Character Hooks from Everfree Northwest

Curious about my presentation about character hooks at Everfree Northwest?

I have modified, slightly expanded, and uploaded the PowerPoint presentation I gave, in PDF form. All of the information I went over during my presentation (including a couple things people asked questions about) should be in there now.

That being said, questions or comments are certainly welcome!

Comments

[Lofty Withers]

Thanks. I think I missed most of this panel so the slides are very helpful.

[Xepher]

My favorite bullet point: "A one-shot character is usually not reused"

... Because we all wondered what "one-shot" meant.

:-)

Just giving you crap! But seriously, sorry I missed your talk. The slide-set looks great. Thank you so much for contributing this year, on the talk and on everything else. I'm practically going to demand you join my staff next year!

[Bad Horse]

Thanks! I've never thought much about character hooks before. Your Fluttershy example makes a very good point. (Did you get booed?)

[Titanium Dragon]

5190080
I think there might have been some noises at that, but not booing per se.

And I'm glad it was interesting! It was an idea I'd been turning over in my head for a while, trying to think about a good way of explaining my thoughts on the matter and how it might be useful to think about, as it can be useful in coming up with character motivations and goals.

I'm actually surprised I don't really see more discussion of this subject. I hear discussion about plot hooks quite a bit - things that draw the reader into the story - but I hear a lot less about character hooks as a class. People talk about interesting characters, but I don't really hear much conceptualization of how to do it, or why developing characters in some ways can make them more interesting and in other ways makes them less so.

I think that resolving character hooks without adding in new ones is a major reason why it is often hard to write sequels to one-off or completed works, where a lot of the character hooks end up being resolved by the story, so you have to awkwardly glom on new ones or unresolve old ones (both of which can feel unsatisfying), and why some characters end up ultimately being so much more interesting than others and feel like they're trying to pull themselves into more stories. It's also a major contributing factor to why resolving a lot of romantic subplots often ends up feeling unsatisfying in serial works, because once you resolve it, a bunch of things that you could tie stories to end up being resolved and don't get replaced because the writers didn't really think about how to make it interesting past that point beforehand, so after that point they often end up kind of stuck.

Probably why a lot of characters in comic books seem to have a hard time staying in stable relationships as well.