Of Character Development. “Ermm , Cough”
Any way. Like a lot of people I have been watching Marvel’s Agents of Shield which, aside from what are they going to call it following The Winter Soldier events, has losing lot of audience lately. Including a lot of my friends who are much bigger geeks than me.
Now I was wondering what was causing this. My point of contention would the strong female lead of Sky. To which I will add that my girlfriend hates her.
Sky is a character that the show was strangely built around rather than Coulson which in and of it self is an odd choice but not the reason that I have trouble with character.
It wasn’t till I was listening to an old episode of Writing Excuses and Brandon Sanderson was going over his Three Prongs of character development. A bit later after hearing this I figure out what was wrong with the Sky, well at to me least.
Brandon discussed how three prongs can be used to help create a well round character. The prongs or bars are: One for Sympathy, One for Competency and a Third for Proactivity. With a good character will have a balance of these to make them interesting. A Character with everything full would not be as liked by the reader. Well not as easily.
Sky by contrast has all three bars at full. This has left her not as interesting as the other characters. She lacks their flaws to make her compelling. She started as a lowly hacker then in very short time became the go to action woman for all the other characters who were more experienced and talented than. One part of the show has her pointing a gun with the skill of a fully trained Shield Agent but having gone through none of the training of a Shield Agent. It came off as being very forced and artificial. I can see what the writers were intending, I can now also see why the character is not working in the show.
So thanks to Brandon and co for helping me figure it out.