 Hello and welcome back to my channel. My name is Jackie and I'm an aspiring fiction writer who is going to be revising a book in July for Camp Nenrymo. So today, as part of my prep, I want to go through the characters from that book and especially I want to get the antagonist, protagonist, dynamic right. And if you've been watching me for a while, you'll know that this is something I struggle with, but I love when I see good antagonists and protagonists in literature and films and so on. So I'd really love to nail it in this revision. So what I'm going to start with is looking at each of the major characters in the book, like the protagonist and the major secondary characters. And I'm going to ask myself, what do they want? What will they sacrifice to get it? What do they fear? Who do they care about? And what will they do for that person? And I'm hoping that'll help me get a bit clearer on their motivations, which I feel like I know in my head, who knows, maybe I don't, but I feel like I know them in my head. I don't feel like they come across clearly in the book. Following that, I want to look really closely at the antagonist and the protagonist, looking at their values as well as their goals and how the antagonist is a necessary opponent for our protagonist. These steps or ways of looking at this dynamic come from on Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson. And I think a lot of his discussion was originally based on The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. So I'll include links to both of those books in the description. When it comes to who these characters are, I'm not sure how much detail to go into on the video because I don't really want to spoil my own book. However, that book probably isn't going to be out until 2022, assuming I get a traditional publishing deal or 2021 at the earliest if I decide to self-publish. So maybe by then you're forgotten. So if you don't want to know who the characters are, please skip ahead. If you do want to know, here's the cast. So our protagonist is Hannah. Hannah is a 16-year-old girl who is the only non-superhero in a family of superheroes. Her siblings are Maria, MacLenn, Thomas, and Maxim. And if you're wondering where these names came from, I live in Estonia at the moment. These are Estonian names because I want the world in which this takes place to be loosely based on Tallinn Estonia. So Maria is the oldest. She is the closest to Hannah. She has fire powers. Maxim is a creep. He has the power to project his pain onto others. So a lot of what he does is like slide into my own arm and make someone else feel that. MacLenn is the youngest. She is 12 and she can basically disintegrate whatever she touches. And Thomas, he's 15, no, he's 16 as well. Yeah, he and Hannah are the same age. And he has super strength. Their father is Artem, which I cannot say properly. So maybe I should change it. But he is a very smart, very powerful, wealthy geneticist who originally discovered the superhuman gene and he's actually been behind most of the research towards this gene and these people as well as behind a lot of the laws restricting their rights in this world. So the first group of characters is really Hannah and her family, so the supers. Then we get the Russian mafia because why not? So in the Russian mafia we have Liza or Liza Veta. She is the granddaughter of the current mob boss. The mob boss is Evgenia. I don't really have much more to say about her. And then there are the goons, I guess, but that doesn't really do them justice. But we have Dmitry or Dina, Mikhail or Misha, Alexei or Alex and Dennis. So those are the major characters. When it comes to motivations and how well I know them, I think Hannah, Maria, Naksim, Marlen, Liza, I think I know all of them quite well. So I'm not too worried. When it comes to the more minor mafia characters, I don't know. I know that I haven't really thought that much about their motivations. I'm also not sure if I need to. So please give me your thoughts on this in the comments. Like, do you come up with what everyone cares about even if they're secondary characters who don't actually influence the plot that much? Or do you just do it for the major characters? In my case, I'm going to think about it but realistically I think I'll probably stop after I get through the main ones. So I've now done those questions for each of the major characters on my list. So Hannah and her siblings, except for Thomas. And on the mob side, I've done Liza and the boss. This went pretty well. It was interesting because there are some things I came up with that I went, oh, I can add that to the book or maybe I should think about like not just what the motivation is but why they have that motivation. So for the boss, I was thinking maybe her main motivation is she is ready to hand over. She's looking for the best successor. She wants to make sure the mafia organization is in the best possible shape and as invulnerable as possible before she hands it over. And then I thought, well, why? And now I'm thinking that maybe she's dying but we'll see. I'm going to keep playing with that and see how it goes into the plot. One of the things I struggled with though is that and I always struggle when doing like individual character sheets is that I see each character as this unique separate person and then I forget about the role they play within the story and how they interplay with the other characters. And I think this is both a strength and a flaw of mine because in my life in general, I am very laser focused. Like when I'm doing something, I'm doing that one thing. I don't get distracted. And I think that can almost be to my detriment with writing because like let's take having a romance B story for instance. I really struggle to figure out how to work that into the main book because I'm focused on this one main plot and that feels like a distraction. So when it comes to looking at each of these characters in isolation, I'm looking at them in isolation and I got to the end of that exercise and I felt like, well, I know who all of these people are now but I don't know how to bring that into the story or I don't know how that affects each of them. So then I decided to try doing a map of how the characters interact with each other so what their relationships are. So Hannah obviously is directly connected to each of her siblings and her father. The siblings are all also connected to the father and as connected to Lisa and each of the mob people she's met directly. Lisa is connected to each of the mob people but other than that, there's no real crossover from one world to the other. And I don't know how much this helped but as I was writing this out, like I started doing little notes. So notes about the primary emotion between them. So like Hannah and Maria, it's a lot of love and self-sacrifice. And then minor characters, I was also thinking about their goals. So Maria's wondering how to escape from this family and from her superhero duties