Crafting Unforgettable Characters for Your Comic Books

0:00 All [Music] right. If it's Tuesday, that can mean only one thing, and it is hot. It's the summer, and it's time for Comic Book School Live. Mike, I am sweltering here in New Jersey. >> It's nice and It's nice and sunny, but cool out here in California. >> Yeah, in New Jersey, I If it starts to rain in my office, do not be surprised.

0:45 Humidity is 100% in here. And I even got my haircut >> now. >> And it's still hot. >> Is Is that from the the humidity or is it just >> humidity? literally cut my hair for me. >> Nice. >> Yeah. So, Mike, tonight we're going to be um we got a great show as as always. Tonight, we're going to we're going to really dig deep into how to create great characters. Drawn Swords is is ready to go. I saw Drawn Swords already commenting while we were backstage, right, Mike? >> Yeah. We also got uh we also got Greg here. He has arrived. Proceed. >> Thanks, Greg. We appreciate that. >> We've got Gatilla. We got Gatilla had a whole run here. Yeah, I was seeing Gatilla's comments. He >> showing up early or on time. >> He's he was like on the keyboard.

1:33 >> Apparently, he's uh he wants to know if we're going to be running late, which apparently we are. And our good friend Andrew Campbell from Down Under. He's here. >> Hello, friends. >> Oh, and our other buddy Russ Detective. >> Detective is here. >> Look, the whole gang's here. >> The whole gang's here. Well, they're going to be excited, Mike. But for people who are new to the show, who are you? >> Uh, I'm Mike Fisolo. I'm going to read right off here. A three-time Emmy award-winning, twotime Annie award-winning screenwriter and comic book writer. Wait, where are my media assets? >> Yeah, you're you're in charge of sound. >> There we go. >> All right. >> All right. And then, who am I? >> Uh, let's see. You are Buddy Scalera, award-winning comic book writer,

2:18 educator, and marketing technologist. >> Yeah, like anybody cares about that part. >> Everyone cares about being a marketing technologist. >> Well, that's how I pay for everything. Okay, here we go. So, tonight, Mike, we got we got a we got a a call out. Last week, we talked about going to conventions. Uh, and that's uh Sean Chen. >> Hi, Sean Chen. He's been on the show quite a few times. >> Quite a few times. Good friend Sean Chen. is wearing his uh Megadroid shirt from Nelson Diccastro, good friend of ours and the Comic Book School show. Uh and uh there we are pointing to the Comic Book School logo on my banner. >> Look at that. And that's one of those banners you had made specifically for the com for the uh the Comic Con. >> That's right. And it was a very glamorous event as you can see the bleachers behind us.

3:04 >> But it was good to see Shawn and uh we we uh we had fun at Eternal Con 2025. So, I'll keep you guys up to date on our adventures. But tonight on Comic Book School, uh tonight we're going to talk about how to create a visual character map. Uh you're going to lead us through some AI tools for character bios. And Mike, even you don't know about this, but tonight we're going to be doing something new called our community spotlight. Spotlighting spotlighting literally somebody in our community who's doing something awesome. And I believe that person may even be in the audience tonight. So, we're going to keep them here all the way to the end. >> Interesting. Is it Gatillaa? >> Gatilla. Wins a community award every night. >> If a would a t-shirt cannon be considered marketing technology?

3:51 >> I suppose it would. >> I guess it is. It's technology or a t-shirt trebuche, whatever it is. He is in a good mood. He's He's wound up. All right, Mike. And a little subtle note, here's our social media channels. I don't know if uh if you follow us on any of these, we occasionally update it um when we when we get around to it. >> Yes. Yes. >> Although you did give us a video, edited a video. So, if you guys haven't seen it, uh Mike edited a video and gave us a new video just uh just the other day. It went up this week, right, Mike? >> Yeah. You're welcome. >> Hey, thank you. And it's Victor Medina. Nice to see you, Victor. >> Hi, Victor. >> All right, Mike. So, this is going to be a two-part show. We know how much people like our two-parters. Uh, so tonight in part one, we'll be talking about creating a visual map and using those AI

