Episode 111 - Using Engines, Anchors, and Hazards to Define Character Voice with Jeff Elkins
December 21, 2021
Jeff Elkins, the Dialogue Doctor, talks about USING ENGINES, ANCHORS, AND HAZARDS TO DEFINE CHARACTER VOICE. He talks about how words like hero and villain, while useful for assessing plot, are less useful for assessing character development, or how the character operates in culture and how he or she negotiates the relationships with the people around them. We delve into examples, including BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY, LORD OF THE RINGS, HARRY POTTER, and GAME OF THRONES, to understand how the characters surrounding the protagonist, or vehicle character, function as engines, anchors, or hazards to bring out the best or worst in that vehicle character.
Jeff Elkins is a novelist, ghostwriter, and editor with more than 10 novels on the market. During the day, he leads the writing team for a company that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice. He also helps authors improve their dialogue to engage readers more fully through one-on-one consulting and through his podcast The Dialogue Doctor.
"The question we need to ask is, is this character propelling my protagonist forward to be the best version of themselves, to be the version of themselves that we want to end in?" —Jeff Elkins, The Dialogue Doctor
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Jeff Elkins. Say, Jeff, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Jeff: Hey, thanks Matty for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:09] Matty: I am glad to have you here, it is my pleasure to be hosting you again. So, Jeff has been a past guest, I'll let people know which episodes those were in a moment, but just as a little refresher of Jeff's background, Jeff Elkins is a novelist, ghostwriter, and editor with more than 10 novels on the market. During the day, he leads the writing team for a company that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice. He also helped authors improve their dialogue to engage readers more fully through one-on-one consulting and through his podcast, The Dialogue Doctor, which I listened to and is a super fun podcast.
[00:00:40] Jeff: Oh, thanks so much!
[00:00:42] Matty: And I was thrilled to have been on the podcast twice, I was on Episode 12 and Episode 41. And as I'd mentioned, Jeff is also a regular visitor to The Indy Author Podcast, and Jeff has been on Episode 48 BUILDING GREAT PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST VOICES. And one of the ones that I really think is a must-listen, and maybe must-watch for anyone was Episode 82, PERSPECTIVES ON WRITER'S BLOCK. And I just, Jeff, I loved your perspective so much that as soon as people are done listening to or watching this episode, they have to go to 82 and listen to PERSPECTIVES ON WRITER'S BLOCK.
[00:01:16] Jeff: Yeah, I got a little raw on that one, that was real.
[00:01:18] Matty: Yeah, it was fantastic. I got kind of choked up listening to it. So hopefully that's a sufficient teaser for people to go check that out.
[00:01:28] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Matty: So today we're going to be talking about, I think this is one of the coolest podcasts episode titles so far, USING ENGINES, ANCHORS AND HAZARDS TO DEFINE CHARACTER VOICES. But before we jump into that, Jeff, I have to ask you about your day job, because your day job sounds so fascinating, and I think it would be a cool introduction to this topic. So just let us know a little bit about what your day job is.
[00:01:52] Jeff: So I work for a small company. Part of what brought about The Dialogue Doctor was I was talking to author J. Thorn, who also does the Writers Ink podcast, and he and I were talking about how I could give back to the author community, and he was like, what do you do for your day job? And I told him, he was like, how are you not teaching people how to do dialogue?
[00:02:11] Matty: Sometimes we're too close ourselves to see the obvious.
[00:02:13] Jeff: But yeah, I was like, those connect? I work for a small company just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, kind of in-between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland, that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice.
[00:02:25] So what that means is, I sit in rooms with experts from around the world on a particular topic, and they will have hired us because they say a lot of times, we get a client because they're like, oh, you can't learn this, you just have to experience it. Like the only way you can learn this is by doing it at a thousand times. And so we provide a way for you to do that a thousand times virtually. What we build looks like a Zoom call, and assets, we create artificial emotion. It's kind of a version of artificial intelligence, but our programs have feelings, because a lot of these conversations are emotional.
[00:03:02] So for example, this week I was finishing up a project with my team that simulates a suicide prevention, and how to have a conversation with people who are experiencing suicidal ideations. So difficult, emotional conversation that is really important as somebody doing suicide prevention that you do well. So we've built a program that allows you to practice talking to different people with different types of suicidal ideation and different levels of suicidal ideation, working them through a safety assessment and a safety plan.
[00:03:33] We do interrogation work where we teach law enforcement interrogation. We do work with different therapists where we teach like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, or motivational interviewing. We do stuff in the business world where we teach sales.
[00:03:49] So what I do is I run the writing and production team. So my team, we sit down with the experts, we learn all about the conversations and we pride ourselves in being professional mimics, which means we listen to how people talk and then we take how people talk and we translate it into a simulation that allows them to practice, not just like the right way to say things, but all the nuances that have happened in those conversations that make those conversations tough and emotional conversations. ...
[00:00:05] Jeff: Hey, thanks Matty for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:09] Matty: I am glad to have you here, it is my pleasure to be hosting you again. So, Jeff has been a past guest, I'll let people know which episodes those were in a moment, but just as a little refresher of Jeff's background, Jeff Elkins is a novelist, ghostwriter, and editor with more than 10 novels on the market. During the day, he leads the writing team for a company that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice. He also helped authors improve their dialogue to engage readers more fully through one-on-one consulting and through his podcast, The Dialogue Doctor, which I listened to and is a super fun podcast.
[00:00:40] Jeff: Oh, thanks so much!
[00:00:42] Matty: And I was thrilled to have been on the podcast twice, I was on Episode 12 and Episode 41. And as I'd mentioned, Jeff is also a regular visitor to The Indy Author Podcast, and Jeff has been on Episode 48 BUILDING GREAT PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST VOICES. And one of the ones that I really think is a must-listen, and maybe must-watch for anyone was Episode 82, PERSPECTIVES ON WRITER'S BLOCK. And I just, Jeff, I loved your perspective so much that as soon as people are done listening to or watching this episode, they have to go to 82 and listen to PERSPECTIVES ON WRITER'S BLOCK.
[00:01:16] Jeff: Yeah, I got a little raw on that one, that was real.
[00:01:18] Matty: Yeah, it was fantastic. I got kind of choked up listening to it. So hopefully that's a sufficient teaser for people to go check that out.
[00:01:28] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Matty: So today we're going to be talking about, I think this is one of the coolest podcasts episode titles so far, USING ENGINES, ANCHORS AND HAZARDS TO DEFINE CHARACTER VOICES. But before we jump into that, Jeff, I have to ask you about your day job, because your day job sounds so fascinating, and I think it would be a cool introduction to this topic. So just let us know a little bit about what your day job is.
[00:01:52] Jeff: So I work for a small company. Part of what brought about The Dialogue Doctor was I was talking to author J. Thorn, who also does the Writers Ink podcast, and he and I were talking about how I could give back to the author community, and he was like, what do you do for your day job? And I told him, he was like, how are you not teaching people how to do dialogue?
[00:02:11] Matty: Sometimes we're too close ourselves to see the obvious.
[00:02:13] Jeff: But yeah, I was like, those connect? I work for a small company just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, kind of in-between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland, that simulates difficult conversations for professionals to practice.
[00:02:25] So what that means is, I sit in rooms with experts from around the world on a particular topic, and they will have hired us because they say a lot of times, we get a client because they're like, oh, you can't learn this, you just have to experience it. Like the only way you can learn this is by doing it at a thousand times. And so we provide a way for you to do that a thousand times virtually. What we build looks like a Zoom call, and assets, we create artificial emotion. It's kind of a version of artificial intelligence, but our programs have feelings, because a lot of these conversations are emotional.
[00:03:02] So for example, this week I was finishing up a project with my team that simulates a suicide prevention, and how to have a conversation with people who are experiencing suicidal ideations. So difficult, emotional conversation that is really important as somebody doing suicide prevention that you do well. So we've built a program that allows you to practice talking to different people with different types of suicidal ideation and different levels of suicidal ideation, working them through a safety assessment and a safety plan.
[00:03:33] We do interrogation work where we teach law enforcement interrogation. We do work with different therapists where we teach like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, or motivational interviewing. We do stuff in the business world where we teach sales.
[00:03:49] So what I do is I run the writing and production team. So my team, we sit down with the experts, we learn all about the conversations and we pride ourselves in being professional mimics, which means we listen to how people talk and then we take how people talk and we translate it into a simulation that allows them to practice, not just like the right way to say things, but all the nuances that have happened in those conversations that make those conversations tough and emotional conversations. ...
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[00:04:18] And the characters we build have an emotional spectrum. The characters feel like real people and that they are feeling the conversation as the conversation happens and how they feel during the conversation changes how they talk. So, that's what I do for a day job. I've been doing it for seven years, it's great. before that I worked in various nonprofits for 15 years. So that's my wheelhouse.
[00:04:41] And that's part of what led to The Dialogue Doctor, was thinking about how people talk every day on a deep level, down to like where and why they put the commas and periods, where they put the commas and periods or how, you know, this sounds different when somebody feels differently. How you can say the same thing five different ways based on the emotion you're experiencing at the time. That's what I do professionally, and that's kind of how that lead to The Dialogue Doctor, and what we do with The Dialogue Doctor in teaching authors how to write, better dialogue, more engaging dialogue.
