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Hello Animals. Story Shamans, comin' at cha!
This week, more character! Are you surprised? I'm not!
We're talking about Character Web. It's a big deal.
When assembling a cast of characters, you want a single trait that ties them all together.
Connecting them into a web. This connective element could be one of the
traits that we already discussed. All of the characters could share a flaw,
or an arc, or a ghost. Example!
All of your characters could be connected by the same character flaw.
Let's say, they all have intimacy issues. And through the course of the story, each
character will demonstrate a different and unique expression of this same "intimacy issues"
flaw. Or let's say all the characters follow the
same character arc. It's a coming of age story across the board.
In their own way, every character will grow up, mature, through the course of the story.
This could be subtle, this could be obvious, it depends on what you're going for.
Or, maybe you want to be a little more straight forward with your plot, and you go ahead and
give all your characters the same ghost. Then you can play out the different perspectives
and opinions they all have about this shared event from their past.
Say a group of soldiers all survived the same battle and now some guy they thought was dead,
he's comin' back for revenge. Any shared character trait can be used to
create a web. Whichever way you play it, having a single
trait that connects and binds your characters together gives your story cohesion.
It makes your story feel organic. The cast of characters are intertwined and
overlap, giving the audience a simple understanding of what all these characters have to do with
each other. It helps an audience make sense of a character's
role in a story, in relation to everyone else. Next week we'll be wrapping up our discussion
of character. We've saved the best for last so hold onto your hats.
Or eat'chur hat. Whaaaaaaat?? Don't eat'chur hat.
That's a prescription buddy!