4:38 tools. But part two, next week, we're going to be talking about character journeys and creating conflict with characters. Uh, audience, you should know that Mike learns about this stuff at the same time as you. I almost I give you almost no notice of what we're going to do, right? >> Yep. I got a I got an email this morning uh that said, "Hey, this is what we're doing." And then I had to do some stuff for it. So, and but you do a heck of a job. >> Well, thank you. Yes, >> it's all cliffhers to test. >> It's all cliffhers. All right, Mike. So, we're going to get into character maps. First thing we're going to do is first we're going to just talk about a character map, uh, and why you should create one. So, a character map essentially, um, and I'll lead off, Mike, and then I'll expect you to jump

5:23 in with some intelligent, witty, and insightful information from being a three-time Emmy award-winning television writer. A character map is exactly what it sounds like. It is a way for you to visualize characters and their relationships. Um they can be done in a variety of ways and tonight we will show you a variety of ways that you can do that uh with the tools that are on your computer or just free tools that are online. Essentially though um I I like to think of the character map uh in this way which is the orbit around the central hero, right? It's it's it's really difficult to not think through uh who the friend is, who's the enemy, the love interest if there's there is one, and the

6:08 associate. Now, you color them in black. The hero is the center in blue. The enemy obviously we've got an we've got an opposite. The friend over to the side, the associate in black. The associate may be a friend, maybe a turncoat, we don't know. And then the love interest. So, creating uh this circle. And I like to have a minimum of this many characters uh in a general story. Mike, what do you do or what do you know about character maps from your work in Hollywood? >> Uh I know pretty much nothing. Like I would never do this. This is not uh what a pancer does. I just get the idea in my head and then I kind of work through it from there. I don't sit down and go, "Okay, this is going to be his friend. This is going to be his enemy. This is

6:54 going to be his love." just kind of just kind of wait for it to happen. >> All right. All right. Well, let's see if tonight we can uh we can change your mind about that. So, um there are lots of different types of character maps. So, these three examples uh super easy to make them. In fact, I'm going to show you how I made these. Um you can do them in any way you want. For example, this one is a riff on the one we just saw. This one is the different characters blocked out in different ways. um showing an extended detail description about them. And then the one to the far right is the main character and then circles. This could be circles of relationships, it could be individuals, it can be groups, it can be relationships showing the relative distance and relationship to the main

7:41 character. So, does do visualizations like this appeal to you, Mike? Would if you got this from a from someone, would you find this to be useful? I would find the middle one kind of useful because then I could uh put little tiny descriptions in the the ABC, ABC, C, and D boxes on the sides. >> All right, so let's get let's get into it. Um, we're going to show you how uh we do these uh using both PowerPoint. Uh you could use Google Docs or we can use Millote. We've covered Millanote in the past. Um, and you can see if you go to our channel, Mike, uh, and you search on the keyword Millerote, you'll find, uh, two demos that we did using the Millanote tool. Uh, if you really want to get into how this this works. So, so

8:26 there's some good stuff in the archives. Okay. So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to we're going to pop out, see if this works. So, we're going to pop out and we're going to go into PowerPoint and I'm going to just zoom in a little bit. How's that view? Pretty good. >> That's pretty good. Dron source wants to to uh throw us question. He says, "I'm eager to see which stories fall into which map. Do you have examples of existing IP?" >> We will uh but not in this episode. Okay. >> You got to wait till next week. >> You got to wait until next week. Okay. So, um we're just going to create a new slide. Okay. So, um we're going to just say character one. All right. Now, in PowerPoint, you've got these uh different types of tools. Smart art is for me the best way

9:12 to uh do this. But you're not seeing the smart art uh because it's Can you see it? No. It's a pop-up window. >> Can't see it. >> Can't see it. Okay. How about if we add We change the slide real quick. See if this is Uh oh. Uh oh. Our first glitch. No glitch. I'm just going to have to show you by doing it. So, I insert a smart art. Uh there is a series of relationships and you could pick any relationship. Um and you said you liked this one, right? >> Yes.

