if you have characters and you have a large cast or a small cast, are they different and are they similar? Are they sharing goals or not? A villain and a hero at its most bare bones have goals that are opposite. Right, and it's like that's how I always ask myself what is each goal and how are they conflicting directly with one another? Because that is what ultimately creates the core of the story. And then, on a scene level, how are you doing the same thing with your characters? Is there purpose to why they're existing there? Are you playing double duty? Right? If you're going to name a character, they best be having a role to play.

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I wanna prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming, so each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

In today's episode, I'm sharing part of an interview that Abigail K Perry and I did with Tim Grawl, who is the CEO of StoryGrid. In this interview, we chat about how JK Rowling crafted a compelling cast of characters, focusing specifically on the first book, harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. You'll hear us talk about things like being purposeful with the number of characters you include in your story, how to create characters that readers can relate to, with varied backgrounds, professions, ages, belief systems and things like that, and how different characters in the first Harry Potter book contribute to Harry's internal arc of growth and change. We cover a lot in this episode and it's all based on the section I wrote about characters in the Story Grade Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which is officially available for pre-order right now. You can learn more about my brand new book at savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork. But for now let's go ahead and dive right into the conversation forward slash masterwork.

But for now, let's go ahead and dive right into the conversation. So let's keep talking about characters, because this is one of the things that I think writers struggle with. A lot is like what characters to put in their book. How do you make these decisions around these characters? Because you have great books that I mean you have great books that there's one character, and then you have books like Harry Potter that there's a whole cast of characters. So what can a writer learn by looking at the characters in Harry Potter about what it means to create your own cast of characters for your own book?

I think the first thing I always like to think about is why do you want to do whatever you want to do? So if you want to have a small cast, why? What does that do for your story? If you want to have a big cast, what does that do?

And in Harry Potter there's a school setting, so of course we have to have it populated with students and teachers, so that's, you know, kind of the base layer, and then it's okay. How do I make this cast of students and teachers really count, you know? And so she kind of puts the spotlight on a select few that matter and let other people fade into the background. Like we're meeting on the train, for example, we meet at different times Fred and George, who are going to be significant, ron and Hermione, neville, draco and his bully friends, and we see a bunch of other kids, but we're not putting a spotlight on them because in this book they don't really matter. So I would say, focus on what matters and just have a reason why you're doing things instead of I just want to have a big cast. Right, because I see a lot of writers that do that. They're like I just want a big cast and I just want six point of view characters and you can do whatever you want, but sometimes that's not the best reasoning to do that.

So talking about characters is one of my favorite topics ever to talk about, because that is my number one element that I look for in a story. You don't care about stakes if you don't care about characters. And with a cast of Harry Potter, I think that what you want to look at it is like life, and that some people come on your life to make your life better, to teach you what, like you know, lessons that you need to learn in order to become a better version of yourself. Some people come in your life to teach you exactly what you don't want to be, and that creates conflict in a way that's sticky and uncomfortable and dangerous in some times, and I think that what Harry Potter does is again. For me, it goes back to always. I keep talking to my clients about this what are your characters withholding from others? And that's why, when it comes to dialogue, subtext is really important, because we need to understand why a certain character has motivations to say or not say certain things and do or do not do certain things, and we all have our own reasons for that, but we're also limited by our own perspectives and you need one another in order to become a better version of yourself. And when you look at the in Harry Potter, there are small groups and then there are big groups. So you're going to have your core three friends. You're going to have your trio of Harry, hermione and Ron, and there are going to be similarities between them. They are all in Gryffindor, right, but they're very different and that is really important in any group dynamic that you decide to write and I think that we do that in our own life as well. We tend to select people in our inner circle who are like us but not like us, and when you do that, you're moving forward towards growth, because they're going to challenge you to become a better version of yourself.

