Dun hynny'rод i Dylgu Hello my name is Phil Earl I'm a writer of books for children and young adults, and I'm here today with Scottish book trust to talk to you about the importance of creating terrific well-rounded characters that appear in your stories. One of the greatest pieces of advice I was ever given about creating characters is that you got to love them, you got to love unwad yn cwch wedi eithgen sydd o ag ioddru ddyr. Broyfendaw aidol o myth yn ddytyl Ysiannau a mewn i Wf archipodau i drfyst hwn, mae'r barUCP P markersans'r i gyda chi menna fel ydyrwch ac oes honoliol yn yr anlon Drei mewn. Minnios ochest mwysfesias hyn gyfer mewn gweld gweld sefwfIs trwy llarian beth cyfaton da'r euchu'r sew o'r imbrauniau ac mae lewfrob es ro. Mae gansom Tok Art i'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r Gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r 15 years old and his lived his life, pretty much all of his life growing up in the care system, living in care homes. Now this isn't something that I'd ever experienced myself, that was one of the reasons that I wanted to write the book. I wanted to get inside this kid's head to walk in his shoes to try and experience what life was like for him. So I needed to start to think about the basic human emotions that are going on inside his head at the start of his journey. And the sorts of emotions that came into my head was that he felt angry, that he felt abandoned by his parents, that he felt ignored by the people that he was living with, that he felt forgotten by the system, that he felt isolated, betrayed, lost, even disillusioned. And this was a really great starting point, it gave me a really strong sense of what was going on in his head. But the point I'd get across to you is that although that's a great starting point, it's not enough to make your characters believable, to make them three-dimensional and stand up on the page, you need to put more flesh on their burns. And that's when I came to hot-seating. If your characters aren't three-dimensional and truly believable, as soon as you add peril or tension into their journeys, you often see these characters just collapse full flat on their face. And as a result, your reader won't believe in them. So hot-seating is a technique that theater directors often use when they're putting players together. All they will do is take an empty chair and put it in the middle of the stage. And one by one, the actors, regardless of the size of their part in the play, will sit in that chair. And when they sit in the chair, they become the character. And once they're sat there, they start to answer questions directed at them from other cast members about that character. And what that allows you to do is start to put flesh on the character's burns, start to give them a backstory. And that's what I really encourage you to do with your characters. You don't have to sit in the chair physically and do it yourself, although if it helps you, then do it. But what it allows you to do is start to really understand what makes your characters tick. Because you need to know your characters well. The better you know your characters, the more believable they will seem on the page. And as a result, the more your reader will love your character too. So let me give you some examples. So tell me, Biri, the first question I've got for you, it's a simple one I think, but it's really important that we know the answer. What's your earliest memory in life? What's the first thing that you can remember from when you were very, very young? The earliest thing I can remember is being in a park, in a play park, and I'm on a swing. And there are other kids on the swings around me, and I'm being pushed, and I'm enjoying the sensation. And someone's pushing me, and I'm pretty sure it's my mum. Yeah, I'm certain it's my mum. But she's not pushing me very well because I'm a hands of full. But a hands aren't full of shopping or bags or anything like that. A hands of full because she's got a can of lager in one, and then she's got a lit cigarette in the other. That's definitely the earliest thing I can remember. Okay, I can see why that would stick with you. And which leads me on to the next question. If that's the kind of earliest memory that you've got in life, then how was that affected you? How would you define happiness? When I say to what would make you happy, what would be your answer? It's really hard to define what happiness is. You know, it's not something that I feel very often. It's really difficult to imagine what that might be. All I know is that it'd be a lot happier if I wasn't living here. If I didn't have this care-idiot Ronnie looking after me. If I didn't have to put up with my mum trying to take the twins away from us. I guess the only thing that will really make me properly happy is having the twins Lizzie and Louis living with me all the time. Then we could be happy if they'd leave us alone and let us just get on with our lives. Yet again, that makes sense. The process is really simple. You know, what's interesting again for me is the answers to those two questions. Never appear anywhere in the final pages of being Billy. But it was an important part of the process for me to go through. That by knowing the answers to those questions, I could understand Billy. And it would shape and affect the way that he behaved and the way that he interacted with people all the way through the book. So I hope that demonstrates to you just what a really effective tool hot seat in his and create and believable well-rounded characters. But I would really encourage you not just to use these exercises for your main characters, for your heroes or heroines. What I would say is that every character that appears in your story, even if they only appear for a few lines or a chapter or two, it's just as important that you know them just as intimately, that they will be just as three-dimensional as well-rounded as your main character. I think a good example of this comes from being Billy, with the character of Ronnie, who is Billy's chief career, his primary career. And Billy sees him very much as is there. Is enemy at the start of the book? Billy blames him for everything bad that's happening in his life. But as the story starts to develop and their relationship starts to deepen, what you actually discover is that Ronnie and Billy are actually very similar. And in many ways they're almost the mirror image of each other. And I could never have revealed that character development unless I'd done the same level of preparation work with Ronnie as I did with Billy. So get stuck in, look at every single character that appears throughout your stories and put the preparation work in. It will really pay off once your story gets into full flow. Thanks for watching.