[00:05:16] Well, I did want to find that out, that information out about your day job and how it led to The Dialogue Doctor, and I was wondering how I was going to make the transition to our topic, but I think I have it, because it was interesting that when you were talking about that, you talked about characters. And so I think an interesting way of thinking about it is, if you're the person who is the actor that you have engaged to help you with creating these simulated Zoom calls, they're like the actor, you're like the director, i.e., author of what's going on.
[00:05:50] Jeff: Yeah, we write all of the scripts and then I have the specific role of directing the video shoot, which for us is very different because we use live actors. We don't use avatars. Because there's facial expressions and body language that just come naturally to a human that is still very difficult to replicate with digital avatars. So, we're all about this feeling like an authentic conversation, so that's why we use real people in our sims.
[00:06:16] So it's actually a weird practice in dialogue that I encourage my group to do, that where our video shoots are very different in that we video like 10 words at a time, like one utterance at a time, and so the actor will say it and I'll listen to it and I'll go, it doesn't sound like you're having enough struggle, let's do it again, and let's put the inflection here or let's add this word or let's add that word. And so we'll do one sentence, where a video shoot might have 2,500 utterances and we'll do one utterance at a time, and we'll sometimes we'll do them four to five times, just kind of thinking about like how it sounds and how it could be different.
[00:06:57] So it definitely preps me in my own work, and in working with The Dialogue Doctor and an editing staff to look at each utterance of character's making and kind of ask, is this conveying the emotion to the reader that we want it to convey? There's definitely a connection there between what I do professionally and what I do with the Dialogue Doctor, yeah.
[00:07:19] Matty: It's exactly like a director working with an actor and when I heard you speak about vehicles, engines, anchors and hazards, you used a lot of great movie analogies. So I'm really just going to ask you to describe what that means, the vehicles, engines, anchors and hazards, and how you came up with that.
[00:07:36] Jeff: Yeah, so let's start with the how and why, because I think the how and why tends to the what. So, I was working with authors, and we'd be looking at their cast of characters, and specifically talking about contrasting voices, like we want all of these characters to sound like themselves. We want those characters, we want that voice to be true to who they are. So, Matty, is something that I've talked about on The Indy Author a long time ago, is the Dialogue Daisy, which is our kind of illustration of characterization. And the point of it is to show that hey, your character's background and your character's personality leads into your character's voice. Your character's voice is the expression of those things.
[00:08:15] So we want to create character voices that sound unique in order to display each character's unique personality and background. So I work with others to do that. I sit down with an author, and we have a big chart that we work through that shows how the characters line up. And part of that work of building these contrasting characters is also asking, does this voice serve the appropriate role in the narrative?
[00:08:43] And so we'd be talking about a character, I'd be talking about a character with an author and the author would be like, this character is kind of my villain. I'd be like, what does that mean? It's like, this character is the bad guy, and then there'd always be this like, but you know, the bad guy in the sense that like they're breaking ethical norms, but they're not really the bad guy, they actually help my protagonist become the best version of themselves. But you know, we're going to call them the villain.
[00:09:09] And it'd be like, okay, all of a sudden, this language of hero and villain isn't very helpful. And they'd be like, this is the antagonist, but she's also the character's best friend, so she's not really the antagonist because she makes the character struggle, but she's also a friend, so she's not the villain. And all the language was just getting muddy. And protagonist, antagonist, hero, villain, side character, all of it was just getting muddy.
[00:09:34] And so I'd be talking with an author about okay, we've got this main character and the voice is starting here, the voice is starting at this place, at the beginning of the story. And then we're going to see maturity and transformation, and that needs to be expressed by modulation in the character's voice. Because the voice is an expression of the character's personality, how the character operates in culture, how the character is negotiating other people around them. The voice is an expression of all those things.
[00:10:05] So as the character changes and as the character renegotiates themselves in the culture that they're in, and renegotiates expectations that people have of them, as the character goes through what we call character development. As the character develops, that voice needs to modulate and change in order to express that development to the reader, so that we don't have to tell the reader in chapter 25, and now Sally is more mature. The reader could feel Sally become more mature because the reader feels the slight changes in Sally's voice. Where Sally was self-questioning before, Sally's becoming more confident. Where Sally was using a lot of stutters and not finishing sentences because it was displaying that she wasn't fully confident in what she's saying, by the end, she's making declarations, and she's actually saying how she feels to people. We're modulating and growing that voice as Sally matures.
[00:11:00] And so with that, knowing that we're trying to modulate and grow this voice and that we want this contrast in palliative characters, and that the words, antagonist and protagonist, and hero and villain, aren't actually helping the Dialogue Doctor community, I was like, all right, we need some new words. And that's where we got into these four words.
[00:11:18] So knowing the problem, knowing the goal is to help readers emotionally engage with our story, and specifically the goal being, how do we develop a character over a story? What are we using?
[00:11:33] So the way to develop a character over a story is to demonstrate their interactions with other characters. To say, okay, at the beginning of the story, my protagonist interacts with this character in this way, and at the end of the story, my protagonist interacts with this character in this way. And we have this vision of our character that they're growing in some way, either they're becoming the best version of themselves or becoming the worst version of themselves, depending on if you're writing a heroic tale or a tragedy. They're moving, they're becoming something that they're not.
[00:12:06] And so we surround them with characters that create conflicts that take them on this journey. So our reader's on a journey with our lead character. So we call the lead character a vehicle. The lead character is this vehicle that's driving, that our reader's getting in a car with the vehicle and they're driving on this journey together. And so, in that journey, we're trying to decide as we go through this story, is this a positive journey or a negative journey? As the reader, am I going to like where this journey ends up or am I going to be really sad about where this journey ends up?
[00:12:41] So you'd mentioned earlier using movie examples. So I think one that's really great for this is BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY as an example. Bridget is on a journey. She states at the beginning of the movie and the book, I want to be a better version of myself. I'm unhappy, it's my birthday, and I'm unhappy. If I don't change it, I'm going to be sad, alone, cat lady who doesn't actually own any cats, living in this apartment by myself in tragedy. And so she is this character, and we're going to go on this journey of self-development with Bridget. We're going to get on this road and drive down this journey.
[00:13:19] And in order to take this journey, Richard Curtis, the author, is going to put different characters around Bridget to challenge her self-expression. So instead of thinking of antagonists and allies, like saying this character is an antagonist, they're going to make the journey hard. This character is an ally, they're going to make the journey easy. Like antagonist, when we use that word, we're talking about, there is some kind of ethical force happening in this story and the antagonist stands against that ethical force, it's not about character development. Or there's an ally and the ally is helping the protagonist defeat the unethical, the immoral side of the story that we want to defeat. That's more about the plot and what's happening in the plot.
[00:14:03] When we're talking about character development, those words aren't helpful, so instead we're going to use the word anchor and the word engine. So the word engine is the character or characters that are propelling our vehicle forward, propelling our vehicle toward change. So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, we have a character who was often antagonistic in the plot, like causing problems in the plot, is actually a really fantastic engine, and that’s the first love interest, Mark Darcy. Bridget's continual conflicts with Mark Darcy and her inability to figure out where she stands or how she feels about this man, propels her to become the best version of herself. Mark Darcy propels her to become independent, he propels her to take ownership, he propels her to not be as self-conscious and anxious about social interactions, because he himself is self-conscious and anxious about social interactions.
[00:15:03] Bridget struggles to express her feelings through the whole movie, unless she's talking to Mark Darcy. When she's talking to Mark Darcy, she doesn't have any problem telling him exactly how she feels, which is what we want for her. We want her to discover how she feels and tell people exactly how she feels. So he's serving as this engine, as he's driving her forward, to be the best version of herself.
[00:15:27] Another example is in THE LORD OF THE RINGS saga. In the books, we have Frodo as one of the characters on this journey. He is becoming, he's going from being a small Hobbit from the Shire who doesn't want to engage with the world, who while is not happy with his life, understands that this is his lot in life. He is to live in the Shire and not go on adventures. And then at the end of the saga, we have Frodo the hero, who's quietly and silently saved the world, although only seven people know about it, living in this dignified kind of leader space, where he's sacrificed of himself for the betterment of Creaturekind, I guess, for the betterment of his world.
[00:16:17] In that saga, Frodo is going to go through all these challenges, he's going to go through ups and downs, he's going to struggle and he's going to succeed. He has an engine with him all the time. And Sam is constantly compelling Frodo to be the best version of himself. He's constantly reminding Frodo, remember what you love about the Shire. He's constantly telling Frodo, you're not supposed to be that kind of person, you're supposed to be this kind of person. When Frodo gets tired, Sam's like, let's go on. When a negative influence shows up, which we'll talk about in a second, Sam is like, no, don't listen to him, do this instead. Sam is constantly propelling Frodo forward as his engine in the journey in order to become the best version of himself.
[00:17:01] Or if we talk about the Harry Potter books. I use these examples because they’re ones I know we've all engaged with. We talk about the Harry Potter books, you've got Harry who's going from oppressed, obscure, young boy who lives in the closet, who doesn't understand himself to, again, sacrificial leader of this movement, who's going to help bring a form of justice into his world, who's going to defeat the ultimate evil. And so, we have this trajectory of growth for Harry through the books. There's ups and downs, it's not always a smooth trajectory, sometimes Harry's doing things that we're like, oh no, why are you doing that? He's listening to influences that we're like, why are you doing that?