Now, like Harry and Ron, I think you are. You are very similar in a lot of ways, but Ron has lived and breathed the wizarding world since before he was conceived. You know it's like his whole family is like all wizard all the time. They're also very humble, which is why Harry works with them, right, and I think that Harry doesn't know anything about the wizarding world. Without Ron he doesn't succeed, like when you look at if you want to zero in really on Sorcerer's Stone. We do not succeed in the trapdoor without Ron and without Hermione he doesn't win, and the reason for that is because they have different skill sets and he has chosen. This is because this whole series is about choices and he has selected those in his life that he believes he feels are going to be helping him grow into the best version of himself. Whether or not he knows it or not, as a child he does this naturally. And Hermione is the most different from the two boys. You know she was even more later. The Sorting Hat was struggling between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor but then subsided, went to defaulted to Gryffindor for her. Maybe she was choosing Gryffindor in her own way, I don't know, we'll see, but I think that ultimately, like that was a struggle. We know that there was a struggle between Slytherin and Gryffindor for Harry and I think that's part of like the beautiful lesson.

In general, with all of these characters you are sorted into different houses and throughout the earlier books in Source for Stone, houses are really important in defining who characters are and categorizing them. And then that gets very much more complicated as you go through the series and you start to learn that we have different abilities and we really have abilities of all houses, but you tend to kind of prioritize which ones. So, with characters in general, am always my number one thing is just looking at how, when you have a large cast or a small cast, how are the characters different from each other and how are they similar to one another and through that, how does that help them face the obstacles that the plot is going to count them with and how do they create obstacles and support each other or challenge each other as you go forward? It's one of the things that I always like to emphasize when you talk about antagonists and we Savannah kind of mentioned this earlier with levels, there's a hierarchy of antagonism.

So in something like Harry Potter, you're having an action story.

It's going to be a classic good and evil.

There will be a villain. A villain exists, a villain is out for destruction and power, usually right. There's also antagonists that are companions. Neville is an antagonist at one point in the final act of Harry Potter, right, and he's actually one of the more difficult ones. Dumbledore points this out 10 points to Neville, 10 points to Neville Longbottom for standing up to your friends, because that's challenging to face your friends as well, but you're doing what's good for each other, so I think that that's what you always want to be looking at is just, if you have characters and you have a large cast or a small cast, are they different and are they similar?

Are they sharing goals or not? A villain and a hero at its most bare bones have goals that are opposite right, and it's like that's what I always ask myself. What is each goal and how are they conflicting directly with one another? Because that is what ultimately creates the core of the story. And then, on a scene level, how are you doing the same thing with your characters? Is there a purpose to why they're existing there? Are you playing double duty, right? If you're going to name a character, they best be having a role to play.

Yeah, and I heard you say a couple really key things. Like that kind of ties back to what I was saying about having a reason why. And you're saying we have friends like Hermione and Ron, who help us learn the theme, who help us survive, who you know. They serve a bigger function in the story than just being there because kids have friends, right. And even the three layers of antagonism. There's three layers of that for a very specific reason.

Like voldemort is not in a, he doesn't have a body, he's on the back of some guy's head, right, so harry can't really face him. Also, that's very purposeful from an author's perspective because an 11 year old who doesn't even barely know magic exists and he's trying to learn magic he can't go up against a full like bodied wizard, dark wizard, and survive, right. I just love picking apart their reasons why. And then you know, thinking about snape, you can't just have in a school setting with an 11 year old protagonist, you can't just have adults who are the conflict, right, that wouldn't make sense. So we have draco, who's kind of an echo of a Snape, of a Voldemort, and, like Abigail said, they're all working to teach Harry the same lesson and to also harm his ability to survive. Yeah, so it's really interesting, really well done.

And I think that's part of the magic of the series as well, because you see all the characters supporting Ormaine and how they grow. So, taking Draco, for instance, you know when we get we get to half-blood prince, he becomes a three-dimensional character and for one through five he's really two-dimensional, so it's like he is this. I'm here to create conflict for harry in a bully scenario. Right, we are arch enemies. And then as soon as you get into order of phoenix, it gets a little sickier because we see how james and snape had their very similar mirrored. Here's your foil approach antagonism. You know bully versus not who's the bully.

