Creating Proactive, Relatable, and Capable Characters: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #5 (2025)

Welcome to our fifth lecture in Brandon Sanderson's writing series. Despite a snowpocalypse in Utah, we're coming to you live from Dragonsteel HQ's cozy training room, where Brandon is pacing between two chairs (courtesy of Taylor, our video production manager, who wisely set them as boundaries to keep our enthusiastic lecturer in frame).

Though we’re snowed in, we’re excited to dive into Brandon’s first lecture on character. Characters are one of the three main pillars of writing fiction (along with plot, which we’ve covered, and worldbuilding, which we’ll cover next). To catch up on the previous lectures, you can watch them on our YouTube channel or read through the lecture notes on the blog.

Let’s get into it!

The Three Pillars of Compelling Characters

"How do you write an interesting character?" It's a deceptively simple question, and one that Brandon notes is surprisingly absent from many university creative writing courses. He opens the lecture by sharing a story from his own university days. In his own words, Brandon shares that when he returned from a church service mission in Korea, he decided to go “whole hog” and figure out how exactly you write a good novel. Brandon switched his major from chemistry (his mother might still be a little disappointed he didn’t become a doctor, but we think it all worked out in the end) to English. He enrolled in every creative writing course he could get his hands on. Surprisingly, very few of them discussed how to create moral characters. In fact, Brandon only had one teacher that dove into the concept in depth.

So, as a result, Brandon thinks it’s essential to cover this topic in plenty of detail to arm his students with the knowledge they need to craft characters. Today, we're diving deep into his framework for character creation, built around three key attributes that make characters compelling:

• Proactivity
• Relatability
• Capability

The fascinating thing about these attributes is that most compelling characters don't excel at all three. As you’re writing, you should assume that your characters will not excel in all three. Instead, they typically shine in one area, show moderate strength in another, and actively work on developing the third throughout their journey. Think of that formula as your equation for a character arc.

Proactivity: The Engine of Story

Proactivity might be the single most important element that makes a character readable. "When we go into stories," Brandon explains, "we want to see progress." He illustrates this with an example from the TV show Lost, specifically the character of Jack.

In Lost's pilot episode, amid the chaos of a plane crash, Jack immediately takes charge: organizing survivors, providing medical care, and establishing a camp. While Jack isn't the most relatable character (we'll get to that), his proactivity makes him instantly compelling. The audience naturally bonds with characters who move the story forward, while feeling frustrated by those who create obstacles.

Think about your favorite character, be they from a book, film, or other production. Do they move the story forward? This question can make for an interesting exercise in finding out what kind of characters you like to read, which will inform the ones you want to write.

The Villain Problem

Here's an interesting challenge: villains are often more proactive than protagonists. They're out there "doing their best to destroy the world, or whatever" as Brandon puts it, while heroes might be reluctant to leave their comfortable lives (Luke Skywalker, anyone?). This creates what Brandon calls "the villain problem."How do you solve this? Brandon suggests several approaches:

• Give your protagonist small moments of proactivity in their normal life
• Show them wanting something specific, even if it's just a glass of water (as Kurt Vonnegut advised)
• Demonstrate how small actions can evoke larger themes

Take Disney’s Mulan, for example. She doesn't initially want a big adventure, but we see her being proactive in small ways (like creating clever solutions for feeding chickens, which is easily one of the best scenes in the film). When she later makes the decision to save her father by joining the army, it feels natural because we've already established her as someone who solves problems creatively. Especially because we’ve also established that her father is the one person in her life that she feels understands her. They have a deep connection. When her father is called to war, it makes complete sense to us as the audience that she’d come up with a creative solution to this problem. We don’t question her motivation. We celebrate her proactivity. 

Relatability: The Bridge to Your Reader

Making characters relatable doesn't necessarily mean making them likable. Many new writers get stuck in that pitfall, and proceed to write two dimensional characters as a result of trying to make them likeable. Instead, focus on creating connections that help readers understand and invest in the character's journey. Brandon outlines several key strategies:

• The Save the Cat Principle: Show characters using their abilities to help others. This is why the popular screenwriting writing guide "Save the Cat" got its name—having a character help someone (or some animal) instantly creates empathy.

• Self-Awareness: Characters who acknowledge their flaws and actively work on them earn reader sympathy. Mr. Darcy becomes lovable partly because he recognizes his mistakes and tries to improve (even if he could never love someone insufferable 👀).

• Shared Experience: Universal experiences create immediate connection points with readers. Garfield is a great example of this! He’s a cat, why should he hate Mondays? Theoretically, Monday should be the same as every other day of the week to him. But it's a detail that makes him a relatable character.