9:57 >> All right. So over here, you could just go in here and you could put um Bob, Mary, Hank, and um >> Jack >> Trader. Okay. And you can put some info and more info. And you can put more info. you put more info and and and and you and you you've got, you know, plenty of tools. You could play around. You can change the colors. You know, you make it look fun. Now, the nice thing about this is I go like this and I'm like, "Okay, I've got this one over here." But, like I said, I want to maybe add in another

10:45 uh version. So, I go over here. Again, you're not going to see the smart art pop up. Uh but you'll see the um relationships, and I'll put the a couple different examples in here. Um, this is a good one because you can see how the character relates to all the other characters. So, you would say main and then you can put one and then you could put two, two, and then you put three and then you put four. So, you begin to build out a visual map of who each of these characters are. You can also take this and, you know, you can adjust this and you can move this character further away because they're they're moving away from the character. You could actually do this during the um

11:30 uh the building process. Now, one of the things that I like to do is consider Mike how these two characters relate to each other. So, again, I don't think you can see the pull down menus very well. No, it's not showing you the pull down menus, but you can see now I've created a uh relationship between these two characters. And what we want to do is show that these characters also have a relationship. So we think about uh this might be Superman. You put Superman and then you might have uh over here Lex and then you have Lois. Each of them has an individual relationship with Superman. Um, but they each have a relationship with each other. So, we're going to put Jimmy over

12:17 here, but Lois is closer to this side, more to the friend side, right? And then we can see how the arrows all move. And then we can go like this. And then we say, what's the relationship between Jimmy and Lois? And we could say, what's the relationship between Jimmy and Lex? Now the point behind what I'm doing Mike is uh for us to force ourselves into making sure that we understand those relationships. So a character map helps you to understand the contextual relationship between the primary characters and then you can have other satellite characters just by adding satellite characters. You can put a whole bunch of extra people and then you're like okay I got a bunch over

13:02 here. I got a bunch of other people that work at the uh at the Daily Planet. So, I put them over here like this. And then you could build these characters out. You want to know what their role is and what their relationship is, say to Superman and also maybe to Clark Kent. But by doing a character map, it helps you to remember where you are. And then you can put at odds, Lex Luthor way over here. He's the bad guy. And then the friends are over here. And then you could put people right over here that you're not 100% sure they could turn on either side. But that's the point of building a character map. And that is how easily that you can do it inside of PowerPoint. >> And you love this method. >> Um, I love this method because I'm a

13:48 visual thinker and it helps me to think through uh all of the different character bios uh that you're going to help demo in a little while, how we write those character bios. But what about this? When you see me do this, does this appeal to you? >> This does not appeal to me. It's It's too like you're visual. I guess I'm not visual because this is too much for me. It's like you got all these arrows and people and bubbles and this connects to that one. And it it's kind of confusing to me. >> Well, I can spend hours not doing the work, just building. After I would do this, I'd be done for the day. I'm like that was my that was my day of writing making >> then why bother writing >> well right well that's why you're a pancer you you get some stuff done but

14:35 uh it is worth noting I'm gonna go I'm going to go back one slide go >> yes Andrew I am very hard to please >> yeah so um I'm also going to now show you can do the same exact thing in a couple of other tools um so for example we're going to stop sharing and we're going to go over here Mike we're going to click over here and we're going to share screen. >> Deron Source says we could give uh homework for the audience. He can think of a few examples for the uh I guess the character maps for IP. >> That's right. Now, Mike, can you see my screen here? >> Uh it says character maps. Yes. >> All right. So, we add we add a slide. Okay. Now, we're just going to be able to do the same thing. We're going to add a diagram and we're going to add relationships. And uh which relationship

15:21 do you like, Mike? Uh, I can't read any of them, so I'll pick the red one. >> Okay. So, you've added a red one, and we've got uh main character >> Swords is with you. He likes graphs. >> Extended um cast. Um, and you've just and then you just kind of build it out and you work on it. Now, whoops. Blank stair says, "If you put that on a wall with push pins and a rope, you could be mistaken for a serial killer." >> That's always It's always been one of my goals. >> Yes. Suddenly, I am not good for morale. No, I am not. >> All right. So, now over here, uh I like this one uh because it kind of gives me

16:08 an opportunity to play around. Oops. I gotta tell you, sometimes it's a little tricky to grab these guys. >> Yep. That's why you got to have a bigger uh cursor. And this is just with little little building blocks you can build out. Oh my god, I just can't I can't get it tonight. And there's lots of different tools that you can add and you can play with, but you know, most people who have Gmail will use their Google Docs. And there's any number of different types of tools that you can do. Nice thing about what you do in the uh Google Docs, it's very easy to share. You and I do a lot of uh