And I think that then you go into half-blood prince and, like draco becomes super sympathetic because he becomes three dimensional and because he he is the prime example of a character who is struggling between living up to parental expectations of who he thinks he's supposed to be and fighting his innate nature of what he actually believes in and not really understanding what that even is. And that struggle and it's like holy crap, like that was like holy struggle, and it's like holy crap, like that's like holy cannoli. I like to say, like that is. If that's not a coming of age struggle, then I don't know what is right. So I think that when, um, when you're looking at all of these, it's really amazing to watch sorcerer's stone and see where characters are starting and then seeing how they grow, and I think that that's you see it on the scene level, and you see it in an individual book, and you see it across the series, and it's just absolutely beautiful.

And Tim, I think you're going to have a hard time keeping us to Sorcerer's Stone because we just can't help it. We can't help talking about the other books.

No, I think it's all relevant and there's a lot in the notes in the book that are addressing the full series and we're going to come and talk about of in the middle of that spectrum. And then he's got these two friends that are very much in that order and chaos realm, like ron's obviously chaos, and hermione is order, and then even within the adults of mcgonigal versus hagrid, and so can you speak a little bit to that. Again, taking this idea of like, okay, if I'm going to look at Harry Potter and the cast of characters and how they serve the story, how do you look at it through that order and chaos lens?

Yeah, I like to call Hagrid Captain Chaos, because that's kind of what he is. But it's kind of like, within, let's say, order, there's good and bad. You know, if we're thinking about the battle between good and evil, there are good people that represent order, good people that represent chaos and bad people that represent order and chaos. So, for example, in just Hermione and Ron, right, we have Hermione's very order and Ron's very much chaos, but they're both good, they're both good influences on him. So I think that is really interesting for us to see and think about. Why not have, you know, a Neville and a Hermione who are both kind of order? I mean, I guess Neville is a little bit of chaos, right, he's like physical chaos, but like why not have two versions of Hermione that are good and ordered?

It's interesting too that you said Harry, you think Harry's kind of in the middle of order versus chaos. I think he is, but he's also in that good bucket too, right. So the chaos is is kind of pulling him towards that bad side. But we see, he, we, he consistently refuses going to the dark side, right, but yeah, it's.

It's think about the purpose of why there needs to be order, why there needs to be order, why there needs to be chaos. And then it's really cool to think outside the characters and how that even plays in world building, because it's there too, the world. When we meet harry in the opening chapter, he's a baby who just got rescued from, uh, the site where his parents are killed. The world is in chaos, but in a good way, and then as the story progresses, we kind of go more towards chaos in a bad way, if Voldemort were to succeed. So it's really interesting how chaos doesn't necessarily have to mean bad. But chaos to me means conflict, and conflict means the opposite of what you expected or different than you expected. So I don't know.

That's a lot of thoughts, but it's interesting. Well, I think of like something that when you have order, you know what's going to happen next, so you feel safe. You know it brings safety, predictability, but at the same time you lose out on new and creativity. So new things and creative things come from chaos. So, yeah, it's not good or bad, but it is interesting how there are both ordered and chaotic figures on both the good and bad sides.

Like I feel like this is something we could probably draw like a four quadrant and start putting the characters in different places. And what I would guess is, if we did that and I think you, you know, you went so deep into the characters in the book is that it would be pretty evenly distributed. Right, we have, we have ordered and chaotic characters on the good side and ordering chaotic characters on, uh, on the bad side and on the good side. So many good things come from Ron's chaos, right, and at the same time Hermione kind of keeps everybody safe. That is just so interesting to me, again, in a cast of characters so large that they seem to be pretty evenly distributed across all of those spectrums.

Yeah, I think that's important too, because sometimes in drafts, especially fantasy and sci-fi, I'll see that the characters that are kind of in that chaos bucket they're all bad, they're all evil, right, and then it's kind of like that's not very multi-dimensional, it's not very realistic and that when we have that scenario it can pull us out of something or a story that you know is meant to be immersive and that's not what we want. So I think it just it speaks to her power of having a character for everybody. Even as we grow too, like, I'm sure, all of us, we related to different characters when we were younger and then in our teens and 20s and in our 30s, right, we relate to different people and because we've all experienced different versions of order and chaos and good and evil, I don't know it's pretty cool.

