Characters

With this brief, I wanted to put a strong focus on the narrative and in particular the characters as I knew this was something I wanted to work on and develop from the last brief. Although I had a strong concept last time, I felt that my characters could have been a lot stronger and more defined.

I immediately began researching characters and the art of the creation and got the following books...

A writers guide to character creation - Andrew Oldham (2010)
Creating Unforgettable Characters - Linda Seger (1990)
Creating Characters - Howard Lauther (2004)
Building believable characters - Mark McCutheon (2001)
Creating Characters: How to Build Story People - Dwight Swain (2008)

These books were the best of the ones I had read as they went into more detail and had a focus on visually creating a strongly defined character than the other books, which seemed a lot more basic in their approach.

I began structuring my main characters and adhered to the advice of Lauther (2004), who explains that a good way to create a character is to contrast them to their environment/situation (p47).

With that in mind I knew that the main environment and narrative was essentially a dark and grim one, so I made the main protagonist an innocent, 10 year old boy. I thought the contrast of the young boy in such a dark, twisted landscape would make an interesting hook to the story.

Using a young boy would also give a different perspective on the story than using an adult, his reactions and decisions in the environment would also differ from an adults.