but she doesn't want to leave Hannah behind. How can she save Hannah at the same time? Between Hannah Marlène, her little sister, there's a lot of resentment. Marlène feels a lot of superiority towards Hannah because Marlène has powers but Hannah does not. But at the same time, she wants to bring Hannah down because there's this fear that well what if Hannah developed powers someday and what's that going to do to Marlène's status. So that was interesting. It's all stuff I felt like I already knew but just going through the exercise was fun. However, the page isn't the most beautiful. I couldn't find a pencil so I had to do it in pen. So I might try and create like a more aesthetically pleasing one. What I did realize though is that my mafia goons, I'm just going to keep calling them that because it's a fun word. I don't think I need individual motivations for them when it comes to the story itself and what they're trying to achieve but I think it would be interesting to explore what their reason for being a part of this mafia family is. Like how did they join? Why did they stay? What do they get out of it? And that might help me figure out just their relationship with Lisa more because these are Lisa's favorites basically in the whole family. So I want to know why they're her favorites. All in all, that was a really interesting exercise. So now I'm going to look at my antagonist-protagonist dynamic. The protagonist is Hannah. The antagonist is her father, Artem. And I'm going to look at a couple of different things from on writing and well building. The first is what are each of their values? So I can see both how they reflect each other and how they differ. Then what's the scale of those values? What does it motivate them to do? This is similar to the question before about what do they want and what are they willing to sacrifice for it. Then there are a number of elements in Tim's book that I don't think are necessary for this story. So things like, you know, the villain being the hero of their own story. I think that a lot of us recognize we're shades of gray. I think it's possible for people to have motivations that they recognize aren't the best ones, but they still have those motivations or even they are motivated to do something that they realize that they're probably sacrificing more than what they should for it, that they're still willing to sacrifice that. So I feel like a lot of people are just they have their goal. They're doing what they need to do to achieve it. They don't particularly think of themselves as heroes. So I don't want to go too far into trying to make the antagonist like, you know, he's trying to save the world from his perspective, like type of thing. I don't, I, he's not the hero in his own story. He's a man who's going after what he wants and he doesn't really care who gets in his way. Then the other thing I want to look at is the necessary opponent moment. So this is a moment when basically the antagonist attacks the protagonist in a way that no one else can. And I think it will work for this book just because they have a father and daughter relationship, like they've known each other for 16 years. He should know all of her weaknesses and know how to hit her where it hurts. Then the final thing I want to look at is any similarities that Hannah and I can share. So the reason my understanding is the reason you look for similarities between your villain and your hero is because that helps highlight how they're different. So in the series Sherlock, for example, Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty are quite similar. They're both highly intelligent. They both dress in similar ways. They both are played by actors who bear a resemblance to each other. And one of them is a consulting detective, while the other one is a consulting criminal. So having all of those similarities makes the points where they're different in terms of morality far more stark. So I'm going to do this now and I will let you know how I go. I've now looked at Hannah and Uhtem side by side. So basically I did one person's values, then I went to the next person's one. And then I looked at the scale for one person. So what would they do? Then the scale for the next one. And then I looked at the necessary opponent moment, which was sort of combined because it's both of them. And after that, I looked at similarities. So what was interesting here is that Uhtem, I need to do more work on him because I feel like I know what he wants, but I don't know the why behind it. It's like what happened with the mafia boss earlier, where he's like, well, I know she's looking to hand over, she's looking for the best successor, but why? In this case, I know he wants power, respect. I know he wants to be the best. I know he wants to extend his influence. He hates being undermined. He wants to basically control his world. But I don't know why. So I'm starting to play with that a little bit. But I mean, on one hand, like, yes, I should play with it. I should know my character. On the other hand, is it relevant? Because it's not going to feature in the book at all. He's not a sympathetic character. It's a single point of view book. So it's all from Hannah's perspective. So maybe I could do something. I don't know. He was picked on at school or no one at university appreciated his research, who knows. And now he's determined to prove himself and get his revenge. Do I need to know that in order to make it clear what he wants and what he's after and what he's willing to do for it? So here's another question for you for the comments. When it comes to your villains, how deep do you go into their motivations? And one of the examples I keep going back to is the Batman and Joker in I think it's the Dark Knight Rises. And that is one of those like hero and villain dynamics done really well where the villain continually pushes the hero to become basically more and more of themselves and to push their limits and to decide what they will and won't do. However, we don't know. In fact, I need to rewatch this because I watched it once when it first came out, but I was working night shift at the time and I kept falling to sleep. So I haven't actually watched the full thing when I've been conscious. But from memory, I don't think we ever find out the Joker's backstory in that film. I remember him saying like a bunch of stories for how he got the scars, but I don't think it's ever confirmed. I think it's left open. And that doesn't make him less scary as a villain. That doesn't make him less compelling, not knowing why he wants what he wants. So let me know in the comments how far you go with your villains. Do you absolutely have to know why they want what they want or is knowing what they want enough? Anyway, if we get back to my book. So I have their values. And what was interesting is that Hannah's values and what she wants actually changes throughout the book because at the beginning of the book, and this is where I started when I was doing