I also think it's important to pay attention to perceptions and we are in third person limited for the majority, like we call this a third person limited POV, and very occasionally, super smoothly, we step out of that. We go into Herione's, for instance, in Sorcerer's Stone during the Quidditch match where Harry Potter is on his broom Because we need to follow Hermione as she sets Snape's cape on fire. We have her. We like to call them prologue disguises for the opening chapters because harry potter's a baby so we can't have as pov. So they're very, very, very subtle and smooth transitions of like differences in pov throughout the story, but dominantly more third person pov, and that means that we're limited to harry's perception. And this is the difference and one of the most valuable tools that I have taken from story grid is the difference between looking at the author's perspective, the character's perspective, which is like the literal perspective, right and the reader's perspective. And when you're writing something like Harry Potter, we're aligned with Harry Potter's perspectives. We have character POV and we have reader POV and they're pretty similar. Now, one of the main subplots in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and really in all the series, is the mystery subplot and that is the idea of who is after the Sorcerer's Stone. So like this is you'll see again, once again, very tightly woven subplots and main plots. When is when are we in the bucket of we're dealing with the action stakes of how the Sorcerer's Stone is impacting the story, and when are we in the bucket of of mystery and what are we just in the same bucket in the same scene. But it's just whatever you want to choose to prioritize for your main stakes, and one of the main skills that I think brawling has is how to execute that. And we believe that snape is after the stone because Harry desperately believes that Snape is after the stone, right? So we're having this line of misdirection Now with order and chaos.

I think that this is the thing is that sometimes a character can actually be out creating, with the best intentions, order for you, but you're creating chaos because you're assuming the opposite. And Snape and Harry are perfect examples of that. Because Dumbledore knows and trusts Snape more than any other character in the entire series, right, and he knows that Snape is doing everything he can to protect Harry. Harry believes Snape is doing everything he can to kill him. So I think that ultimately, at least like we get to a place where he believes that. So I think that ultimately, at least like we get to a place where he believes that. So I think that ultimately, that is going to create Harry is going to create chaos. He's going to manifest chaos for himself because of his assumptions, right, yeah, and Snape is actually saving him in the Gorm seat with Quidditch, right? Snape is saving him multiple times when we see Snape, when Harry overlooks Snape and Quirrell having their arguments, he assumes that Quirrell's getting bullied and he starts to give him friendly smiles of encouragement where Voldemort is on the back of Quirrell's head and is like out to kill him.

So I think that it's just really interesting how you can play with different perceptions of order and chaos as well and, based on all you know, the information that you have, you actually can create chaos for yourself when other creator, when other characters, are creating or trying to create order for you. You know and I think part of the beauty of ya as well I've talked about um with our harry potter team when we've when we've made had discussions. If harry did ever just went to dumbledore and was like, hey, here's the information I have. These things are what's up. I'm a little worried about them. The story doesn't exist because dumbledore takes care of it.

Dumbledore figures out in two seconds, right, but because we're dealing with children and adults and we worry about certain things. We worry about, um, you know, feeling like we're not living up to our expectations, where there's anxiety and pressures, dealing with, you know, what we share, what we don't share this is really loud, at least in Chamber of Secrets. That is going to create we're going to create chaos for ourselves. This is a lesson I learned continuously as I grow up and I will forever be growing up. I feel like sometimes I'm still a child, still learning this lesson, but withholding, again withholding information that creates chaos for you often.

When, when do you share and what do you share and how much do you share and what you're trying to do in order to protect from someone because you don't share certain things. That is going to create order and chaos as well. So when you talk about good versus, you know bad, those buckets and order and chaos. I think if you were to grit you know, grit it out or you know, put them in the quadrants and see where someone falls the answer is everyone is always both Right, how, where you fall on that line might be different, but I think ultimately the answer is it's both, and then it's just a matter of where are you? In different scenes and, like you said, characters change. You know, draco becomes a better character than he is in the beginning, and I think that if you look at someone like Hagrid, he's always Captain Chaos, but he also always has the best intentions. So ultimately, like you can depend on Hagrid. No-transcript.

