Character Web

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I didn't post this video because it's about The Walking Dead. I never really cared much for that show. Watched a few episodes, then lost interest pretty fast. Maybe because there's no identifiable theme? I don't know.

I posted the video because it's about Character Web and how to go about creating one. Each character should have a particular stance on the main theme, or possibly a secondary theme for some of them. Otherwise they don't belong and are just along for the ride and weighing everything down uselessly.

This is one way to approach writing a story. I don't think it's the only way, but it's tested and proven to work if done well. It just so happens when I started writing the Beastseekers I actually did have a central theme, stated in my premise. And I did a pretty good job of making a web of characters around it. Even after I've stopped and re-started almost from scratch several times, that character web still seems to be holding true. But I'm going to be doing some exploratory writing about it for a while to see if I might have missed a major take on the theme that I left out. I might want to add another character to represent that, I don't know. Or maybe save it for a sequel or series if it goes that way. But I think it's well worth exploring. It might modify my existing characters somewhat. A couple of them have started to become a little too similar I think.

The moment that made me decide to build a blog post around this video was when he said this:

Avoid depth for the sake of depth—without purpose, depth is a waste of time.
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I've been exploring how to write deeper into the emotions and thoughts of my main character, and to express more about the other ones too, but this gave me a bit of a brake check. I mean, I definitely will continue to do freewrites and practice scenes delving into that stuff, because it's improving my writing. But for the actual story there's no depth unless it's called for.