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vanta.com/Simplify. So

2:55

mine is actually a game and

2:57

it's one of my favorite examples

2:59

So I may have said it

3:01

before but when I played a

3:03

Dragon Age Inquisition a friend of

3:05

mine also played it and it's

3:07

a game where you save the

3:09

world and magic What have you,

3:11

but my friend was like I

3:13

love that dragon killing game and

3:15

I was like Dragon killing game,

3:17

I guess there's a side quest

3:19

where you can kill dragons. And

3:21

he was like, yeah, I killed

3:23

every dragon in the game. And

3:26

then I was upset because there

3:28

was no achievement for that. And

3:30

I was like, yes, because that's

3:32

not what the game is about

3:34

at all. The game is not,

3:36

that's not the purpose. But for

3:38

him, he was playing this epic

3:40

dragon killing game and only saving

3:42

the world enough to level up

3:44

to kill more dragons. And I

3:46

thought, wow, how exciting that this

3:48

game has room for both. your

3:50

hunting experience and my actual narrative

3:52

saving the world experience. This is

3:54

the face of me trying to

3:56

remember, there are dragons in that

3:58

game? I mean, that's my whole

4:00

dragon age, but like anyways, the

4:02

point here is that And I've

4:04

said this before, the largest part

4:06

of what you get out of

4:08

a book or a movie or

4:10

a game comes through what you

4:13

brought with you to the book

4:15

or the movie or the game.

4:17

I can't count the number of

4:19

times where I've come away from

4:21

a film just having loved it

4:23

and talked to somebody. You're like,

4:25

oh, that was. Cliche, it was

4:27

awful, it was boring, it was

4:29

whatever, and I was exactly what

4:31

I wanted. How are we so

4:33

different? And often those conversations jokingly

4:35

end with, well, I guess you

4:37

and I can't be friends. But

4:39

our perspectives are too different for

4:41

us to have had that. Yeah,

4:43

but I think what you bring

4:45

in with your interest and how

4:47

you engage with it does change

4:49

it quite radically, right? Like to

4:51

bring another game example. I'm a

4:53

huge fan of soft games and

4:55

these games are, this is the

4:57

Dark Soul series, Eldon Ring, Bloodborn,

5:00

and they're most notorious for having

5:02

a part of the community that

5:04

we derisively call the get good

5:06

part of the community who just

5:08

insists that you are not, you

5:10

have to play the game in

5:12

the hardest way possible, never looking

5:14

anything up, never asking any friends,

5:16

and that if you're not good

5:18

enough to be the game, then

5:20

you just shouldn't be playing it.

5:22

And I think they could not

5:24

be misinterpreting the intention of the

5:26

design more. that to me, the

5:28

game is very much about how

5:30

difficult it is to go to

5:32

do things by yourself, and that

5:34

instead what we need to do

5:36

is to reach out to the

5:38

people around us, to the community

5:40

and find resources, find information and

5:42

find help, but also like how

5:44

hard it is to get clear

5:47

information and to get help. And

5:49

I think it's a really beautiful

5:51

meditation on the human experience because

5:53

of its difficulty, but also because

5:55

of its community. But that's maybe

5:57

just me bringing my own lens

5:59

to it and my own perspective

6:01

of what it means to be

6:03

a person in the world. And

6:05

what I love about that is

6:07

thinking about fiction, like if you

6:09

took your... good player and you

6:11

your bring your community in player

6:13

and drop you both in the

6:15

zombie apocalypse how differently would you

6:17

take the exact same urgent problem

6:19

like you would be like oh

6:21

who can I reach out to

6:23

you and they'd be like I

6:25

don't know get good killing zombies

6:27

or what have you and I

6:29

think that's so interesting is that

6:31

a lot of times I think

6:34

it's easy to get really attached

6:36

to a character as a person.

6:38

Like you, you like embody them

6:40

like, this is what Ginny would

6:42

do. And so you sometimes don't

6:44

get a chance to think about

6:46

what are all the things that

6:48

make up the character that you've

6:50

created? And like what are all

6:52

those lenses that they bring from

6:54

other situations that happened before they

6:56

were in this plot of this

6:58

story right now? And that's also,

7:00

that's one of the things that

7:02

will lead a character to being

7:04

monodimensional is that the... the character.

7:06

I mean, how many characters have

7:08

you seen in stories that appear

7:10

to not have a family or

7:12

friends outside this story? Like, they

7:14

don't have anything outside the story.

7:16

They exist only to do this

7:18

one quest. And they feel extremely

7:21

flat. When you start thinking about

7:23

all of the different lenses that

7:25

you can apply to that character.

