Speaker 1: Inspiration? Check. A story with legs? Check. Think it's time to write the pilot now? Not so fast. There is one more key ingredient your show is missing. And it's an important one.

Speaker 2: So what have you two come up with? Nothing. What does that mean? The show is about nothing.

Speaker 1: The place writers turn for every future episode. Maybe the reason audiences keep coming back.

Speaker 2: This is actually like another 26 seasons.

Speaker 1: Or decide to stay up a little bit later to watch One more episode. It is your characters. And they can't just be good characters. They have to be great. Got another character named Ching Chong who loves to play ping pong. Hi, we're StudioBinder and in this video we'll show you how to create great character dynamics by asking yourself three questions. Who? What? Where? This is Jason Hellerman.

Speaker 3: I worked as a story editor for a producer named Michael Costigan for a few years. We did Ghost in the Shell and A Bigger Splash among others.

Speaker 1: His screenplay Shovel Buddies made the top 10 of the blacklist.

Speaker 3: It was purchased by Awesomeness TV and debuted at South by Southwest in 2016. What makes great characters? The best characters are people that have to constantly deal with things and that's how we see who they really are.

Speaker 1: To demonstrate, we'll use a show that's considered a true character study. Before we get started, let's take a look at our character dynamic worksheet. The first question we need to ask ourselves in this process is Who? Who is this story about? In the case of Mad Men, we focus on one particular mad man. Don Draper. Don is an ad exec. He's a heavy drinker. He's a womanizer. He's a really heavy drinker. Are you okay? And once in a while, he's Dick Whitman.

Speaker 3: We meet Don Draper. He's sitting, smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes and Don is writing notes on a napkin. One of the first things we learn about Don Draper is that he'll talk to anyone.

Speaker 4: Can I ask you a question? Why do you smoke old gold?

Speaker 5: It's a habit. I could never get you to try another brand, so... My Luckies. I love my old golds.

Speaker 3: For a show that winds up being essentially about advertising, it's a beautiful entryway into his thought process and who he is.

Speaker 1: But that's not all there is to the question, Who? For more dynamic qualities, we need the next question. What? What has happened to Don that defines him?

Speaker 2: Just go. I can't.

Speaker 1: What is happening to Don now?

Speaker 2: $2,500. By that, I mean you are a productive and reasonable man

Speaker 1: and completely self-interested. What will happen to Don later in the show?

Speaker 6: I want to keep things as normal as possible. And you not being here is part of that.

Speaker 1: By asking yourself these questions, you start to flesh out your character. What happened to Don? Well, for starters, he stole a dead man's identity.

Speaker 5: Lieutenant Draper. Private Whitman. You were the last person who knew him in his chain of command. We'd like you to take him home.

Speaker 1: But there's more to What? than a buried backstory. He's also a family man.

Speaker 3: At the end of the pilot, there's that great hook, right? Where he walks into this house and you're like, Oh, I guess he's going to bed. But really, you find out he's a family. And he's been cheating on his wife the whole time. And, you know, like maybe he's not the greatest dad. And right from there, you're hooked.

Speaker 1: So now we have a main character with depth. By answering the who and the what, we've decided some things that inform our writing.

Speaker 3: As I layer my characters, I think a lot about what would I do in that situation?

Speaker 1: Lung cancer. Inoperable.

Speaker 3: Sometimes it's picking the not so great parts of yourself. It's like, what's the most desperate version of me doing? What's the saddest version of me doing?

Speaker 1: But what about the rest of the characters? We need them to create great character dynamics. Time for our third question. Where? Most shows build their ensembles around location. Seems weird, but it makes sense when you consider it. All the characters in Cheers are the people you'd find in a bar. The characters in The Sopranos are Tony's family. And Tony's family.

Speaker 3: I think that location is one of the most important parts to going into any character. You let the location dictate some of the people that might be in your world, and then you can build who they are outside of that.

Speaker 1: I mean, Superstore is pretty spot on with its portrayal of workers and customers inside a megastore. It's fine, I work here. It's my job to help customers.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I was so surprised. I was like, what? What's he doing cleaning up toilet paper?

Speaker 1: So where does Mad Men take place? New York, in an ad agency in the 1960s. Takes us back to The Who.

Speaker 3: You're looking at the finest ad men in New York.

Speaker 1: Who would we find in these places?

Speaker 3: Probably a lot of macho guys, a lot of women. It's the 1960s, so you have to color your show that way in terms of like, oh, the women were the secretaries, but maybe there's someone with gumption there, like a Peggy, who's going to take over. Maybe there's someone like Joan there, who really secretly runs the office and is secretly in charge, but whose voice still doesn't get heard.

Speaker 1: Don also lives in the suburbs of a mid-century nuclear family. So there, we have Betty and the kids. And each of these new characters all have their own what's. What happens to Peggy after she gets pregnant? What will Roger do after his heart attack? What will Joan do with that guy from Jaguar? Oh man, this show got dark. Let's look at this clip of Pete getting punched in the face to liven the mood. Once you've filled out all your who, what, and wheres, you're ready to fill out the most important element of the worksheet. How these characters relate to create dynamic. And to keep the theme running, we'll call this final step the want. What does Roger want from Don?

Speaker 2: And now let me introduce the man who will stand alongside me

Speaker 1: for the next 40 years, Donald Draper. What does Betty want from Don? Bets, don't worry about my job.

Speaker 4: Why would I? I don't know anything about it. They offered you a contract, and you didn't say a damn thing to me. What's the matter? You don't know where you're going to be in three years?

Speaker 1: You can go on and on between all the characters. So before you start writing your pilot, which we'll get into more detail on in the next video, make sure you download and fill out our character dynamic worksheet. So, ask yourself who, what, and where. Definitely remember to ask yourself. What?