[00:17:44] But he's got two engines next to him all the time. He's got Ron and Hermione with him all the time. Hermione is always compelling him to be the most disciplined and ethical version of himself. And Ron is compelling him to remember that people matter and the community matters and that family matters. So we've got these two engines next to Harry that are driving Harry's character development throughout the entire thing, sometimes by encouraging and sometimes by being in conflict. But conflict with engines encourages the character be the best version of themselves.
[00:18:16] And that's the question, if we asked, is my character an engine? The question we need to ask is, is this character propelling my protagonist forward to be the best version of themselves, to be the version of themselves that we want to end in?
[00:18:30] Matty: Is that nuance the reason that you don't call the protagonist, the Harry character, the Bridget character, the Frodo character, "the driver," because in the whole vehicle metaphor, it seems like the thing to spring to, but it sounds like you're intentionally not doing that because Frodo isn't so much driving in some cases, as being driven.
[00:18:52] Jeff: Yeah. And so the reason I call it "the vehicle" is because I want you to imagine your reader in the car with that character. So your vehicle is the character that your reader is going to emotionally connect to and follow the story with. Now, you may have more than one vehicle in the story, right? Like the Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordan, and especially in his later books, when you get to the Roman saga, he'll have four vehicles going at one time. So when you think about a character's development, the vehicle is the character that the reader is emotionally engaging with. Because the reader's going to latch onto a character, and the reader's going to go on an emotional journey of change with that character. That's your vehicle. And then the engine is the one that's propelling that character forward, so when the engine shows up, we're going to see positive change in that character.
[00:19:47] Matty: I was thinking through the examples, it's been too long since I watched BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, so I can't comment on that, but I was thinking about the engine characters that you're mentioning and thinking about their role in making the vehicle character change. But I'm trying to think to what extent they change. So from the beginning to the end of the Harry Potter books, Ron and Hermione are intrinsically different because they've literally grown up, so there's just some change that comes along with that. Sam, I can't even remember. Is change an important aspect of the engine characters in the same way it is for the vehicle character?
[00:20:23] Jeff: So, we're going to get a little like three-dimensional chess here. It depends if you want that engine character to also be a vehicle. So Ron and Hermione are vehicles in and of themselves, people connect with them, they follow Hermione and Ron emotionally. And so Ron and Hermione also experience character development.
[00:20:43] In the Percy Jackson series, Grover, his partner is an engine, but no one connects with Grover emotionally. He wasn't written for you to connect with him emotionally. Grover is kind of a one-note character. He always is the same. And so he is an engine that is not a vehicle, and so you don't see a lot of character change in them, but there is a level to this where you're like, okay, which characters do I actually want people to connect with, and do I want my reader to connect with? Which characters am I taking on an emotional journey?
[00:21:15] Can you 100% control that? No, you cannot. Your reader is going to do what your reader wants to do. You may be like, oh, this is my engine character, and this is my vehicle, and I want the reader following Bridget Jones through the whole saga. Oh my gosh, we got to follow Bridget Jones, and you have a reader who's, man, I really connected emotionally with Mark Darcy. Like, you can't help that. Readers are going to do what readers want to do. Part of the beauty of storytelling is that you're releasing this thing into a reader's imagination, and the reader's imagination is really what makes the story come to life.
[00:21:48] Matty: If you consciously decided that you wanted Mark to be a vehicle, as well as Bridget, is that a conscious decision that you think authors should make about to some extent?
[00:21:58] Jeff: So I'm encouraging is as you plot out your novel, as you think about the twists and turns, understand that your reader wants to see this character develop and change. So think about your scenes as, okay, how is my vehicle going to be challenged in this moment, and what's going to happen to them because of that challenge? How are they going to move forward? Who is bringing that challenge? Is this character an engine or an anchor? Should my reader be inspired when this character shows up to challenge my vehicle, or should a reader get nervous when this character, which is an anchor, which we can talk about in a second. But I am encouraging you to like, hey, be strategic as you're writing to think, okay, what role do these characters play in character development?
[00:22:45] So, if you're writing the book BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and you get about halfway through and you're like, man, I'm really connecting with Mark Darcy. Then you're going to have to create some scenes where Mark Darcy is emotionally challenged. You're going to have to know who Mark is becoming in this book, and push toward that.
[00:23:02] So if you think of each character as a lens that you're looking through, you can put on different sets of glasses, you can wear the Bridget glasses, and then the Mark glasses. Tolkien does this, right? Like, Tolkien actually breaks his entire plot into multiple sections, and you have the Frodo glasses. You have the Merry and Pippin glasses, and you have the Aragon glasses. You have multiple vehicles, those vehicles have multiple engines and anchors and hazards that come at them, And that's part of the big grand scope of storytelling.
[00:23:33] GAME OF THRONES does this. We have all these different vehicles we're following through. Some vehicles, your reader's going to connect with, some they're not. But all of those vehicles are constantly encountering engines, anchors, and hazards that force them to have character development. So if we're thinking about GAME OF THRONES, we see, oh man, how can I do this without spoiling anything? It doesn't matter, it's been out forever, it's not even finished, it looks not even finished, I can spoil whatever I want. So you got Jon Snow going to the Wall, and at first, he's kind of demure and like the forgotten son, the one that's no big deal, like why is he even there? And he grows into this leadership position at the Wall. He's one vehicle that we traveled with. He was a vehicle I enjoyed. I really liked reading the Jon Snow chapters.
[00:24:19] We've got Tyrion Lannister, another vehicle that we follow through this like, deep set of books. Very different vehicle than Jon Snow, encountering completely different engines and anchors and hazards. But Tyrion also goes through this process of growth. And so you're putting on these different vehicle glasses as you're taking the reader on these emotional journeys with these characters.
[00:24:42] So yeah, all that to say, you can have more than one vehicle. If we go super meta, Pippin and Merry are vehicles in and of themselves. They have their own journey, they have emotional growth, they have character development. We follow their story a little bit. Pippin and Merry are actually anchors to Frodo. When Pippin and Merry are around, when you're looking through Frodo's vehicle, Pippin and Merry are encouraging him to be the worst version of himself.
[00:25:08] Anchor is the opposite of an engine. If you think about your vehicle going down the road toward growth, the anchor drops out of the trunk and slows everything down, pulls your vehicle down toward the worst version of themselves.
[00:25:22] So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, to go back to that example, Daniel Cleaver is the anchor, played by Hugh Grant in the movie. Now Daniel Cleaver isn't necessarily an antagonist, right? This is a love triangle. We've got Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver, both competing for Bridget's attention. Daniel Cleaver though is constantly encouraging Bridget to be self-conscious. He talks about her body in ways that makes her think badly about herself. He jokes about her in ways that make her think badly about herself. He's constantly making her feel like she's not enough, that she's someone who's funny, but not necessarily kind of the epitome of womanhood that he's looking for.
[00:26:04] So you have this person who's pulling her down to the worst version of who she is, and we know from the first time that she encounters Daniel Cleaver that if this relationship is the relationship that wins out, she's going to end up alone and sad in her apartment, feeling bad about herself. Whereas Mark Darcy is going to bring her to the person she wants to be. So we've got this competition for character development between our anchor and our engine.
[00:26:34] In LORD OF THE RINGS, Frodo's anchor is Gollum. Gollum is following Frodo around, Gollum is encouraging Frodo to be the worst part of himself, he talks about the ring as is precious, he show's Frodo, oh, this is a natural extension of the ring and the ring wants you to hold on to it and you can't give it away, whatever you do, don't throw it in the fire. In fact, the final scene, again spoilers, if you haven't read THE LORD OF THE RINGS, too late. So one of the Frodo's final scenes is a wrestling match with his anchor about what this ring is, and Frodo starts to give in to the worst impulses of his character development. So we have this journey that Frodo's on, where there's this character that's constantly pulling him to the worst version of himself.
[00:27:23] Matty: Another example that I am always fascinated by is Snape.
[00:27:28] Jeff: Yeah. Oh, Harry Potter. Yeah. So, and that's an interesting question. Snape as an antagonist, definitely through the first books. There's a change at the end, but in the first book, Snape is an antagonist. Snape is also an anchor for Harry. He brings out the worst. Harry behaves terribly whenever Snape shows up into a scene. We don't see the noble, disciplined, compassionate for others warrior. When Harry's around, we see the conniving, put upon, feeling like a victim version of Harry that we don't want.
[00:28:05] So Snape in that way serves as this anchor to Harry, bringing Harry's character movement down. Malfoy is another clear anchor to Harry. Like when Malfoy shows up, Harry behaves like a Slytherin jerk. He's got this like. Slytherin nature to him. So when these guys show up, they start to encourage this worst side of Harry.
[00:28:24] And Snape is an interesting conversation because in the end of the series, Snape is a protagonist. You find out that oh no, he's actually fighting for the ethical good of the plot. But he never stops being an anchor for Harry. Even as a protagonist, he continues to bring the worst out in Harry. And that's a great illustration of how that protagonist and antagonist words, when we're talking about character development, don't really help. So, yeah, Snape is a clear anchor to Harry, pulling him downward. Malfoy is a clear anchor to Harry.
[00:28:54] Other professors show up and they are engines to Harry. Dumbledore as a clear engine to Harry. Dumbledore is constantly encouraging Harry to be the best version of himself. All that to say, that tension between the anchor and the engine driving our character forward is part of what brings out the beautiful texture of this story, of the character, trying to make decisions, the character making choices about who they're going to be in relation to these other people.
