All language subtitles for Masterclass - David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing - 08.Creating Compelling Characters

I've read a lot of books in my life and

I'm sure you have too. Um, I don't

always remember the plots of these

books, but the one just what sticks with

me, the element are characters. If you

read to kill a mockingb bird, you know,

sort of has something to do with racism

in the south, but you remember scout,

you know, you remember Adakus Finch, you

may you remember you may remember

Kalpurina, the maid. I really feel like

Amos Decker is one of my best characters

ever because he's so unusual.

And I remember getting a lot of emails

from people after the book came out.

Love Memory Man, but boy that Amos

Decker is annoying as hell. You know, I

can't take my eyes off him on the page,

but boy, I'd like to kick him in the ass

a couple of times, too. But that's what

I wanted because that that makes a

character memorable for both good and

bad reasons because characters in a

novel the only shot that you have to

connect on a human level with the

reader. The plot doesn't do that for the

most part but the characters do. So you

have to really invest a lot of time in

creating characters that are not only

deep but three-dimensional seem real to

people. They could walk out the street

and say hello to these people and they

would just interact with them as they

would with anybody else.

I will make a bet with all of you that

you have never in your entire life met a

perfect human being. It just doesn't

happen. Doesn't work. If I met a person

who was almost perfect, I forgot them

because it just seemed real to me at

all. in the same uh track in a novel.

Um, you can't have somebody out there

who's a totally a white knight with not

not a blemish. It just doesn't work.

Flaws in a character, it's almost a

misnomer to call them flaws. I just call

them deepening character traits. All

readers have those same types of things.

We all have issues and problems. We fall

down a lot. We get up. We make mistakes.

So flaws are one, it makes the

characters human just by default because

everybody recognizes we all have flaws

and mistakes. But two, it gives you plot

elements and plot opportunities because

somebody makes a mistake. Why? Because

they're flawed. And what does that

mistake do? Well, they have to overcome

it. It's an obstacle they have to get

through. And eventually it makes people

root against them, root for them because

they're looking, they go, you know what,

they recognize mistake. We all make

mistakes. They got knocked down, they

got back up, and now they're going to

figure out and get to the truth. And I

can support that decision on their part,

and I can root for them to get to that

point. Will Roby is a government hitman.

You know, he's the best assassin we

have. his job is to go out and to kill

people. When I first thought about him

as a character, I was like, how can I

make any reader care about this guy?

Because on the very first chapter, he's

going to like kill several people in

underground Edinburgh on Scotland. Even

though these guys are bad, he's going to

kill them in cold blood and that's his

job. So, am I going to lose the reader

after the first page, first chapter with

this guy? So, you have to think about

these things, too. What are the what's

the reader's reaction going to be to the

words that you're writing right now?

when they pick the book up a year later

when it's when it's published. So with

Will Roy's character, I knew I had to do

twofold. One, I had to show yes, this

was his job. Two, I had to show that he

was a consmate professional, how he went

about it. And three, I and this is most

importantly, I had to show that every

time he killed somebody, it stole a

little bit of his soul away. There was

an impact on him every time he pulled

the trigger or gutted somebody with a

knife. If you had a character who just

cold-bloodedly dispensed people and

couldn't care less and went out, had a

nice meal and never thought about it

again, there would be nobody who would

want to read that book because there

would no way they could relate to this

character. They would not root for him,

which I needed them to do when I was

building the story. They would root

against him. They want in chapter 2 some

somebody to come in and kill him. So for

me, I needed to humanize him. A guy who

had these special skills, who killed

people for a living, but I needed to

show that it really affected him.

When I'm dealing with uh characters and

I'm trying to explain somebody's

situation and motivations,

you have to look into their past because

past always drives motivations. Think

about an an element I like to call

baggage. And baggage really is just

fodder. It's additional material that

you can use to develop and deepen this

character. And if it's going to be a

series, then you can foreshadow things

in that person's character and how you

develop them to use later on in

different books. With Memory Man, we

when we first meet Amos Decker, he is

down and out. He's living he used to be

living in a cardboard box in the parking

lot of a Walmart, you know, after he

lost his family, lost his house, his

car, his job. He hit rock bottom.

There's no further place for him to fall

than that. And what does that mean from

a storytelling point of view? for you as

the writer, it allows you a lot of

latitude and flexibility uh to do some

positive things because if you hit rock

bottom, there's only one other place to

go, which is up. But then you as a

storyteller have to decide how do I get

that person from here there and how do I

let him rebuild? All of us have fallen

down in our lives. So when you have

somebody hitting rock bottom, this is a

terrific place for you as the writer to

deepen a character but also build a

connection from the character and the

story to the reader. This is a great way

to do it because everybody's fallen down

in their lives. They've made mistakes.

