur costume designer, and that's something that she's passionate about. So I'm going to write that down on my list. This also is another area that might allow her to get access to some people that would bring in some interesting types of creativity that might be less traditional. So I'm going to finish capturing my thoughts here on this page, and I encourage you to do the same. In the next video, we will start thinking about a new character who fits our design brief, but is very different than the one that we just made. And our goal here is to stretch our thinking, to find a character that might surprise us in some way and maybe unlock a possibility we didn't expect. So when you're ready, come join me, and I'll see you there. (gentle music)