[00:29:21] Another fun example is in BATMAN. I was a huge comic book reader growing up and I loved the Batman comics. And there's a lot of them, so that can be hard to talk about. So grabbing a movie, the Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker, is another great example of an antagonist and the Joker who is actually an engine. He is the villain. He is blowing up hospitals, right? He's not a good character. But he encourages Batman to be the best version of himself. So he's going to antagonist to the plot, but he's an engine in character development because Batman becomes Batman in response to who this guy is. He ponders his own self-worth. He starts making sacrifices and not just seeks revenge because of who this character is. A lot of the comic book villains work that way. They're villains in the story, but they're engines in character develop.
[00:30:49] Matty: Yeah, I think it's interesting that in the examples you're using, the most interesting and engaging characters are the ones where there's this seemingly opposed role they're playing, like an antagonist and an engine. You had talked about Snape and Malfoy in Harry Potter, and Snape is always a fascinating character. Malfoy isn't an interesting character. He's only interesting because of what Harry does when he's around him. But I don't think anybody is sort of saying, yeah, of all those characters, the one I really loved was Malfoy. Whereas I think they are saying it about Snape, especially when you get to the end, and you see that there's this tension between antagonistic role and engine role.
[00:31:31] Jeff: Yeah, that's a great point. That tension goes the other way too. You can have a protagonist who's an anchor. So, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, going back to our original example, her mother is the protagonist. Her mother wants the best for her, is trying to help, but her mother is an anchor. Her mother makes her into the worst version of herself when she's around her mother. And her mothers, one of the most interesting characters.
[00:31:54] And my theory is that part of that interest is that when we meet our readers' expectations, they feel good for a moment, because they're like, oh yeah, this is what I expected. But then that feeling, that positive feeling, begins to fade because they're like, oh, this is what I expected. It feels good because they're getting what they expected, but it's not interesting. When you take a character like Snape and you start playing with his role in comparison to how he impacts the character, you take a character like Gollum, you start playing with his role in the story versus how it impacts the character, it starts to make the reader go, oh, this is interesting because what a contrast in these things.
[00:32:42] Matty: But I'm guessing that you couldn't really do that with everyone. So you had mentioned earlier that there are some characters for just a one note character. Gollum I think is basically a one note character.
[00:32:54] Jeff: I think Gollum's really rich in texture, but that's different. Yeah.
[00:32:58] Matty: But there's not like an arc. There's no arc of Gollum's character development. Like at the beginning he was like this, but at the end he was like that. No, he's just, he's very consistent. But I think in the same way that even if you're writing a thriller, you don't want every chapter pegged it 11 on a scale of one to 10 in terms of action, I think that if you try to delve into every character as, well, they're an engine and an anchor, it was become confusing, I guess, unless you're George R.R. Martin, and then maybe you can get away with it.
[00:33:28] Jeff: Yeah, I mean, the more characters you try to develop, and this is just kind of the rule that I talk with others, the more characters you're trying to develop, the more characters you're trying to show change in, the longer your books, or the longer story is. Because we need to take the reader on the journey. The reader needs to see the characters before they change. The reader needs to become comfortable with the character before they change. The reader needs to feel the conflict of the inciting incident and what that's going to require of the character. The reader needs to have the character reflect on what that's going to become. The reader needs to feel the character being forced to make choices. And then the reader needs to feel the consequences of those choices. So that's just one character arc. The conflict and then the choices and consequences that the character has to go through as they develop to become the person we want to see at the end of the book.
[00:34:22] So every time you add a character that's developing, add that story arc. So if you're going to develop, if you're like, okay, I'm writing a fantasy novel, I got a cohort of five characters. We're going to take three of them on this massive journey of development. And then two of them, we're just going to do a little bit of development on it. Well, like buckle it, now you've got Game of Thrones, right? The book you're about to undertake is hundreds of thousands of words, because we have to spend all of these moments with all of these characters.
[00:34:54] And you can combine those moments. If you're really skillful, you can have two characters making choices at the same time and showing the consequences of their choices. It just takes more skill, but you're still going to have more chapters. The more characters you're developing, the more scenes you're going to have to add. So just be ready, right? That's not saying don't do it. That's just saying don't be discouraged when you realize, oh man, what I thought was a 60,000-word romp with these five characters is actually four Game of Thrones books. Just know the bigger, the more vehicles you put for the reader to jump between, the more character development you have to do the longer your book is and the longer your story is, or books are. and that's just something you got to be ready for.
[00:35:45] I grew up reading Grisham novels and Clancy novels. I loved Jack Ryan as a teenager. Jack Ryan kind of changes. Not really. Like Clancy novels are really long because he likes to describe like the submarine they're in, but Jack Ryan is pretty much the same all the way through. So you can write a standalone Clancy novel and really kind of get the emotional arc done in like 60,000 words because there's not a lot of change going on. Jack Ryan is going to experience some stuff. He's going to get stressed. He's going to overcome it. In the end, he's going to come out a little bit more mature, right?
[00:36:19] Jack Reacher novels are this way. I love Jack Reacher novels. They're great. Jack Reacher shows up to a small town. Jack Reacher discovers that there's some kind of corruption going on. Jack Reacher faces down the corruption. He struggles a little bit. There's a mystery. He uncovers something, wins the day. Usually there's a couple of fights where he's punching people in the face. And in the end, he tells everybody, thanks, and he moves on, right? Like it's not, it is an emotional journey, but because of the genre, it's not this dramatic emotional journey, so you can get it done in 60,000 words, no big deal.
[00:36:51] But if we're going on this like dramatic, emotional journey where you're going to take Arya Stark from being a young girl growing up in the north to being a faceless assassin murdering people, buckle in, you're writing for a long time, right? It's like a lot of it is just you as an author, you're making choices. And part of what I'm hoping to do with the language of engine, anchor, and vehicle is just give you more tools to help you understand and describe to yourself the choices you're making as a writer.
[00:37:25] Matty: I think you've now hit all of them except hazards. I don't know that we talked about.
[00:37:28] Jeff: So hazard characters are just a way to think about what is traditionally called side characters. But again, the problem with the language of side characters is you think they don't have to show up very often, whereas hazard characters can show up as much as you want. Hazard character is not going to necessarily grow or change. You're never going to put that lens of your reader on a hazard character. That's not going to happen. Mostly because hazard characters are big, and they cause your vehicle to swerve in one way or another.
[00:37:58] So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, Bridget's friends are hazard characters. She has four friends, they show up, they yell and scream about her life. They say wild things, and they force her into choice moments. And that's what a hazard character does. Hazard character voices are usually bigger and more expressive than your normal character voices. I'm trying to think of a good example in Tolkien. Saruman in the Big Tower in Lord of the Rings is a hazard character. He's a big voice. He's a loud voice. He forces them to make decisions. Wormtongue forces Aragon to make decisions. So you have these characters that show up that don't necessarily have an arc, aren't going to develop, but are going to force conversation and force change, and those are hazard characters.
[00:38:53] And what I tell authors that I work with is if you're writing a side character, like if your vehicle character is in a bar is in a coffee house and they're ordering a coffee and you've got this little side conversation where they're ordering a coffee. You're like, oh, this is a fun barista, I kind of riding this barista pause there for a minute and ask like, how can I exaggerate this voice in a way that's going to force either the best or the worst of my character? How can I exaggerate this voice in a way to force my character to make a decision about who they are in this moment? That's a hazard character.
[00:39:29] Great book by Fredrik Backman called A MAN CALLED OVE about a grumpy old man who's experiencing suicidal ideations. Who's dealing with his desire to isolate himself and end his own life as these neighbors keep drawing him back into their lives. At one point he goes to a hospital and there's a magician at the hospital and the magician is a fantastic example of a hazard character. Big voice, loud voice. We're only going to see him this one time and this story forces Ove I have to make some decisions. Ove punches the magician in the face. He gets kicked out of the hospital. It's a great scene. It's a great scene because Backman went big with the voice and made the hazard character something that's going to force Ove into a confrontation.
[00:40:15] And that's what we talk about we have hazard character. So a lot of times, especially when I'm working with pantsers who just don't want to plan, they just want to write, they'll be like, I feel like my story is wandering and I don't know where I'm going. Now it's time for some hazards. Let's take some of the scenes you wrote that are wandering and let's find the side character that's at the center of that scene, blow that side characters voice up so it's forcing your vehicle to make some choices. And now your story won't feel wandering and anymore. It'll feel like the character is debating who they're going to be. And it helps build that momentum in the plot toward on a journey.
[00:40:52] Matty: Are there any cautions or red flags that an author might be relying too much on hazard characters?
[00:40:59] Jeff: Yeah. If your character's just waffling between development. Like, oh, they grow a little bit here and then they don't grow here, or they grow in the wrong direction here and then they grow in the right direction here and then the wrong direction here in the right direction here. You're not going anywhere. You're just driving in circles. So it's like you have to show movement,
[00:41:17] Another way to think about this. this is a weird turn, but it's what came to mind. There's a social scientist in the 1950s, I think named Bruce Tuckman who studied how people change and how behaviors change specifically. And he broke behavior change down into these different states. Forming norming, performing and storing. You heard this before? So the idea is that often we form expectations of how we operate around people around us. Those expectations start to norm in that when I show up to work, I know this person's going to say hello to me. I know this person's not going to say hello to me. And I'm starting to norm out of that expectation. I expect that person to say hello. I expect that person not to say hello. And then I perform at that expectation. I treat the person that says hello nicely. I treat the person that doesn't have to say hello with more indifference, because they're not saying hello. so I'm, I've normed, I'm performing.