They've hit rock bottom and they have to

pull themselves back up. And to read

about a character doing the very same

thing, that drills a connection between

the reader and the story you're telling

unlike anything else you could probably

do in that story. And that's why it's so

vital to put people in incredibly bad

situations and allow readers to see how

they can survive those situations

because that is a very personal

connection.

What do you want this character to look

like on page one? What do you want the

character to look like on page 500? Cuz

they're going to change. They're going

to evolve. That's what readers really

want to look at. If you're going to put

a character into a thriller where lots

of crazy things are happening, how in

the world can you expect the character

not to be changed by the end of the

novel? But with Amos Decker, I'll give

you an example. I started off kind of

big with him because I wanted to make

him larger than life. Literally, he's

physically is a very large guy, but he's

just very different. His traumatic brain

injury changes the way he interacts with

people. You know, he has no social

skills anymore. He walks out of the

rooms and when people are still talking

to him, which is very annoying. I get

that. but also allowed me to start him

at the bottom socially. Then as he comes

out of the end, a memory man, little

things, little efforts he makes along

the way to be more human and to also

understand I know I'm not the same

person I used to be and it really is

pissing me off unbelievably. I wish I

could be but my mind won't let me be.

All of a sudden what you get from

readers is not annoyance but empathy. If

you do those things, you know, big and

small measures, and at the end of the

novel, there's a there's an evolutionary

arc of the character, you're going to

come out the other end, they're going to

close the book and put it down and go

like, I can't stop thinking about this

guy.

I grew up loving duos, you know, uh, PRO

and Captain Hastings and Holmes and

Watson. and one of my favorite kids

series with the three investigators,

three little boys about my age. I just

love those. And they in my the my camel

club series is an ensemble cast of five

older guys. For me, it was almost like I

built up better skills and talent as a

writer because I had multiple characters

I had to pay attention to. And that made

me as a as a as a writer and I think

will you too. It's like you're you're

the air traffic controller. You don't

have just one plane you're trying to

land safely or take off safely. You have

multiple planes out there. You have to

pay attention to all of them. But I

think it makes you a better ant air

traffic controller because you got a lot

of stuff on your plate and building two

characters together as a duo. It's not

just twice as hard as doing it as a solo

character. It's four or five times as

hard. Do not give short shrift to your

sidekicks. You know, then they just

become one-dimensional. Nobody really

cares about them at all. I'll give you

an example with with um Amos Decker and

Alex Jameson. He was a detective,

homicide detective. He, you know, he's

on he's sort of on the spectrum

somewhere. Has no social skills. Alex

Jameson was a journalist covering this

murder story where she didn't know if he

was the murderer or not. Over the course

of several books, they've become close.

So, what's what is her job really in

this to keep him tethered? Cuz Amos

Decker character or Will Roby, they have

a tendency to they could float away. You

know, their world is so different from

yours, mine, your world that they could

just float away unless something

tethering. At the same time, it shows

growth in her character as well. Having

to deal with a guy like him, she's

evolving as well. She's getting smarter

and learning how to deal with him and

not just deal with him, but growing as a

person. In the book that I'm working on

now, you know, she is becoming a

full-fledged FBI agent. She took that

additional step uh to become an FBI

agent where she's got she's got her

credentials, her shield, her wrestling

authority, her her uh she's graduated

from Quanico, she carries a weapon. So,

she's evolving as well. So, don't get

short shrift to the sidekick. Not only

does it weaken your story, if you want

to use that sidekick in a more prominent

way in another book, it won't work.

I try to put as much time and effort

into developing the protagonist as I do

the antagonists because they're of equal

importance. I like people who are in the

gray areas where good people do bad

things sometimes for the wrong reasons

and bad people who often do really bad

things can do something good every once

in a while and that makes them gives

them depth, gives them complexity. um

and actually you know helps people to

understand where they came from. Also

look this is really important. If you

create an evil genius or mastermind

who's doing all these diabolical things

in your book,

give him a reason or a motivation for

why he was doing it. Nobody wants to

read at the end. Yeah, he was just a

psycho. You know, nobody wants to read

that because that's a lazy way of

building a character. Let anybody can

write scenes where this character is

like killing people, slaughtering

people, blowing stuff up. That's cool

and all that, but there has to be a

point to it. There has to be a reason

why the person is doing it. Not only

does it make it more believable uh for

your readers, it just makes it more

plausible that this person would have

the motivation to do these outrageous

things. Human beings are not built to do

this kind of stuff unless really they

are completely missing a few

chromosomes. There has to be a

motivation that also gives you a

backstory to the antagonist, the evil

person that you can explore in depth as

as a writer, which I've done in many of

my books, memory man, a lot of others,

because often times the backstory for

the the villains are equally, if not

more interesting than for the heroes and

the in the protagonist in your novel.