16:55 sharing. So, you know, you could just immediately pop in here and populate any number of things. So uh they do have quite a few tools in here in the insert uh where you can do diagrams and you can put hierarchies and you know we can talk about the timeline of the characters growth you know three acts different things like that. So all of this is pretty easily accessible inside of Google Docs. What do you think so far? >> Uh I uh again it's making my brain hurt but I mean it's if it's helpful to you absolutely do it. Uh, drawn swords also wants to know if you can share the map PDFs. Is that something that you could put up there as a template? And anybody could uh >> comic book schools got you. Yeah, we got

17:40 you. We got you. >> Comic book got you. >> What you're doing here, I think, is extremely useful for people who enjoy that sort of stuff, like mapping out every single detail. For me, it makes my brain hurt looking at it because I'm like, this is so much happening. I like the way you phrase that sort of stuff >> just on the page. It's like I I it it kind of takes away from me telling the story as it happening. >> All right. Well, I'm going to make your head hurt more. So, we're gonna we're gonna go back to our um right here. Uh so, as I noted, uh we we have some videos on Milanote. We just showed you Google Docs. Uh we did the outline. Now, I'm going to show you Milanote. Um I and

18:26 I'm going to note that once again none of this is sponsored. Um uh the Milanote demo we put on earlier. You can also do this with Miro, MS Vizio, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Whiteboard. Uh a lot of these tools actually are free. Um and some of them are paid. So you know, you figure out which one works for you. But I'm going to show the screen, Mike, and show people how I use Milanote. So, Milanote's got a basic um format and you can create a board. And so, you can see right here as I drag this over, right? Can you see me just drop that? >> Yep. >> I'm going to put character

19:12 map. What are we up to? Five. Okay. So, I go into five. Now I double click and you can see here that I've going to add in a board. Oops. Go back. Let me just go back. Let me just do one that's already bu built. Um so not that one. That was for our character bio. So there's a couple different ways you can do this. Um Milanote will give you a um template like this. You can start with the actual template so that you can practice with it. All the stuff is movable. All the relationships, you know, you can you can type into all of these like this. You can change the creatures.

19:57 You can add different pictures. Um, as well over here, um, this is the one that I was just showing you. Um, so if we were thinking, okay, Jeremy's missing and we're going to put him closer to Gus and all the ones that have the red X are the enemies, but they're over here. And then here are the supporting characters. And we can change the images and we can say Maria. And we could talk about Maria and write a bio about Maria if we wanted to jump into Maria. I didn't obviously write a bio about Maria, but what this does is it gives us an opportunity to create these new characters. So, let's say I were to go in here and I wanted to um

20:44 can't see it. >> Gatilla wants to know if is this how artists become writers? Oh, >> it it might be. Why am I not getting what I want, Mike? >> Because you're live on camera. >> Yeah. Uh >> oh. Uh >> oh. >> I can't get what I want. >> If only if only this was prepared ahead of time. >> It was prepared ahead of time. All right. So, we're just going to have to we're just going to have to do uh the uh ones that that I've already prepared. Um, you come up with a series of these, you can add characters, and this is the

21:30 character map. What would you like using this? This, uh, feel more organic for you? >> This This would be kind of fun just because it has more pictures. Um, but still, it's it's a lot of stuff going on with all those lines pointing to each other and who they are. It's it's a lot. It's a lot for me to take in. >> So, this would this would definitely be too much for you. This seems a little better just because, like I said, I got the pictures and I could put little text below them and they don't have the the crazy arrows pointing to each other and this and that and making it look all nuts. >> Yeah, you like that a little better. >> I like I like this this section of it a little better. >> Yeah. And then you can you can create relationships and you could label it.

22:18 >> Yeah, that that arrow would would start throwing me off already. >> Bad man. And you know, you can create linkages between characters and you can add a little to-do list. You could be like, uh, practice using this. >> Jeron Swords is a little like you. He says, uh, he admitted he'd be tempted to make graphs rather than the actual thing. >> Yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, so, you know, series of uh different ways of doing it. And one of the things that I also do want to show not that one is uh this which are the character bios and the character arcs which um oops change the background. Um but you can

23:05 see how you can build out your character bios. You can make them have a representative uh view and you can um zoom it a little bit so you can get a better view. Uh would you find this to be useful? >> Sort of. I think it's it's it's more useful than the than the pointy things with all the graphs just because it's all uh textbased and I can write it and see it. Yeah. See something like that. It would This goes to that one and this one goes to that one. >> Not your not your uh not your jam. >> No, it's not my jam. >> Blank stair wants to know if if any of this is useful for pitching or is this strictly scaffolding for the builder's eyes only?