[00:42:09] And then all of a sudden, a storm will happen. The person who doesn't say hello says it, and that storm challenged me to change my expectations. And I have to re-norm. Like, oh, now I guess this person talks to me when I got to work. And so then I'm going to start performing on that new expectation. That's the cyclical nature in social science of personal change and development, personal change and growth. I'm making decisions based on the relationship I have with the others around me.
[00:42:37] If you keep having storms and your character, isn't changing, they're just going in circles in their character development, the hazard is the storm. Like engines, anchors, hazards, they cause storms that our characters have to re-norm to. If that re norming isn't going in a direction, positive or negative, your story's wandering and you're not going anywhere, you need to reevaluate how you're using those characters to change your vehicle.
[00:43:04] Matty: Well, Jeff, I feel like we just barely scratched the surface of this whole concept of vehicles, engines, anchors, and hazards. If listeners wanted to pursue this more, what resources are available to them, and other of your resources that you could point them to.
[00:43:19] Jeff: So we talked about this on the podcast. Occasionally, not a lot, occasionally. So Dialogue Doctor is the podcast. You can also come over to DialogueDoctor.com. There is a list of every podcast there that we've ever done, and you'll see some of them. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head because I didn't come prepared for things. There's the list of episodes. You'll find several episodes there where I talk about it, lay it out with fun charts and graphs. Not fun charts and graphs, illustrations via PowerPoint.
[00:43:48] And then I also talk about it a lot in bonus episodes. Because it's a concept as the community's still kind of working out, I talk about it in bonus episodes some. To get the bonus episodes, you subscribe to the the Dialogue Doctor Patreon for $3 a month. In fact, this week on the bonus episode, the week we're recording this, not that we get comes out, but we are recording this, I'm doing a bonus episode on pointillism and how it connects to adding contrast in comparison characters together. So we're going to talk about Georges Seurat, art, pointillism, and how using that idea that two colors next to each other create a third color, how that actually also works for characterization. So that's the kind of nerd craft stuff we do over at The Dialogue Doctor.
[00:44:32] Matty: Yeah. Well, I'm going to head over and subscribe and then I'm going to invite you back at some point to talk about painting styles over the centuries.
[00:44:41] Jeff: The weird rabbit holes that Jeff goes down. The goal is to provide ... so my encouragement, if you're listening to this and you're overwhelmed, because I know a lot of times people hear me and other Dialogue Doctor junkies over the DialogueDoctor.com go off on these things about these tools and these resources and they get overwhelmed and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm just trying to finish my first draft. What the heck are you doing? If that's where you are, know that these are just tools. You don't have to use any of them. We're just giving you like different types of hammers and screwdrivers. So the key is to find a way of thinking, find a tool that works for you, and lean into that tool. Don't feel the need to use all of them.
[00:45:28] And so at the Dialogue Doctor, we're constantly developing new tools for your toolbox so that when you need them, they're ready for you, not that you have to have them, so please don't be overwhelmed. Just know that we're constantly thinking about new tools for you to use. And you may listen to it, you may be like, anchors and engines? That's insane. I'm not using the tool. Great. Don't use it. It doesn't hurt our feelings. We just put it into the world so you might have that option.
[00:45:53] Matty: I appreciate so much you spending time walking through that and I'm going to be looking forward to all the Patreon resources that I'm going to get as soon as I subscribe, which I'm going to do right after we're done talking, but Jeff as always, this was so much fun talking to you. And I think you've already told the listeners where they can go to find out more about you. So, I think they just have to keep an eye out for the next time I can talk you back onto the podcast.
[00:46:14] Jeff: Yeah. Anytime I love it. Thanks, Matty.
[00:04:41] And that's part of what led to The Dialogue Doctor, was thinking about how people talk every day on a deep level, down to like where and why they put the commas and periods, where they put the commas and periods or how, you know, this sounds different when somebody feels differently. How you can say the same thing five different ways based on the emotion you're experiencing at the time. That's what I do professionally, and that's kind of how that lead to The Dialogue Doctor, and what we do with The Dialogue Doctor in teaching authors how to write, better dialogue, more engaging dialogue.
[00:05:16] Well, I did want to find that out, that information out about your day job and how it led to The Dialogue Doctor, and I was wondering how I was going to make the transition to our topic, but I think I have it, because it was interesting that when you were talking about that, you talked about characters. And so I think an interesting way of thinking about it is, if you're the person who is the actor that you have engaged to help you with creating these simulated Zoom calls, they're like the actor, you're like the director, i.e., author of what's going on.
[00:05:50] Jeff: Yeah, we write all of the scripts and then I have the specific role of directing the video shoot, which for us is very different because we use live actors. We don't use avatars. Because there's facial expressions and body language that just come naturally to a human that is still very difficult to replicate with digital avatars. So, we're all about this feeling like an authentic conversation, so that's why we use real people in our sims.
[00:06:16] So it's actually a weird practice in dialogue that I encourage my group to do, that where our video shoots are very different in that we video like 10 words at a time, like one utterance at a time, and so the actor will say it and I'll listen to it and I'll go, it doesn't sound like you're having enough struggle, let's do it again, and let's put the inflection here or let's add this word or let's add that word. And so we'll do one sentence, where a video shoot might have 2,500 utterances and we'll do one utterance at a time, and we'll sometimes we'll do them four to five times, just kind of thinking about like how it sounds and how it could be different.
[00:06:57] So it definitely preps me in my own work, and in working with The Dialogue Doctor and an editing staff to look at each utterance of character's making and kind of ask, is this conveying the emotion to the reader that we want it to convey? There's definitely a connection there between what I do professionally and what I do with the Dialogue Doctor, yeah.
[00:07:19] Matty: It's exactly like a director working with an actor and when I heard you speak about vehicles, engines, anchors and hazards, you used a lot of great movie analogies. So I'm really just going to ask you to describe what that means, the vehicles, engines, anchors and hazards, and how you came up with that.
[00:07:36] Jeff: Yeah, so let's start with the how and why, because I think the how and why tends to the what. So, I was working with authors, and we'd be looking at their cast of characters, and specifically talking about contrasting voices, like we want all of these characters to sound like themselves. We want those characters, we want that voice to be true to who they are. So, Matty, is something that I've talked about on The Indy Author a long time ago, is the Dialogue Daisy, which is our kind of illustration of characterization. And the point of it is to show that hey, your character's background and your character's personality leads into your character's voice. Your character's voice is the expression of those things.
[00:08:15] So we want to create character voices that sound unique in order to display each character's unique personality and background. So I work with others to do that. I sit down with an author, and we have a big chart that we work through that shows how the characters line up. And part of that work of building these contrasting characters is also asking, does this voice serve the appropriate role in the narrative?
[00:08:43] And so we'd be talking about a character, I'd be talking about a character with an author and the author would be like, this character is kind of my villain. I'd be like, what does that mean? It's like, this character is the bad guy, and then there'd always be this like, but you know, the bad guy in the sense that like they're breaking ethical norms, but they're not really the bad guy, they actually help my protagonist become the best version of themselves. But you know, we're going to call them the villain.
[00:09:09] And it'd be like, okay, all of a sudden, this language of hero and villain isn't very helpful. And they'd be like, this is the antagonist, but she's also the character's best friend, so she's not really the antagonist because she makes the character struggle, but she's also a friend, so she's not the villain. And all the language was just getting muddy. And protagonist, antagonist, hero, villain, side character, all of it was just getting muddy.
[00:09:34] And so I'd be talking with an author about okay, we've got this main character and the voice is starting here, the voice is starting at this place, at the beginning of the story. And then we're going to see maturity and transformation, and that needs to be expressed by modulation in the character's voice. Because the voice is an expression of the character's personality, how the character operates in culture, how the character is negotiating other people around them. The voice is an expression of all those things.
[00:10:05] So as the character changes and as the character renegotiates themselves in the culture that they're in, and renegotiates expectations that people have of them, as the character goes through what we call character development. As the character develops, that voice needs to modulate and change in order to express that development to the reader, so that we don't have to tell the reader in chapter 25, and now Sally is more mature. The reader could feel Sally become more mature because the reader feels the slight changes in Sally's voice. Where Sally was self-questioning before, Sally's becoming more confident. Where Sally was using a lot of stutters and not finishing sentences because it was displaying that she wasn't fully confident in what she's saying, by the end, she's making declarations, and she's actually saying how she feels to people. We're modulating and growing that voice as Sally matures.
[00:11:00] And so with that, knowing that we're trying to modulate and grow this voice and that we want this contrast in palliative characters, and that the words, antagonist and protagonist, and hero and villain, aren't actually helping the Dialogue Doctor community, I was like, all right, we need some new words. And that's where we got into these four words.
[00:11:18] So knowing the problem, knowing the goal is to help readers emotionally engage with our story, and specifically the goal being, how do we develop a character over a story? What are we using?
[00:11:33] So the way to develop a character over a story is to demonstrate their interactions with other characters. To say, okay, at the beginning of the story, my protagonist interacts with this character in this way, and at the end of the story, my protagonist interacts with this character in this way. And we have this vision of our character that they're growing in some way, either they're becoming the best version of themselves or becoming the worst version of themselves, depending on if you're writing a heroic tale or a tragedy. They're moving, they're becoming something that they're not.