I love that you brought up their perceptions of things. Because this is what causes so much of Harry's problems and gets him into these life and death situations is he does have the good intentions, he does want to bring about order, but his naivete or his like not understanding of all the facts and his misguided perceptions of Snape, those are what get him into the chaos territory and put him in dangerous situations. So it's super interesting to think about, like if I'm a writer, I'm probably thinking how do I use these tools or these, this lens of order and chaos? And I think if I were to take away the two like bullet points of what we said, it's how do I kind of make sure I have everybody in that like four grid If we said you know know good and bad, order and chaos, how do I make sure I have characters all across that? And then how do I play with how those things are changing, whether in reality or via perception? And that's a pretty cool tool to have and I mean look at someone like dumbledore.

So dumbledore, to me, is the ultimate mentor, right? He one of his superpowers, if not his ultimate superpower, is that he believes in people and he believes that Harry will make the right choice. He doesn't ever try to tell him what to do. He's probably the only character that never tries to tell him what to do. But he gives him what he needs in order to make his own decisions, and that can create chaos, right? But ultimately, if he tries to tell Harry what to do, we don't have the end result, I think, because Harry has to choose to be who Harry wants to be, and forcing him to do otherwise is going to end in failure.

So, like even something like you, look at Sorcerer's Stone, the Mirror of Erised scene, dumbledore you know we have Christmas Dumbledore mysteriously gives him the cloak that's going to allow him to have a little rebellion, to have a little fun. He's expecting that based on what he knows about Harry, because he's always observant, right? But when he sees that Harry's starting to get too obsessed with Mira, vera said we have an interference. He doesn't necessarily say like you need to stop. It's not a command.

I think it's like the ultimate, like parenting lesson. Honestly, it's not a command. It's like I hope that I can see you be making other choices, like it's always like. This is your choice. But here's what I've learned, that I've seen witches and wizards waste their lives, you know, wishing for something that they're never going to get. He's speaking from experience. He never shares his experience the whole thing about him seeing socks in the mirror. We know that that's not true by book seven and I think that that's part of the beauty. If you look at any character as an example of this, dumbledore is perfect because he is allowing Harry to make those choices while also only stepping in when he needs to step in.

I think that's a fun point, because the vibe you get when you read the Mirror of Erised scene is that Dumbledore's a little disappointed. He doesn't want to see Harry do this and he kind of allows Harry to make the choice of where do you want to be kid? What kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to be, you know, this person that sits here and dwells on your dreams and the life that you never had? And that is part of the key lesson for Harry in the book too, because if he doesn't learn to let go of that or accept where he is today and that he has no parents and things like that, he would still see his parents in the Mirror of Erised at the end of the book. So we always say Dumbledore is like the best mentor, even though he makes mistakes, which means he's human right. So yeah, I think that's a great point, abigail.

Yeah, and I also like this idea. You kind of brought it up, abigail, when you were talking about how each of the characters are kind of dealing with. When do you say what you know? When do you keep secrets?

Like these problems, and that's one of the things we look at in StoryGrid is how each character needs to be dealing with the core problem of the book in their own way, because that's what allows us, as readers, to experience the story from a different perspective. And so, when you're thinking through all of these different characters again, how do you feel like? Because I would say again, if we're on that good side, they're all trying to fight evil, but they're all going about it in completely different ways. I had never even thought so much about Dumbledore, how he never told Harry what to do, and then, of course, you have Snape, and then you have McGonagall, and you have Hagrid, and you have all of these people that want good, but they're going about it in completely different ways. How does that like?