23:51 >> Wow. >> It's I think it could be useful for pitching. I mean, if you got a a nice uh big pitch deck that you're uh showing all the stuff in. I I have a good guess in my mind if you were working with a publisher and they liked what you were doing uh they might ask you to dimensionalize and and add more information. Now you can see Microsoft whiteboard here right Mike? >> Yeah. Yes. >> So you open up whiteboard and once again you can have any kind of template that you want and then you could build out that template. Let's see if it pops up. Did it pop up? Oh, I'm going to put it in there. And boom. You you you can now label all of these. You can have your central main character and

24:39 is very easy to manipulate and you can do this with Microsoft Whiteboard and uh if you have Microsoft, it's uh pretty much free. You could add little sticky notes here where you could put a note and you can zoom in to the note. Uh you can put things that you like. You're like, "Oh, I like this. This is cool. You can put like, oh, that's a funny person. So, this is a lot of different ways that you can work with existing tools. Uh, Mike is using a PC now. And poor Mike uh had to give in and start using a PC because um that's how the world is moving. >> Back towards PC.

25:24 >> Now, what do you think? Is this uh is this appealing to you? This is somewhat appealing, but this isn't the first thing that I would think to do when I was coming up with a brand new story. >> No. But would you could you could you find usefulness out of this and in your, you know, character development where you're like, "Oh, okay. I'm gonna this is how I'm gonna write out my character bios and in a visual way so that it's easier to keep track of things and then you would send it to me and that's how we would build out character arcs and and and and relationships and things of that nature. >> Uh I I could sort of see that happening. Um I got to agree with drawing swords

26:11 though. Um he says this is mostly helpful for extremely complex stories with magic systems, betrayals, backstories. He doesn't see it for children's books, which is true. Um, but see, like even when we're working together, you might send me something that's like, "Oh, here's the idea." And even when we agree on it, I don't sit down and start writing out all these crazy character bios. >> I understand. Yeah, that makes sense. >> Here, this is a good idea. Let's Let's just kind of see what happens. >> Yeah. All right. Well, so >> that's true. That's true. Andrew, >> what did he say? We're slowly getting into something Mike likes, but we only have an hour. >> Anyway, so Mike, you can use uh Milanote is what I demoed with, of course, while

26:58 I'm live. I was having nothing but problems. Um, you can use Miro. Miro is another tool that I've used. Uh, it's very similar to Milanote. Um, Vizio, whiteboard. Now, I think Milanote, Miro, and Whiteboard all have free versions. I don't think Vizio has a free version, but like you can have a free version with all of these if you're only going to use one or two boards and then save them, render them down as a PDF, and then you save them. >> Easy enough. >> Yeah. I mean, for me, it's a it's just a tool that helps me get to where I want to get. >> And you say you're very visual, so there you go. >> Yeah. So, Mike, um, one of the things that we wanted to talk about, um, was

27:44 using AI for character bios, and you put together a character AI prompt. And now, do you have your window open? >> Um, >> do you want to do a sharing? >> Let's see if I can manage this. >> All right. So, while while you while you do that, I'm going to I'm going to read the uh the description that you wrote to get us started. So, character AI prompt that you wrote, Mike, was how do you create great characters for a story, novel, nolla, comic, short story, etc., but make it detailed, put in some actual characteristics that would make you like to have would you would like to have so that you can build the foundation of a great character. So, Mike, you use chat GPT pretty regularly. Tell us uh you

28:32 ready to you ready to show that up on the screen? >> I'm not sure it's gonna work the way I want it to. Let me >> If you want, I can just do a a share real quick and and do mine. >> Yeah, do yours till I can get mine. >> All right. >> Functional. >> All right. So, here we go. So, Mike, what were you trying what were you trying to accomplish with this one? Uh, this one I was just trying to um like you said. Oh, did that pop up or no? >> Oh, that's your Yep, there's your chat. You can see I can see it. All right, go ahead. You want to roll it out? >> Uh, yes. Now I have to get back to it. Here we go. >> I'm doing good. >> Okay. Okay. Uh, how do you create a character, great character for story, novella, novel, comic, short story, etc.