[00:12:06] And so we surround them with characters that create conflicts that take them on this journey. So our reader's on a journey with our lead character. So we call the lead character a vehicle. The lead character is this vehicle that's driving, that our reader's getting in a car with the vehicle and they're driving on this journey together. And so, in that journey, we're trying to decide as we go through this story, is this a positive journey or a negative journey? As the reader, am I going to like where this journey ends up or am I going to be really sad about where this journey ends up?
[00:12:41] So you'd mentioned earlier using movie examples. So I think one that's really great for this is BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY as an example. Bridget is on a journey. She states at the beginning of the movie and the book, I want to be a better version of myself. I'm unhappy, it's my birthday, and I'm unhappy. If I don't change it, I'm going to be sad, alone, cat lady who doesn't actually own any cats, living in this apartment by myself in tragedy. And so she is this character, and we're going to go on this journey of self-development with Bridget. We're going to get on this road and drive down this journey.
[00:13:19] And in order to take this journey, Richard Curtis, the author, is going to put different characters around Bridget to challenge her self-expression. So instead of thinking of antagonists and allies, like saying this character is an antagonist, they're going to make the journey hard. This character is an ally, they're going to make the journey easy. Like antagonist, when we use that word, we're talking about, there is some kind of ethical force happening in this story and the antagonist stands against that ethical force, it's not about character development. Or there's an ally and the ally is helping the protagonist defeat the unethical, the immoral side of the story that we want to defeat. That's more about the plot and what's happening in the plot.
[00:14:03] When we're talking about character development, those words aren't helpful, so instead we're going to use the word anchor and the word engine. So the word engine is the character or characters that are propelling our vehicle forward, propelling our vehicle toward change. So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, we have a character who was often antagonistic in the plot, like causing problems in the plot, is actually a really fantastic engine, and that’s the first love interest, Mark Darcy. Bridget's continual conflicts with Mark Darcy and her inability to figure out where she stands or how she feels about this man, propels her to become the best version of herself. Mark Darcy propels her to become independent, he propels her to take ownership, he propels her to not be as self-conscious and anxious about social interactions, because he himself is self-conscious and anxious about social interactions.
[00:15:03] Bridget struggles to express her feelings through the whole movie, unless she's talking to Mark Darcy. When she's talking to Mark Darcy, she doesn't have any problem telling him exactly how she feels, which is what we want for her. We want her to discover how she feels and tell people exactly how she feels. So he's serving as this engine, as he's driving her forward, to be the best version of herself.
[00:15:27] Another example is in THE LORD OF THE RINGS saga. In the books, we have Frodo as one of the characters on this journey. He is becoming, he's going from being a small Hobbit from the Shire who doesn't want to engage with the world, who while is not happy with his life, understands that this is his lot in life. He is to live in the Shire and not go on adventures. And then at the end of the saga, we have Frodo the hero, who's quietly and silently saved the world, although only seven people know about it, living in this dignified kind of leader space, where he's sacrificed of himself for the betterment of Creaturekind, I guess, for the betterment of his world.
[00:16:17] In that saga, Frodo is going to go through all these challenges, he's going to go through ups and downs, he's going to struggle and he's going to succeed. He has an engine with him all the time. And Sam is constantly compelling Frodo to be the best version of himself. He's constantly reminding Frodo, remember what you love about the Shire. He's constantly telling Frodo, you're not supposed to be that kind of person, you're supposed to be this kind of person. When Frodo gets tired, Sam's like, let's go on. When a negative influence shows up, which we'll talk about in a second, Sam is like, no, don't listen to him, do this instead. Sam is constantly propelling Frodo forward as his engine in the journey in order to become the best version of himself.
[00:17:01] Or if we talk about the Harry Potter books. I use these examples because they’re ones I know we've all engaged with. We talk about the Harry Potter books, you've got Harry who's going from oppressed, obscure, young boy who lives in the closet, who doesn't understand himself to, again, sacrificial leader of this movement, who's going to help bring a form of justice into his world, who's going to defeat the ultimate evil. And so, we have this trajectory of growth for Harry through the books. There's ups and downs, it's not always a smooth trajectory, sometimes Harry's doing things that we're like, oh no, why are you doing that? He's listening to influences that we're like, why are you doing that?
[00:17:44] But he's got two engines next to him all the time. He's got Ron and Hermione with him all the time. Hermione is always compelling him to be the most disciplined and ethical version of himself. And Ron is compelling him to remember that people matter and the community matters and that family matters. So we've got these two engines next to Harry that are driving Harry's character development throughout the entire thing, sometimes by encouraging and sometimes by being in conflict. But conflict with engines encourages the character be the best version of themselves.
[00:18:16] And that's the question, if we asked, is my character an engine? The question we need to ask is, is this character propelling my protagonist forward to be the best version of themselves, to be the version of themselves that we want to end in?
[00:18:30] Matty: Is that nuance the reason that you don't call the protagonist, the Harry character, the Bridget character, the Frodo character, "the driver," because in the whole vehicle metaphor, it seems like the thing to spring to, but it sounds like you're intentionally not doing that because Frodo isn't so much driving in some cases, as being driven.
[00:18:52] Jeff: Yeah. And so the reason I call it "the vehicle" is because I want you to imagine your reader in the car with that character. So your vehicle is the character that your reader is going to emotionally connect to and follow the story with. Now, you may have more than one vehicle in the story, right? Like the Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordan, and especially in his later books, when you get to the Roman saga, he'll have four vehicles going at one time. So when you think about a character's development, the vehicle is the character that the reader is emotionally engaging with. Because the reader's going to latch onto a character, and the reader's going to go on an emotional journey of change with that character. That's your vehicle. And then the engine is the one that's propelling that character forward, so when the engine shows up, we're going to see positive change in that character.
[00:19:47] Matty: I was thinking through the examples, it's been too long since I watched BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, so I can't comment on that, but I was thinking about the engine characters that you're mentioning and thinking about their role in making the vehicle character change. But I'm trying to think to what extent they change. So from the beginning to the end of the Harry Potter books, Ron and Hermione are intrinsically different because they've literally grown up, so there's just some change that comes along with that. Sam, I can't even remember. Is change an important aspect of the engine characters in the same way it is for the vehicle character?
[00:20:23] Jeff: So, we're going to get a little like three-dimensional chess here. It depends if you want that engine character to also be a vehicle. So Ron and Hermione are vehicles in and of themselves, people connect with them, they follow Hermione and Ron emotionally. And so Ron and Hermione also experience character development.
[00:20:43] In the Percy Jackson series, Grover, his partner is an engine, but no one connects with Grover emotionally. He wasn't written for you to connect with him emotionally. Grover is kind of a one-note character. He always is the same. And so he is an engine that is not a vehicle, and so you don't see a lot of character change in them, but there is a level to this where you're like, okay, which characters do I actually want people to connect with, and do I want my reader to connect with? Which characters am I taking on an emotional journey?
[00:21:15] Can you 100% control that? No, you cannot. Your reader is going to do what your reader wants to do. You may be like, oh, this is my engine character, and this is my vehicle, and I want the reader following Bridget Jones through the whole saga. Oh my gosh, we got to follow Bridget Jones, and you have a reader who's, man, I really connected emotionally with Mark Darcy. Like, you can't help that. Readers are going to do what readers want to do. Part of the beauty of storytelling is that you're releasing this thing into a reader's imagination, and the reader's imagination is really what makes the story come to life.
[00:21:48] Matty: If you consciously decided that you wanted Mark to be a vehicle, as well as Bridget, is that a conscious decision that you think authors should make about to some extent?
[00:21:58] Jeff: So I'm encouraging is as you plot out your novel, as you think about the twists and turns, understand that your reader wants to see this character develop and change. So think about your scenes as, okay, how is my vehicle going to be challenged in this moment, and what's going to happen to them because of that challenge? How are they going to move forward? Who is bringing that challenge? Is this character an engine or an anchor? Should my reader be inspired when this character shows up to challenge my vehicle, or should a reader get nervous when this character, which is an anchor, which we can talk about in a second. But I am encouraging you to like, hey, be strategic as you're writing to think, okay, what role do these characters play in character development?
[00:22:45] So, if you're writing the book BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and you get about halfway through and you're like, man, I'm really connecting with Mark Darcy. Then you're going to have to create some scenes where Mark Darcy is emotionally challenged. You're going to have to know who Mark is becoming in this book, and push toward that.
[00:23:02] So if you think of each character as a lens that you're looking through, you can put on different sets of glasses, you can wear the Bridget glasses, and then the Mark glasses. Tolkien does this, right? Like, Tolkien actually breaks his entire plot into multiple sections, and you have the Frodo glasses. You have the Merry and Pippin glasses, and you have the Aragon glasses. You have multiple vehicles, those vehicles have multiple engines and anchors and hazards that come at them, And that's part of the big grand scope of storytelling.
[00:23:33] GAME OF THRONES does this. We have all these different vehicles we're following through. Some vehicles, your reader's going to connect with, some they're not. But all of those vehicles are constantly encountering engines, anchors, and hazards that force them to have character development. So if we're thinking about GAME OF THRONES, we see, oh man, how can I do this without spoiling anything? It doesn't matter, it's been out forever, it's not even finished, it looks not even finished, I can spoil whatever I want. So you got Jon Snow going to the Wall, and at first, he's kind of demure and like the forgotten son, the one that's no big deal, like why is he even there? And he grows into this leadership position at the Wall. He's one vehicle that we traveled with. He was a vehicle I enjoyed. I really liked reading the Jon Snow chapters.
