I am but a semi-idiot writer on a quest for lazier and lazier ways to accomplish my semi-idiot goals.
To that end, I wanted to share a simple character scaffold I use to fulfill two things.
Remind me that my characters are living, breathing works in progress, without getting lost in the weeds of story grids, hero’s journeys, or any other motivational tesseracts that exist out there.
Help visualize how a handful of internal ingredients actually drive change via growth.
This is admittedly a bit reductive and probably not enough on its own to hold up a fully realized hero, but I think it may at least provide a unique combination of “mile markers” to get a flat character up off the ground.
Plus, it’s alliterative, so you know it must be good.
It’s called…!
The Soil
The Seed
The Sprout
The Spider
The Sun
The Soil → Our environment
Pretty self-explanatory, but as a sucker for setting, I often start with something my character can’t control.
Now that I think about it, most of these are actually out of our character’s hands.
Especially when it comes to sci-fi/fantasy/horror, or really any story based on vibrant worlds… our environment hosts some of our earliest and most formative obstacles and opportunities. Resist the urge to use a picture of Tatooine. Resist the urge to use a picture of Tatooine.
I think this can be as simple as “Grew up on a mining moon where the air was rationed.”
Or as complex as writing out all the class lines, superstitions, and old grudges of your character’s home village.
Think about the soil of your own life. Were you born in a pre-manicured garden of moist earth with nutritious microbes, teeming with an ecosystem of affirming worms? Or was your childhood a dried-up patchwork of compacted dirt with an acidic pH and shaped only by the footprints of careless boots?
For better or for worse, The Soil is the context from which everything will grow.
The Seed → What was given to us in childhood
This is the “nurture” to The Soil’s “nature.” You can’t really have one without the other, so if The Soil represents our passive environment, The Seed represents a key principle or conditioning imposed upon us.
Ideals instilled by parents or mentor figures, circumstantial traumas, you know, the one rule that was never to be questioned, etc.
I think of The Seed as a formative moment from which your character’s earliest life philosophy blooms.
The Sprout → An identity-defining moment
The Soil has been established, The Seed has been planted. The Sprout is the first time your character has the opportunity to take their fate into their own hands. In my mind, this doesn’t necessarily mean something actively motivated by your character. It can be your character’s reaction to something situational or something completely unrelated to your story at large.
The point is that this is the moment where your character meaningfully participates in their own life and “invokes” their perspective.
Is this the moment that needs to set your character’s motivations and goals in stone? Nah.
It may be as simple as refusing to take the oath their family had taken for generations. Maybe it was the moment they chose to run when everyone else stayed to fight. Yes, there exists a Dark Sprout™️
Think about The Sprout as more of a coming-out party for your character’s “default perspective” or status quo spirit of being, which will inevitably be challenged by what comes next.
The Spider → Our self-destructive trait
This is not one of those spiders “who are actually really healthy to have around because they eat all the other—” No! This motherfucker is out here munching on our leaves, skittering across our stems, and spinning webs of deceit all up in our budding character truths.
The Spider is self-sabotage incarnate. Something in your character’s nature that works against them at almost every turn. Not just their “weakness,” but the part of their ego that actively undercuts what they need (whether they know it yet or not).
Maybe it’s the pride that won’t ask for help, or the fear that won’t let anyone close, etc.
I think of The Spider as the antagonist we carry with us everywhere we go.
The Sun→ Our enlightenment
Hey, do you mind if we ascend real quick?
It would be easy to call The Sun your character’s “need” – nothing too groundbreaking there. But since most of this framework has an internal focus, I think it’s appropriate to get a little Buddhist with The Sun and call it your character’s enlightenment. Their “final state marked by the absence of desire or suffering.”
The Sun is not WHAT your character needs, but WHO your character should be once they get it.
My character needs to feel worthy → My character is at peace being ordinary
My character needs revenge → My character can carry the loss
My character needs to be accepted into a community → My character is at home in their own skin
I know it’s just a re-skin, but it helps me not commoditize my character’s need and keep their enlightened destination state in focus.
The only way upward is inward, squidward
I think this flow is best used as a spectrum. I don’t know if I’ve even created a character that has reached their identity-defining moment or “enlightenment” quite yet. The important thing is that we remember our characters are evolving beings on their own internal journey.