29:19 Uh, but make it detailed. put in some actual characteristics that you would like to have so that you can build the foundation of a great character. Now, just handing this over to to chat GPT, you give it a click and it lays this whole thing out for you. And that all came up for you. >> Yeah, I'm I'm watching it now. It's looking good. >> So, it it just tells you exactly what you need to do. You need a strong desire or goal because every character needs that. It needs something that they want to do that they're going to have trouble doing. They can't just go, "Oh, I want that cane." And they have to walk across to get it. There has to be something in their way that stops them from getting it. Uh they need a wound or a flaw. Um an emotional scar. Um something, you

30:06 know, an example, after being humiliated in front of her class at 12, she became obsessed with being taken seriously. something that's in the back of their head or in the back of their mind that is is pushing them forward. Uh they need some contradictions, things that make them interesting. Best characters are messy and contain opposites. Um they need an agency. How do they act? Uh they make choices that drive the story even if those choices are flawed. And five that they say here is specificity. What makes them them? This is where the gold is. hobbies, ticks, uh, philosophies of red streams, and the weirder the better. And now all this is just the very very basics. Like you could put all of this

30:51 stuff in those little bubbles that you did as the main character and then the little uh bubbles around it would be one of these things like what are their flaws? Uh how are they going to act when something happens? Where are they going? What do they need to do? And then uh chat GPT will just throw in it's a it just a character for it. It it does it up in 10 seconds. It's all this. It gets the occupations, lives, uh the likes, dislikes, core desires, and it lays it all out. Now, see, from here, what I would do if I had put this in is just take it and then run with it. just go, they give you the character of um the occupation, freelance disaster

31:39 recovery specialist. You don't like that, you put in, oh, they're a comic writer. And you don't like uh that their lives, you know, out of her van. No, I don't want her to live out of a van. I want her to be in a house by the river. And all of this stuff you can just put in and change and chat GPT will just, you know, work it right into the story for you. And um it can also, you know, write out a little paragraph if you want. It can write out a a small character bio. It can do anything that you need it to do. And you just use this basic stuff as a prompt. And then that will start you off on your on your journey. Yeah. And I what I like about this, Mike, if you scroll back up to the top, is they give you an example of what it looks like when you fill it out right

32:25 here. Character profile. Iris Quan, 29 years old. So this takes each of the areas and you had noted agency, philosophy, quirks and you you don't want to use this character. What you want to do is literally copy this and then delete everything after occupation, everything out of appearance and and you want to build that yourself. >> Yes. And you want that just to give you the guide to do this. Back you and I you and I were we took a we took a couple classes together. We went to New York City and took a class. You know, a lot of these books that you buy online include these prompts, but you can use

33:11 Chat GPT or Gemini uh to help you build out the the uh the characters. You should still do the work. You shouldn't have chatpt create your characters. What you should do though is have chatpt or Gemini help you to frame out what you want to know and it'll help you to extract knowledge about your characters. Sometimes you forget like is the character parents dead or alive? Are they uh do they have siblings? Did they have a great childhood? Did they have a terrible childhood? Those are the kinds of things that sometimes you forget to do if you're pancing it too much. >> Yes. Yes. >> Now, how much do you how many how many

33:56 character bios do you write out or do you typically just know it in your head and start? >> I I usually just start. But if I was going to do this with chat GPT, I would do exactly what you said. I'd say, "Give me a character bio and give them just a basic rundown of what it is." And they'd print out that whole list. I can pull it back up. Um, they'd give you the the whole list of things of the character and then I'd say I don't want that occupation. I don't want th that where she lives. I want a different appearance. So, like you said, I would take the basics that they said, erase everything after, and then make it my own character. >> Yeah. You just drop it into Google Docs. Okay. So, just for fun, let's uh let's try something new. uh where we're gonna