You have to give them equal weight.

So, in the novel Memory Man, I'm going

to read a couple of pages from the novel

and it's going to set up and really the

first time we get to see Amos Decker.

It's really important. I set this guy up

is a perfect recall, hypermesia,

traumatic brain injury. So, he's kind of

larger in life in many ways. He can do

things that ordinary human beings can't.

It's really important for you, the read

the writer, if you are going to do that

with a character, you need to sort show

that early on. You can't wait until page

175 to show what this guy can do. It's

almost like in Sherlock Holmes very

first story with study in Scarlet Holmes

came out with Watson and they were first

living together and he had all these

deductions about this guy passing the

street blew everybody away. But that

showed the reader from like page three

this is what this guy can do. Hang on to

your seats. So this is my sort of way of

doing study in Scarlet

and this is chapter two.

A park bench painted red, the unsettling

knifelike chill of fall draining to

winter. Amos Decker sat on the bench

waiting. A sparrow zipped across in

front of him, narrowly dodged a passing

car before soaring upward, catching a

breeze and drifting away. He noted the

make, model, plate number, and physical

descriptions of all the cars before it

left him. Husband and wife in the front

and a kid in the back in a booster seat.

Another one next to him, older, about

10. The rear bumper had a sticker. It

read, "My kid is an honoral student at

Thornrest Elementary."

"Congrats! You just told a psycho

exactly where to snatch your very smart

kid." Then a bus rolled to a near stop.

Decker ran his gaze over it, making the

same observations. 14 passengers, most

looking depressed and tired, though it

was still only midday. One was

energetic, a child. He beboped next to

his exhausted mother, who sat slumped

over, a fat bag pursed in her lap. The

driver of the bus was a newbie. Her face

a sheet of nervousness. Even with the

power steering, she fought the wheel and

took the next turn so slowly it looked

like the bus's engine had died. A plane

soared overhead low enough for him to ID

it as a United 737

later modeled because of the winglets

with the number 737. For him the color

silver popped out. The number 737 was in

his mind a beautiful concoction, sleek

silver, fast, bullet-like. Anything

beginning with a seven gave him that

reaction. He appreciated the Boeing

numbered all its aircraft beginning with

a seven. Two young men walked past,

observed, recorded. One was older,

bigger, the alpha. The other was a

sidekick, only there for laughs and to

push around. Then he noted the four kids

playing in the park across the street.

Age, rank, serial number, pecking order,

and hierarchy established before age

six, like a pack of wolves. Done. Next,

a woman with a dog, a German Shepherd,

not that old, but with bad hips.

Probably dysplacia common in the breed.

Cataloged. A man jabbering away on his

smartphone. expensive suit. The G for

Gucci on the slick shoes. Quarter-sized

rock set in a gold band on his left hand

like a Super Bowl ring. $4,000 Zenith

watch on his right wrist. He was too

small on the wrong build for a pro alete

dressed far too nicely for a typical

drug dealer. Maybe a hedge fund manager.

Malpractice lawyer or real estate

developer. Memory socked away. On the

other side of the street, an old woman

in a wheelchair was being rolled out of

a medical transport ban. Her left side

was useless. Facial paralysis on the

same side. Stroke documented. her

caregiver had myoscoliosis with the club

foot imprinted.

So that is Amos Decker. That is his

gift. That's how his mind works. I

talked earlier about being curious and

being observer of people. This is a guy

who everything he sees is cemented into

his mind. It's like his brain is a data

cloud and everything is uploaded and

then when he wants to download it, he

can. But he sees the world and he sees

details that nobody else even pays any

attention to. When you set yourself up

to create a character that is somewhat

extraordinary in certain attributes, you

can't hide that. You need to emphasize

it. You need to get it out there upfront

because it's going to permeate and

emphasize everything that character does

early on. So, I couldn't wait to do this

scene with him because then a lot of the

stuff that would come before would make

no sense to people. Well, how does he do

that? You know, why is it what's his

mind? Why is his mind kind of weird?

Nobody told me what was going on. So,

some almost like putting the dominoes in

the right order. If one is out of place,

everything that comes after it falls

apart. So for me, this gift, this power

that he has, this embellishment that he

has, I needed to drive it out there

because it is a as you read memory man,

it is the driving force. It is the

machine and the engine behind everything

that happens in the story. So the reader

needs to understand that and you as a

writer, you have to understand what

information does the reader need to know

at this point in time for them to enjoy

the story going forward. If you get that

out of order, guess what? The enjoyment

of the story vanishes.