my preparations in preptober, was she wanted to prove herself to her father and she felt like she needed to develop powers in order to do that. But in the book, she actually switches basically at the midpoint. So she gets kicked out of home because she doesn't have power. She's determined to develop powers so she can go back. Then she gets tangled with the mafia. She starts to learn more about the bad things her father's done. And she agrees to work with the mafia to help bring him down. So it goes from I need to prove myself to my dad, I need to be accepted by my dad to I need to stop this man who is basically going to wreak havoc on the world through various things that I won't get into detail about now because spoilers. And this is interesting because that then affects scale. So something I didn't realize was that Hannah actually betrays her sister at the beginning because her sister Maria, who's the closest person in the world to her, Maria, she knows that Maria does not want to be a superhero. And she knows Maria would love to be free. And the truth is Maria could be free. She has been planning and saving and building resources for ages, but she doesn't want to abandon her. And because Hannah so focused on proving herself to her father, she is actually like demoting Maria in her level of in her hierarchy of priorities because she's prioritizing proving herself to her father over valuing what her sister wants and needs. So I didn't realize that but yes she betrays her sister for her father. Later she attempts to betray the mafia for her father. So in order to gain his acceptance she is willing to sacrifice things that on the surface she says are important to her. Later because what she values changes, the scale of what she's willing to do also changes. So ultimately what she's doing is then betraying her father instead of the others, but she's willing to do things like break the law in order to do it, in order to bring him down. When it comes to the necessary opponent moment, I actually already have that in the book. So I was thinking about what is the worst thing he could do, how could he attack her in a way that no one else can. And he actually already does in the climax. So I think I can keep what I already have. I just need to build it up more in order to make sure it really has that hit. And then when it comes to how they're similar, they're both geneticists fascinated with examining the super gene. Both of them are willing to sacrifice other people in order to achieve their goals. So I just explained that Hannah sacrifices Maria and her friends. Artem basically isn't going to let anyone stand in his way so everyone is expendable. At the beginning of the book at least, they both believe in the necessity of the current laws. So the world that we're in actually has a lot of restrictions on superhumans and their movements and they all need to be registered and so on. And Artem set that up. So he obviously believes it. He wants to have power over this group of people and overall the research and so on that happens in that space. And Hannah believes it at the beginning of the book, but gradually changes throughout the book. What is interesting about this is that none of this is new. I mean some of it's new, like asking why to get behind the surface level motivations is new. But the motivations themselves, how the characters relate to each other, I already knew all of this. Like I'd already thought about all of this. I don't think it's in the book though. And what I'm stuck on is I'm not sure how to put it in there. Like I don't know if it means I need extra scenes that we don't currently have. I don't know if it means some of the scenes that I have need to work a different way or need to be cut. I don't know if it means just making more passing references within the existing plot. So I'm not sure how valuable this exercise was after all of that. Yeah books are hard. Like so think of real life as a comparison. You have your friends and your family and you know what they're working towards or what motivates them, probably if you're close to them, that you don't spend every interaction talking about it. And most of the time you're just focused on what you're doing and if you're catching up, you're focused on catching up and if like whatever the plot is of your life, that plot's moving forward. You're not actually talking about everyone's motivations and desires and so on. That's all underneath and it contributes to how people act and what they value but no one's actively communicating that. So when you translate that into a book, well you've got a bunch of people who are all living their own lives and for the purpose of this plot, they've all run into each other and they're working towards a common or in the case of antagonist-protagonist like contradictory goal. You know how do you do the same thing? Because I see these characters and I know all of this stuff about them but I think someone who didn't and was reading this book would not get the message and I don't know how to put all of it into the book. So yeah, books are hard. I don't know what I'm doing. This is probably not news to anyone who watches my videos but that's where I am. So from here I think I'm going to continue playing with this. I want to look at the mafia goons and figure out what their backstory is, why they ended up in the mafia. I want to... I don't know if I need to play with that damn more. In any case, I think this is going to be a circular process. So from here, for my next couple of videos I'm going to be looking at different things like the next one I want to look at the overall plot, what I currently have and what the ideal one should look like and I think that when I start looking at the plot and the events in the book, then I'm going to have to come back to this character work and go okay, how is this demonstrated by the plot and what needs to change in order to make all of this clearer. So ultimately, I think anyone who writes knows that one single exercise or even a couple of exercises aren't going to clarify everything at once. Each thing you do is a step that gets you towards writing the best book you possibly can and sometimes you make big strides forward and sometimes you need to step back in order to pick something up before you can move forward again. So I think I'm going to call this a day in terms of this video. I hope you liked this. If you did, please like, subscribe, hit the notification bell and do all of those good things and in the comments below, please let me know how deep you go with character motivations and how deep you go into how many characters you do this sort of work for. Is it just you a couple of major characters, secondary characters? Is it every character in your book? And again, how deep do you go with those motivations? So is it enough to know what someone wants or do you also need to know why they want it and why they want that and so on? Please let me know. Other than that, I'll see you next time. Bye.