34:42 put the same prompt directly into Gemini and see what Google Gemini has to say about your cool little prompt. What do you say, Mike? >> Let's do it. >> All right. So, I I dropped in your prompt. Did the wrong thing. >> That wasn't my prompt. >> That's not it. I'm going to copy and I'm going to paste. See if that worked. All right. So, very similar, Mike. It's working. It says, "The foundation of a great character requires core concept and archetypes. It also uses these cute little emojis. Tells you to start with a

35:28 basic idea. It suggests personality and traits, some positive, negative, and quirks." Wow. very similar backstory and motivation. Obviously, those are things like what are the key events, goals and desires, fears, relationships. I don't I'm not sure if I remember uh Chat GPT mentioning relationships. >> No relationships. >> Yep. Arc and growth. Obviously, uh a great story often starts with a character uh changing at the end. Uh so, it's prompting you to do um that. Now, let's see how how similar it is. Example characteristics you got name, core concept, age, appearance. So very similar, right? Personality traits, cynical and sarcastic, highly intelligent and perceptive, resourceful, loyal, self-reliant. Okay, so it's

36:16 actually giving you some examples of Ilar Vance. Uh, a little bit of backstory and motivation. I do like having motivation as a big part of it. Uh, relationships is very important. arc and growth of this character, initial state, turning point, and transformation. Okay, so Mike, based on what we saw, let's ask the audience. Uh, we don't have any skin in the game. Um, let's uh let's go back. Which which do they feel was better? I I think Gemini was slightly better, but I do like the way at the very end uh chat GPT gave you that nice neat uh copy it, delete all the details, and you have that complete

37:01 list. I thought that was really that was a really neat touch. >> Yeah, the thing with with Gemini is Gemini will will lay out the thing for you, and I think it's better for something like that, like here's what you need to do, but chat GPT will ask questions at the end of >> Yeah. it's a thing. Let me let me I think I can pull that back up there. Um Oh, can't do it. Uh but it will pull it'll ask you a question about oh, what do you want this character to do or where are you thinking to take this story? Which will prompt you to keep asking it questions going back and forth developing the story and the character more. Gemini just kind of goes, "Here it is. This is what you asked for. That's it." >> Yeah. And I think you're right. I think that's um that that that bit that nice

37:46 touch from uh chat GPT gives an advantage. Uh the one thing I do like about Gemini is that it connects directly to Google Docs. So I can just say send this directly to Google Docs and then it'll open it'll open up in Google Docs for me. Oh, >> okay. That's pretty neat. >> Yeah. Um and then if I were to reprompt it, um hold on. Let's see if I could reprompt it. Let me just see if uh there is a an ability. Let's just see something real quick. Okay, I will say can you give me a basic uh template with no details populated so that I can

38:33 use it in a document like Google Docs and fill in my own information. Sound sound good? Yeah. >> All right, let's do that. See if it does that. >> Yep. >> So, right there. >> There's your template. >> There's your template. And you know what, Mike? We will include this in uh the show notes for the actual episode. But please make sure you leave a comment uh and give us your thoughts about how we could have done this better. if you enjoyed what you're seeing here. Um, and you know, the algorithm likes when you leave comments, so we're kind of like begging for, you know, begging for likes

39:20 here. Um, so Mike, now, um, I'm I'm gonna >> We got a comment from Drawn Swords says, "Chad, GPT is more useful to me. Admittedly, I usually reverse engineer my ideas rather than have it help me get them out." See what I do, like I wouldn't do the character first. I wouldn't say this is the character I want and then put them into a story. I would come up with the basic idea for a story, you know, stealing from Harry Potter. Oh, he's a wizard who lives in the normal world and gets drawn into the magical world. I would do something like that. And then when I use chat GPT to kind of uh point me in the right direction of what it would be, that's how I would build my character from there.

40:06 >> Well, I think that's very reasonable. you know what you what you want the story to be and you kind of know what your hero is and you probably know who the foil is and it's just now you're building out those other characters who could easily become very flat but by dimensionalizing them and forcing yourself to say well does this character have a sibling does that matter I think it's important to know if the if the character did have a formative event whether or not it ever makes it into the story or not you need to know that about your character >> yeah and I think I think that's also what what uh the AI is good for, especially Chad GBT, because it will ask you questions like where did he come from or do you want me to to build out an ide give you a list of possibilities of, you know, where he went to school?