If I'm a writer and I'm thinking about my next book and the kind of characters I need, what does that mean for the characters I'm developing as far as thinking through how they need to be different, because if you have two characters that are exactly the same, dealing with the main problem of the book in the same way, there's really no point in having them. So how do you think that, as far as when you're editing books and you're looking, you're like, okay, these characters don't need to both be in here or you need an extra character here, how do you go through that and how can I look at that through the lens of Harry Potter?

I think it goes back to character work and finding that their backstory right. So if we just look at Harry, ron and Hermione and how they deal with the thought of do we tell people what we're thinking and discovering or not? Hermione is by the book. She's very much order and good, right. So she's always like we need to tell somebody, we need to do something. The answer's in the books and that has served her very well in her entire life. She has parents who will listen, even if they don't get wizarding problems, but they're all very open with each other.

And then you have someone like ron, who he's always just kind of a little bit chaotic and he likes to be loud because he's the youngest boy and he's never heard and you know, and so he wants to be seen, he wants to make an impact and be known for something.

So he's always like let's go fight the bad guy and let's like make the most chaos we can, you know. And then there's harry, who has been ignored and put in a cupboard under the stairs his whole life and cannot trust the adults he was raised with. So he's like I don't think this is the right thing to do. Yet we don't have evidence. I'm not bringing this to an adult. If I'm just going to get yelled at, he doesn't know for sure that he won't get yelled at. So I think it comes down to how you're developing your characters and what is that backstory that creates that inner obstacle that's at the core of who they are and that filters through how they make decisions. You know, because if Harry was someone who was more confident and embraced himself as a wizard, he wouldn't make the decisions we see on the page.

Well, I think that's the key there. It's about how they make decisions. When it comes down to the core of it, personality is built off of who they are at their core and their upbringing right, because that is going to help you make decisions differently based on influences. And that doesn't mean you can't grow and learn to make different decisions in different ways because of who you're immersing yourself with in your groups throughout the story. But it comes down to how you make decisions. You might make the same decision, but you might execute how you make that decision differently. And I think that that's the key of looking at.

Do you have a variety of a cast right? And often, when you put characters together, would you come up to a different solution or will there be debate about how something is gone about right? We see Ron and Hermione and Harry do that all the time. They have to kind of put themselves in chat. What is the best? As they're trying to discover who Nicholas Flamel is or you know what they're doing. What's the hiding source for Stone?

That whole mystery is based on them going about things differently. If you go to the middle of the book and you have the Midnight Duel right, I think that Hermione is going to say don't go to this Like. This is a dumb decision. Why are you going out there? And Harry and Ron have a little bit more of their pride they need to preserve, so they're going to go face that, which is going to lead them to a trap, right? So I think that that's what you're always kind of thinking about. Is that how you make decisions? And that's where the action comes into play? And are we doing that differently enough? And if not, then you need to morph characters together.

Yeah, and I like what you just said. A key word about it's who you immerse yourself with, Because if Harry would have gone into Slytherin, he would have been with Draco and Crabbe and Goyle and he would have maybe known more about the conflict or he would have valued different things based on how he was growing and changing at Hogwarts, right. So kind of, when you're the architect of your story, you can think like what do I need to accomplish? If I'm rolling, I need to accomplish Harry leaning into good, Harry solving the puzzle, Harry embracing his identity, and what kind of people are going to help me do that? And then, as his two best friends, they each kind of in different ways help him get to that result, but also help express the theme of what it takes to survive and what it takes to own your identity and things like that. So you can kind of look at it however you want. You can go ground up and look at your character's backstory and I think you should do both at some point but look at how they were raised, their backstory, and then look at the bigger picture and say what do I actually need these people to do and what's the why behind their role in the story and then massage it till you get to the right answer. All right, that's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes. Look at what went into writing and editing the StoryGrid Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

If you want to grab a copy of the book, go to savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork to get all the information, including where to purchase and to see the bonuses I'm giving away for free with proof of purchase. So that's it for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and for showing your support. If you want to check out any of the links I mentioned in this episode, you can find them in the show notes listed in the description of each episode inside your podcast player or at savannahgilbocom forward slash podcast.

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