Today I'm going to talk about and use character webs, a method/principle introduced to me by John Truby in his book "The Anatomy of Story". Since I am a bit short on time, this post will be a rather short one.
Character Webs
John Truby begins his chapter on characters with telling the reader that defining the hero's traits and then telling a story with him changing is "all wrong". Instead of focusing on the characters as separate individuals he advocates for looking at "all of them together in an interconnected web". According to him, this approach has several advantages:
- the characters won't seem to be "alone, in a vacuum, unconnected to others"
- the hero won't seem to be the only person that matters
- comparing characters and possibly defining their dynamics when they meet will help in defining them and make them more complex
- secondary characters are rather seen on the same layer as the hero/the main characters
- helps constructing story functions for characters and inscribing archetypes, themes and oppositions
While I do agree with many of Truby's thoughts, I do believe that e.g. character sheets have their value on their own: Not every character needs to be distinguished in as much detail as the main characters, and focusing on a character and his connections for a while will help achieving that. (And, I don't believe that there is such a thing as a "wrong" approach.)
A quick word on character dynamics: The term dynamics was not introduced by the book I'm referencing, but by myself. It is taken from a seminary I had and probably inspired by systems theory (focusing on a delimited system) and/or cybernetics (which is all about a system's inner and outer entanglements), Character dynamics in that sense are concerned with the processes happening in and between characters. For our character web I'd like to highlight especially the latter: What behaviours do characters show when meeting certain other characters? What is the atmosphere like? What do they do to their environment? What is created (music? words? battles?)? What are typical patterns in their meetings? Answering such questions seems to be a very promising approach for making a very coherent story.
But know I'd already like to proceed to my Witcher quest.
Further Reading / Inspiration
- John Truby: The Anatomy of Story
- Wikipedia: Social psychology
A "Witcher" Quest - Part 3: Character Web
A bit of a problem at this point is that I haven't yet defined any character but Alene in more detail. I will nonetheless do a character web and if it fails I will hopefully lean be able to learn something from it.
Here comes the result (see post #11 for a summary of the story and its characters):
 |
| Here you may look at a PDF-variant of this diagram in unlimited resolution! |
I started out with a list of characters and turned each of them into a blue sticky note. The notes were then arranged based on the characters more formal relations: Aisker is Alene's father, Alvin lives in the forest and so on. I quickly started to note that I tended to place some notes higher than others and decided to make a rule out of it: After some iteration it became "the lower a note/connection is placed, the more personal it is". I also used clustering and proximity to indicate the closeness of characters (Aisker and his wife) or their distance to something (Aisker and Alvin). I made two enclosing lines to denote the border of the village and the valley, such that e.g. Geralt could be placed more sensibly. The line type also got a meaning: Straight lines indicate a more formalized or stable relationship, while curved lines are rather dynamic and skewed/angular connections indicate a not optimal, somewhat broken relation. The central dashed line represents Geralt's wish for non-involvement: He'd rather like to visit the valley on a formal level of contract, employee, employer and work. The mere connection of burgomaster and Aisker shows, how difficult it might be to uphold this distance, especially if Geralt is confronted in the beginning with Alene and Alvin, rather than the eldorman himself in his official role. Lastly I tried to identify the main characters in this web, denoted in red.
So, this was the positive side: I managed to express a good many things with this diagram. However, there are some caviats:
First of all, it is difficult to take into account every character with the amount of detail I'd wish for. For example, defining the relation of Geralt, Aisker or Alene to each of the other characters would be very desirable, but simply not practical in one diagram: It would result in too much clutter. Here the more focused character sheets might be of help, or a single diagram devoted to the relations of one character. Furthermore, little can be expressed of character dynamics: It is rather a description of the overall dynamics in the story that is delivered. For some important characters thinking about their concrete dynamics might be sensible.
But in the end I was suprised by the ways of characterization that emerged whilst using this "method". For example it came to me, that Nohman could be seen as a surrogate brother for Aisker, which would result in a much more interesting connection than "seeking the river". And I am altogether content with this overview, which would surely help to introduce the setting to someone who is new to the project.
Ideas for Feedback
- How else could characters be described besides character sheets and webs?
- Which character/reation in the above diagram should be explained more deeply?
Conclusion
This short method really helped me to take a more holistic view on the characters, their environment and their connections. It also provides, as Truby mentions himself, the possibility of setting several themes, archetypes and conflicts into relation by inscribing them into characters, which would lead to a very natural source of inspiration for a story (at least, that is how it seems to me).
Concerning my Witcher quest, I'd like to turn my eye towards more gameplay-adjacent matters. The story space/level needs a post and when I lay out the so far existing story (as described in post #10) in that space, then there'll probably be a lot of re-adjustments to be done. And maybe I will get some inspiration to fill the remaining gaps in the story.
I am looking forward to this and hope you have a good time!
No comments:
Post a Comment