40:54 It'll it'll ask you those things which makes you think, which then you can just use to build your character even more. All right. So, I'm going to take one more step here and I'm going to return to the details. Okay. So, we did the character AI prompt that you uh gave and uh I said, let's get a little more detailed. Um, I'm working on a modern era crime fiction story. I need to create character bios for each character. I'd like to have a solid understanding about my characters and their interpersonal relationships. So, I give a little bit of setup. Can you give me a structured, reusable template that will guide my character bios? These character bios should fit on one to two pages. So, keep that in mind as you prioritize the template for me. Now, um

41:41 I will note that um it is not very different from what you initially gave as the prompt, but I was just curious if I gave it a little bit more information if it would change the way it answered. So, we're going to try uh one more time now. Uh where is where is my Gemini? Okay. So, you ready? >> Yep. >> All right. Here we go. So, I put it in here. I paste. Okay. So we got the full name, occupation, profession,

42:28 role and story, appearance and demeanor, physical description, style of dress, core personality, strength, weaknesses, flaws, motivations, fears, brief history, education, interpersonal relationships. So not all that different. >> No. >> Right. >> Because they're not gonna Yeah. Like you said, don't fill it out for me. So it's It's all just the basics, which is >> Yeah, I don't think it was all that different. So, it's kind of kind of And that's where you see the limitations of AI, right? It's not it doesn't it doesn't ask me any follow-up questions that would keep it interesting for for me or for the the you know, the the uh the story.

43:14 >> Yes. Because like like I said, chat GBPT will ask you questions about what you want next or what it can do for you. Would you like me to write you out a paragraph? And you can say, "Give me just the first sentence." And then you can take it from there. Or you can say, "I don't like this. I want to change that." It's it's the the constant back and forth that feels like you're you're actually talking to someone and just you just bouncing ideas off each other, which is it's great for that. It's fantastic. >> All right. Is the Is the uh is the neighborhood saying anything? >> Uh no, they're all they're all quiet. >> All right. So, Mike, uh this is uh this is week one of a two-week uh show. We we will follow up in um let's go back to

44:00 this. So, uh next week we will do character journeys uh and creating uh conflict with characters as a followup. Uh, and this week we uh we have something special, Mike. Um, I wanted to uh to do a shout out >> for a community spotlight. >> So, get the applause ready, Mike. >> Oh, I gota Okay, let me get to the media assets. All right. >> Uh, we have a pretty amazing community and and and and we hope that we inspire the community, but the community also inspires us. And this week's community spotlight, you ready, Mike? >> Yep. goes to Andrew Campbell who announced on Twitter 100 weeks of writing. Uh, and he gave himself a

44:47 little achievement unlocked 100 week writing streak. And I don't hear the the applause. >> Well, I was waiting for you to finish, but it wouldn't. So, we give a community spotlight to our uh our friend from down under uh Andrew Campbell uh for achieving uh 100 weeks of writing. He says, "Time flies." I say, "Not when you're writing." >> Congratulations, Andrew. 100 weeks of writing. That's impressive. >> Yeah. He couldn't get to two years. That would have been 104. Guess he's not fully an achiever. Hey, now. So, >> there we go. Let's go, Andrew. Yeah, >> look at that. Everybody's cheering for Andrew. 100 weeks already. That's impressive. >> It is. That was pretty impressive.

45:34 Now go through the meanest pitch ever pitched. So um applause. Congrats. Yep. So keep uh keep uh sharing your socials. Um let me know what's going on. I just happened to stumble upon this because I follow Andrew on the Twitters and Andrew um um actually comes up in my algorithm because he retweets when I announce the show or he comments when I so his stuff comes up higher in my algorithm which is why I was uh able to see this and I was very impressed. So good work Andrew. Round of another round of applause for for our community. >> That was the end of the applause. It's got to start over again. There we go. >> All right, Mike, you can start to play the uh the playout music. Uh it'll

46:21 probably be too loud, but >> Oh, that's the that our playout music. >> Yeah, that's our play music. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Uh this Tuesday and every Tuesday, we will be back with part two of this episode where we get into character conflicts. We hope that you've enjoyed the show. Please leave uh your likes, your comments, and obviously hit that bell for the subscription. Uh, comments help the algorithm a lot and help us build our audience. We love you guys. We will see you again next Tuesday, 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. Good night, everyone.