[00:24:19] We've got Tyrion Lannister, another vehicle that we follow through this like, deep set of books. Very different vehicle than Jon Snow, encountering completely different engines and anchors and hazards. But Tyrion also goes through this process of growth. And so you're putting on these different vehicle glasses as you're taking the reader on these emotional journeys with these characters.
[00:24:42] So yeah, all that to say, you can have more than one vehicle. If we go super meta, Pippin and Merry are vehicles in and of themselves. They have their own journey, they have emotional growth, they have character development. We follow their story a little bit. Pippin and Merry are actually anchors to Frodo. When Pippin and Merry are around, when you're looking through Frodo's vehicle, Pippin and Merry are encouraging him to be the worst version of himself.
[00:25:08] Anchor is the opposite of an engine. If you think about your vehicle going down the road toward growth, the anchor drops out of the trunk and slows everything down, pulls your vehicle down toward the worst version of themselves.
[00:25:22] So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, to go back to that example, Daniel Cleaver is the anchor, played by Hugh Grant in the movie. Now Daniel Cleaver isn't necessarily an antagonist, right? This is a love triangle. We've got Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver, both competing for Bridget's attention. Daniel Cleaver though is constantly encouraging Bridget to be self-conscious. He talks about her body in ways that makes her think badly about herself. He jokes about her in ways that make her think badly about herself. He's constantly making her feel like she's not enough, that she's someone who's funny, but not necessarily kind of the epitome of womanhood that he's looking for.
[00:26:04] So you have this person who's pulling her down to the worst version of who she is, and we know from the first time that she encounters Daniel Cleaver that if this relationship is the relationship that wins out, she's going to end up alone and sad in her apartment, feeling bad about herself. Whereas Mark Darcy is going to bring her to the person she wants to be. So we've got this competition for character development between our anchor and our engine.
[00:26:34] In LORD OF THE RINGS, Frodo's anchor is Gollum. Gollum is following Frodo around, Gollum is encouraging Frodo to be the worst part of himself, he talks about the ring as is precious, he show's Frodo, oh, this is a natural extension of the ring and the ring wants you to hold on to it and you can't give it away, whatever you do, don't throw it in the fire. In fact, the final scene, again spoilers, if you haven't read THE LORD OF THE RINGS, too late. So one of the Frodo's final scenes is a wrestling match with his anchor about what this ring is, and Frodo starts to give in to the worst impulses of his character development. So we have this journey that Frodo's on, where there's this character that's constantly pulling him to the worst version of himself.
[00:27:23] Matty: Another example that I am always fascinated by is Snape.
[00:27:28] Jeff: Yeah. Oh, Harry Potter. Yeah. So, and that's an interesting question. Snape as an antagonist, definitely through the first books. There's a change at the end, but in the first book, Snape is an antagonist. Snape is also an anchor for Harry. He brings out the worst. Harry behaves terribly whenever Snape shows up into a scene. We don't see the noble, disciplined, compassionate for others warrior. When Harry's around, we see the conniving, put upon, feeling like a victim version of Harry that we don't want.
[00:28:05] So Snape in that way serves as this anchor to Harry, bringing Harry's character movement down. Malfoy is another clear anchor to Harry. Like when Malfoy shows up, Harry behaves like a Slytherin jerk. He's got this like. Slytherin nature to him. So when these guys show up, they start to encourage this worst side of Harry.
[00:28:24] And Snape is an interesting conversation because in the end of the series, Snape is a protagonist. You find out that oh no, he's actually fighting for the ethical good of the plot. But he never stops being an anchor for Harry. Even as a protagonist, he continues to bring the worst out in Harry. And that's a great illustration of how that protagonist and antagonist words, when we're talking about character development, don't really help. So, yeah, Snape is a clear anchor to Harry, pulling him downward. Malfoy is a clear anchor to Harry.
[00:28:54] Other professors show up and they are engines to Harry. Dumbledore as a clear engine to Harry. Dumbledore is constantly encouraging Harry to be the best version of himself. All that to say, that tension between the anchor and the engine driving our character forward is part of what brings out the beautiful texture of this story, of the character, trying to make decisions, the character making choices about who they're going to be in relation to these other people.
[00:29:21] Another fun example is in BATMAN. I was a huge comic book reader growing up and I loved the Batman comics. And there's a lot of them, so that can be hard to talk about. So grabbing a movie, the Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker, is another great example of an antagonist and the Joker who is actually an engine. He is the villain. He is blowing up hospitals, right? He's not a good character. But he encourages Batman to be the best version of himself. So he's going to antagonist to the plot, but he's an engine in character development because Batman becomes Batman in response to who this guy is. He ponders his own self-worth. He starts making sacrifices and not just seeks revenge because of who this character is. A lot of the comic book villains work that way. They're villains in the story, but they're engines in character develop.
[00:30:49] Matty: Yeah, I think it's interesting that in the examples you're using, the most interesting and engaging characters are the ones where there's this seemingly opposed role they're playing, like an antagonist and an engine. You had talked about Snape and Malfoy in Harry Potter, and Snape is always a fascinating character. Malfoy isn't an interesting character. He's only interesting because of what Harry does when he's around him. But I don't think anybody is sort of saying, yeah, of all those characters, the one I really loved was Malfoy. Whereas I think they are saying it about Snape, especially when you get to the end, and you see that there's this tension between antagonistic role and engine role.
[00:31:31] Jeff: Yeah, that's a great point. That tension goes the other way too. You can have a protagonist who's an anchor. So, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, going back to our original example, her mother is the protagonist. Her mother wants the best for her, is trying to help, but her mother is an anchor. Her mother makes her into the worst version of herself when she's around her mother. And her mothers, one of the most interesting characters.
[00:31:54] And my theory is that part of that interest is that when we meet our readers' expectations, they feel good for a moment, because they're like, oh yeah, this is what I expected. But then that feeling, that positive feeling, begins to fade because they're like, oh, this is what I expected. It feels good because they're getting what they expected, but it's not interesting. When you take a character like Snape and you start playing with his role in comparison to how he impacts the character, you take a character like Gollum, you start playing with his role in the story versus how it impacts the character, it starts to make the reader go, oh, this is interesting because what a contrast in these things.
[00:32:42] Matty: But I'm guessing that you couldn't really do that with everyone. So you had mentioned earlier that there are some characters for just a one note character. Gollum I think is basically a one note character.
[00:32:54] Jeff: I think Gollum's really rich in texture, but that's different. Yeah.
[00:32:58] Matty: But there's not like an arc. There's no arc of Gollum's character development. Like at the beginning he was like this, but at the end he was like that. No, he's just, he's very consistent. But I think in the same way that even if you're writing a thriller, you don't want every chapter pegged it 11 on a scale of one to 10 in terms of action, I think that if you try to delve into every character as, well, they're an engine and an anchor, it was become confusing, I guess, unless you're George R.R. Martin, and then maybe you can get away with it.
[00:33:28] Jeff: Yeah, I mean, the more characters you try to develop, and this is just kind of the rule that I talk with others, the more characters you're trying to develop, the more characters you're trying to show change in, the longer your books, or the longer story is. Because we need to take the reader on the journey. The reader needs to see the characters before they change. The reader needs to become comfortable with the character before they change. The reader needs to feel the conflict of the inciting incident and what that's going to require of the character. The reader needs to have the character reflect on what that's going to become. The reader needs to feel the character being forced to make choices. And then the reader needs to feel the consequences of those choices. So that's just one character arc. The conflict and then the choices and consequences that the character has to go through as they develop to become the person we want to see at the end of the book.
[00:34:22] So every time you add a character that's developing, add that story arc. So if you're going to develop, if you're like, okay, I'm writing a fantasy novel, I got a cohort of five characters. We're going to take three of them on this massive journey of development. And then two of them, we're just going to do a little bit of development on it. Well, like buckle it, now you've got Game of Thrones, right? The book you're about to undertake is hundreds of thousands of words, because we have to spend all of these moments with all of these characters.
[00:34:54] And you can combine those moments. If you're really skillful, you can have two characters making choices at the same time and showing the consequences of their choices. It just takes more skill, but you're still going to have more chapters. The more characters you're developing, the more scenes you're going to have to add. So just be ready, right? That's not saying don't do it. That's just saying don't be discouraged when you realize, oh man, what I thought was a 60,000-word romp with these five characters is actually four Game of Thrones books. Just know the bigger, the more vehicles you put for the reader to jump between, the more character development you have to do the longer your book is and the longer your story is, or books are. and that's just something you got to be ready for.
[00:35:45] I grew up reading Grisham novels and Clancy novels. I loved Jack Ryan as a teenager. Jack Ryan kind of changes. Not really. Like Clancy novels are really long because he likes to describe like the submarine they're in, but Jack Ryan is pretty much the same all the way through. So you can write a standalone Clancy novel and really kind of get the emotional arc done in like 60,000 words because there's not a lot of change going on. Jack Ryan is going to experience some stuff. He's going to get stressed. He's going to overcome it. In the end, he's going to come out a little bit more mature, right?