7:27

Often by looking at the lenses

7:29

in your own life, that's when

7:31

you can start making a character

7:33

that's multi-dimensional. And, you know, in

7:35

talking about this, this overarching concept

7:37

of the way who we are,

7:39

colors our perception, influences our perception

7:41

of what's around us, the lens

7:43

of who is how your audience

7:45

will relate to what's on the

7:47

page. If you don't understand how

7:49

that lens works, you will put

7:51

things on the page and the

7:53

audience will have reactions that you

7:55

did not expect or not just

7:57

that you didn't expect that you

7:59

didn't want because because you know

8:01

the lens may have been distorted.

8:03

When we say lens though there's

8:05

So many pieces to this that

8:08

we're going to cover in episodes

8:10

that come up, relatability, when we

8:12

say that a character is relatable,

8:14

when we say, you know, a

8:16

character has depth, when we talk

8:18

about POV tools, you know, first

8:20

person, second person, third person, omniscient,

8:22

limited, so on and so forth.

8:24

All of these are aspects of

8:26

that lens. we'll be covering in

8:28

in upcoming episodes. We've been talking

8:30

about this and you know the

8:32

last episode we we just discussed

8:34

puppetry and that was a lens

8:36

that I bring to the way

8:38

I experienced the world. And much

8:40

like that one of the things

8:42

that will happen to me as

8:44

a puppeteer is that when I

8:46

am performing some types of puppetry

8:48

I will remember the scene later

8:50

as if I am looking through

8:52

the characters I view. gaze, even

8:55

though it's obviously an object that

8:57

is in front of me or

8:59

above me. And this is a

9:01

thing that will happen to readers

9:03

as well, if the character is

9:05

having moments that are emotionally compelling,

9:07

and it's always like the really

9:09

emotionally compelling things that happen to

9:11

when this happens to me in

9:13

performance, if the character is having

9:15

emotionally... compelling moments on the page,

9:17

your reader is going to remember

9:19

things through the character's eyes. They're

9:21

going to, how many times have

9:23

you had this experience, right, where

9:25

you're like, oh yeah, I can't

9:27

remember much of that book, but

9:29

I really remember being at the

9:31

side of the road, I remember

9:33

the rain pelting down as if

9:35

you had actually experienced it yourself.

9:37

It's important to remember that humans

9:39

are wired to care about other

9:42

humans, right? the way we experience

9:44

the world is through relationship, right?

9:46

And it's why when I talk

9:48

about like stakes, right, in a

9:50

story, I'm always like, well, what

9:52

relationship is at stake here? That's

9:54

where tension comes from, because, but

9:56

that's true of the reader to

9:58

the character. as well, right? We

10:00

want to know the person's emotions,

10:02

interiority, and perspective, and that's how

10:04

you pull people into the story.

10:06

That's how you get people to

10:08

understand it, because we are always

10:10

already seeing it through the lens

10:12

of character. It is impossible for

10:14

us to not do so, I

10:16

think. Yeah, and I think also

10:18

you don't have to share, and

10:20

I don't think any of us

10:22

are saying this, the character's lens

10:24

in order to care about that

10:26

character. who challenge us in some

10:29

way, who make us uncomfortable, you

10:31

know, that, you know, we don't

10:33

want to be necessarily looking for

10:35

that lens, but it's still so

10:37

compelling in the same way that

10:39

people look at horrible things online

10:41

all the time that maybe they

10:43

don't wish they were, but yet

10:45

they keep doing it. And so

10:47

I think it's really interesting to

10:49

think about the main thing is

10:51

that the lens is true to

10:53

the character, not that it is

10:55

necessarily emotionally grounded. I mean, so

10:57

many of my favorite characters are

10:59

just absolute miserable bastards, you know

11:01

what I mean? And just like,

11:03

you know, the one that comes

11:05

to mind is I watched True

11:07

Detective Night Country recently, Jodie Foster

11:09

plays the main character in it,

11:11

and it's just miserable, just like

11:13

an awful person who was still

11:16

trying to do good and still

11:18

trying to do a thing, and

11:20

still the protagans hear the story,

11:22

and I ended up carrying about

11:24

her very deeply very deeply, but

11:26

the joy is having a character

11:28

that you don't gets you to

11:30

ask the questions of why is

11:32

this person like this, right? What

11:34

made them this way? What are

11:36

their reasons for being the way

11:38

that they are? And then that

11:40

gives you an excuse to date

11:42

into all the context of that

11:44

character, where they came from, what

11:46

was their childhood like, why do

11:48

they believe what they believe, what

11:50

systems are they embedded in? All

11:52

of those things. And so the

11:54

lens of a character, and you

11:56

don't have to do an awful

11:58

character. I think that's fun and

12:00

delicious, but, you know, The excuse

12:03

to dig into the water. of

12:05

the character and I know we're

12:07

jumping ahead a little bit but

12:09

like that is the thing that

12:11

enriches the who. Yeah absolutely. I've

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