• External Perspective: Sometimes, seeing a character through another's eyes can highlight their more relatable attributes, even if the character themselves isn’t focusing on them in a scene. This technique can help get out of your main character’s (or a side character’s) viewpoint and look through a different lens. Of course, this isn’t always possible if you’re only writing from one perspective, and even harder if that perspective is first person. 

Capability: The Power to Act

We love reading about competent people doing things competently. Brandon uses the example of Dirk Pitt novels, where the protagonist's extreme capability becomes almost comical—to the point where even his accountant becomes action-hero capable through proximity!

Check out the clip from the lecture below to see Brandon’s full reenactment of that scene. However, too much capability can decrease relatability. Modern James Bond films recognize this, making Bond more vulnerable and prone to failure than his earlier incarnations. The sweet spot is usually having characters be extremely capable in one or two areas while having clear weaknesses in others.

Character Arcs: The Journey of Growth

An arc typically involves movement along one of these three scales. The most common arcs involve:

• Increasing relatability through overcoming flaws
• Growing capability (think Luke Skywalker learning the Force)
• Developing proactivity (a character learning to take charge of their destiny)

Antiheroes: Breaking the Rules Effectively

When discussing character attributes, antiheroes present a fascinating case study. Brandon points out that there are actually two distinct types of antiheroes in literature:

The Classical Literary Antihero

The classical antihero (think about Emma Bonvoy from the French novel, Madame Bonvoy) deliberately subverts our expectations of heroic behavior. These characters often reject proactivity entirely—their story becomes about their refusal to fulfill the traditional hero's role. Rather than fighting against their circumstances, they might deliberately choose inaction, creating tension through their resistance to conventional character development.

The Modern Pop Culture Antihero

In contrast, modern antiheroes like John Wick follow a different formula. These characters typically rate high in capability but low in traditional relatability. The key to making them work is context. You make sure the people they're fighting are even less relatable than they are. "Is John Wick a hero?" Brandon asks. "He's a protagonist, for sure. I'd say a hero is someone who does virtuous things, and a protagonist is someone who we are rooting for."

This distinction means writers can create compelling antiheroes by carefully managing the relatability scale. The antihero doesn't need to be traditionally "good.” They just need to be more relatable than their opponents. This creates complicated feeling about these characters, which can lead to deeper, more nuanced storytelling.

Brandon points out that this is part of literature's function: "Sometimes we just love rooting for these people as they go crazy because it allows you to throw away your moral code for a while. And that's what literature is for! You get to experience things you'd never do in real life."

A Note on Flaws and Limitations

Brandon introduces three distinct types of character weaknesses:

1. Flaws: Issues the character needs to overcome
2. Restrictions: Limitations they could overcome but choose not to
3. Limitations: External constraints they must work around

This framework helps writers distinguish between different types of character challenges and use them effectively in storytelling.

Putting It Into Practice

Here are some key takeaways for implementing these principles in your own writing:

Working with Limited Characters

If your character is restricted in their ability to take action (for instance, if they're imprisoned), Brandon suggests several approaches:

• Show their mental proactivity through planning
• Demonstrate small acts of agency within their constraints
• Focus on their attempts, even if they fail
• Build up other attributes (relatability or capability) while proactivity is limited

The Balancing Act

Think of proactivity, relatability, and capability as sliding scales. When developing your character, consider:

• Where are they strongest?
• Where do they need growth?
• Which attribute will remain consistently low as part of their character?

This framework helps you create more dynamic characters and clearer character arcs.

Handling Character Motivation

Brandon emphasizes that motivation is often the key difference between a wooden character and a deeply rounded one. When a character isn't working, there's roughly a 60% chance it's a motivation problem. Ask yourself:

• Have you clearly shown what the character wants?
• Do their actions align with their stated motivations?
• Can readers understand why they make their decisions?

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Brandon warns about several common issues to watch for:

• The "Michael Problem" (named after the Lost character): Don't let a character's primary motivation become their only characteristic 
• The "Villain Problem": Be mindful of making your antagonists more proactive than your protagonists
• The "Too Capable" trap: Remember that perfect competence can reduce relatability

Check out the full lecture video for a more full explanation of all of these pitfalls. Brandon dives into each of them in quite a bit of depth!

Until Next Week

As the snow continues to fall outside Dragonsteel HQ, Brandon wraps up with a final thought about character development: "The difference between a wooden character and a deeply rounded character is their motivation." When a character doesn't work for readers, it's often because their motivations aren't clear or don't align with their actions.

Join us next time as we continue our exploration of crafting stories, brought to you from wherever the Utah weather permits.