[00:36:19] Jack Reacher novels are this way. I love Jack Reacher novels. They're great. Jack Reacher shows up to a small town. Jack Reacher discovers that there's some kind of corruption going on. Jack Reacher faces down the corruption. He struggles a little bit. There's a mystery. He uncovers something, wins the day. Usually there's a couple of fights where he's punching people in the face. And in the end, he tells everybody, thanks, and he moves on, right? Like it's not, it is an emotional journey, but because of the genre, it's not this dramatic emotional journey, so you can get it done in 60,000 words, no big deal.
[00:36:51] But if we're going on this like dramatic, emotional journey where you're going to take Arya Stark from being a young girl growing up in the north to being a faceless assassin murdering people, buckle in, you're writing for a long time, right? It's like a lot of it is just you as an author, you're making choices. And part of what I'm hoping to do with the language of engine, anchor, and vehicle is just give you more tools to help you understand and describe to yourself the choices you're making as a writer.
[00:37:25] Matty: I think you've now hit all of them except hazards. I don't know that we talked about.
[00:37:28] Jeff: So hazard characters are just a way to think about what is traditionally called side characters. But again, the problem with the language of side characters is you think they don't have to show up very often, whereas hazard characters can show up as much as you want. Hazard character is not going to necessarily grow or change. You're never going to put that lens of your reader on a hazard character. That's not going to happen. Mostly because hazard characters are big, and they cause your vehicle to swerve in one way or another.
[00:37:58] So in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY, Bridget's friends are hazard characters. She has four friends, they show up, they yell and scream about her life. They say wild things, and they force her into choice moments. And that's what a hazard character does. Hazard character voices are usually bigger and more expressive than your normal character voices. I'm trying to think of a good example in Tolkien. Saruman in the Big Tower in Lord of the Rings is a hazard character. He's a big voice. He's a loud voice. He forces them to make decisions. Wormtongue forces Aragon to make decisions. So you have these characters that show up that don't necessarily have an arc, aren't going to develop, but are going to force conversation and force change, and those are hazard characters.
[00:38:53] And what I tell authors that I work with is if you're writing a side character, like if your vehicle character is in a bar is in a coffee house and they're ordering a coffee and you've got this little side conversation where they're ordering a coffee. You're like, oh, this is a fun barista, I kind of riding this barista pause there for a minute and ask like, how can I exaggerate this voice in a way that's going to force either the best or the worst of my character? How can I exaggerate this voice in a way to force my character to make a decision about who they are in this moment? That's a hazard character.
[00:39:29] Great book by Fredrik Backman called A MAN CALLED OVE about a grumpy old man who's experiencing suicidal ideations. Who's dealing with his desire to isolate himself and end his own life as these neighbors keep drawing him back into their lives. At one point he goes to a hospital and there's a magician at the hospital and the magician is a fantastic example of a hazard character. Big voice, loud voice. We're only going to see him this one time and this story forces Ove I have to make some decisions. Ove punches the magician in the face. He gets kicked out of the hospital. It's a great scene. It's a great scene because Backman went big with the voice and made the hazard character something that's going to force Ove into a confrontation.
[00:40:15] And that's what we talk about we have hazard character. So a lot of times, especially when I'm working with pantsers who just don't want to plan, they just want to write, they'll be like, I feel like my story is wandering and I don't know where I'm going. Now it's time for some hazards. Let's take some of the scenes you wrote that are wandering and let's find the side character that's at the center of that scene, blow that side characters voice up so it's forcing your vehicle to make some choices. And now your story won't feel wandering and anymore. It'll feel like the character is debating who they're going to be. And it helps build that momentum in the plot toward on a journey.
[00:40:52] Matty: Are there any cautions or red flags that an author might be relying too much on hazard characters?
[00:40:59] Jeff: Yeah. If your character's just waffling between development. Like, oh, they grow a little bit here and then they don't grow here, or they grow in the wrong direction here and then they grow in the right direction here and then the wrong direction here in the right direction here. You're not going anywhere. You're just driving in circles. So it's like you have to show movement,
[00:41:17] Another way to think about this. this is a weird turn, but it's what came to mind. There's a social scientist in the 1950s, I think named Bruce Tuckman who studied how people change and how behaviors change specifically. And he broke behavior change down into these different states. Forming norming, performing and storing. You heard this before? So the idea is that often we form expectations of how we operate around people around us. Those expectations start to norm in that when I show up to work, I know this person's going to say hello to me. I know this person's not going to say hello to me. And I'm starting to norm out of that expectation. I expect that person to say hello. I expect that person not to say hello. And then I perform at that expectation. I treat the person that says hello nicely. I treat the person that doesn't have to say hello with more indifference, because they're not saying hello. so I'm, I've normed, I'm performing.
[00:42:09] And then all of a sudden, a storm will happen. The person who doesn't say hello says it, and that storm challenged me to change my expectations. And I have to re-norm. Like, oh, now I guess this person talks to me when I got to work. And so then I'm going to start performing on that new expectation. That's the cyclical nature in social science of personal change and development, personal change and growth. I'm making decisions based on the relationship I have with the others around me.
[00:42:37] If you keep having storms and your character, isn't changing, they're just going in circles in their character development, the hazard is the storm. Like engines, anchors, hazards, they cause storms that our characters have to re-norm to. If that re norming isn't going in a direction, positive or negative, your story's wandering and you're not going anywhere, you need to reevaluate how you're using those characters to change your vehicle.
[00:43:04] Matty: Well, Jeff, I feel like we just barely scratched the surface of this whole concept of vehicles, engines, anchors, and hazards. If listeners wanted to pursue this more, what resources are available to them, and other of your resources that you could point them to.
[00:43:19] Jeff: So we talked about this on the podcast. Occasionally, not a lot, occasionally. So Dialogue Doctor is the podcast. You can also come over to DialogueDoctor.com. There is a list of every podcast there that we've ever done, and you'll see some of them. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head because I didn't come prepared for things. There's the list of episodes. You'll find several episodes there where I talk about it, lay it out with fun charts and graphs. Not fun charts and graphs, illustrations via PowerPoint.
[00:43:48] And then I also talk about it a lot in bonus episodes. Because it's a concept as the community's still kind of working out, I talk about it in bonus episodes some. To get the bonus episodes, you subscribe to the the Dialogue Doctor Patreon for $3 a month. In fact, this week on the bonus episode, the week we're recording this, not that we get comes out, but we are recording this, I'm doing a bonus episode on pointillism and how it connects to adding contrast in comparison characters together. So we're going to talk about Georges Seurat, art, pointillism, and how using that idea that two colors next to each other create a third color, how that actually also works for characterization. So that's the kind of nerd craft stuff we do over at The Dialogue Doctor.
[00:44:32] Matty: Yeah. Well, I'm going to head over and subscribe and then I'm going to invite you back at some point to talk about painting styles over the centuries.
[00:44:41] Jeff: The weird rabbit holes that Jeff goes down. The goal is to provide ... so my encouragement, if you're listening to this and you're overwhelmed, because I know a lot of times people hear me and other Dialogue Doctor junkies over the DialogueDoctor.com go off on these things about these tools and these resources and they get overwhelmed and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm just trying to finish my first draft. What the heck are you doing? If that's where you are, know that these are just tools. You don't have to use any of them. We're just giving you like different types of hammers and screwdrivers. So the key is to find a way of thinking, find a tool that works for you, and lean into that tool. Don't feel the need to use all of them.
[00:45:28] And so at the Dialogue Doctor, we're constantly developing new tools for your toolbox so that when you need them, they're ready for you, not that you have to have them, so please don't be overwhelmed. Just know that we're constantly thinking about new tools for you to use. And you may listen to it, you may be like, anchors and engines? That's insane. I'm not using the tool. Great. Don't use it. It doesn't hurt our feelings. We just put it into the world so you might have that option.
[00:45:53] Matty: I appreciate so much you spending time walking through that and I'm going to be looking forward to all the Patreon resources that I'm going to get as soon as I subscribe, which I'm going to do right after we're done talking, but Jeff as always, this was so much fun talking to you. And I think you've already told the listeners where they can go to find out more about you. So, I think they just have to keep an eye out for the next time I can talk you back onto the podcast.
[00:46:14] Jeff: Yeah. Anytime I love it. Thanks, Matty.
Links
dialoguedoctor.com
The Dialogue Doctor Podcast
https://twitter.com/Jffelkins
https://www.facebook.com/JeffElkinsWriter
Episode 048 - Building Great Protagonist and Antagonist Voices with Jeff Elkins
Episode 082 - Perspectives on Writer's Block
Episode 12 of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast with Matty Dalrymple – Jeff and Matty discuss carrying a character across a series and audiobooks.
Episode 41 of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast - Matty Dalrymple Returns – Jeff and Matty look at a piece Matty wrote and go deep into keeping the dialogue moving.
The Dialogue Doctor Podcast
https://twitter.com/Jffelkins
https://www.facebook.com/JeffElkinsWriter
Episode 048 - Building Great Protagonist and Antagonist Voices with Jeff Elkins
Episode 082 - Perspectives on Writer's Block
Episode 12 of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast with Matty Dalrymple – Jeff and Matty discuss carrying a character across a series and audiobooks.
Episode 41 of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast - Matty Dalrymple Returns – Jeff and Matty look at a piece Matty wrote and go deep into keeping the dialogue moving.
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