Can we talk a little bit now about characters perhaps, the people, or in your case, the animals, in some of your stories. How do you make your characters, whether human or non-human, seem interesting and real? >> One of the thing is to find a convincing motives for the characters. Why do they do what they do? Then, I also want to find characters who can make things happen. >> Good. >> To other characters and bring out certain reactions from other characters. >> Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. Then, characters who carry the story forward. Yep, good. >> Dialogue, I try to use dialogue a lot. >> Good, because we're going to talk about dialogue in another module and we're going to say how important that is. So getting characters to say things which show the sort of people or animals they are, thank you. Exactly. Also, it's not just what they say, which is important but also how they say it. >> Good. >> That distinguishes the characters one from another. >> So you can make your characters talk in different ways and that separates them in the reader's mind from one another. Thank you. Excellent. I try to show characters in terms of what they do, action. >> This is wonderful because we've been saying exactly the same things in our videos that the writer can stand outside and describe the character but it's much better if the character says or does things which shows what he, she, or it is. >> Yes, exactly. The last one is, the character has to be in a story for a purpose. >> Right. >> If you can do away with a character in a story, than he or she does not need to be there and I always consider a story to be like a dinner, where only a few guests have been invited. >> That's lovely. Yes, yes. [LAUGH] >> Those who have not been invited have no business being there. >> Great, so you must not have characters who are just there for decoration. They must do something to the story or show something about any theme there is. They must have a purpose, that's a lovely word, thank you, right. Can I ask you, we've been suggesting in some of our earlier videos that writers can find material for characters from people in their own lives. Now you've lived in tents, India, you've been in Canada for a long while. Do you find that any of your characters are based on people or animals you know? >> Yeah, yeah, some of the characters I've based on certain things I know of certain people. Names, for example, if I'm looking for names for characters, I always first try to think of people that I've known in my life. >> Right. >> And use their names. >> You have to be very careful sometimes, don't you? Especially, if you give the name of somebody you know to a rather unpleasant character. >> Yes, exactly >> As far as whether characters are based on me, I wouldn't say for sure that this is so but I can say that all the characters are filtered through my own personality. >> Yes. >> In the sense that, when one is creating characters, whether you want it or not, you put a little bit of yourself in the characters because you see things from their point of view. >> Yes. Yes. >> I'm sure such point of view would be based on one's own outlook >> Exactly. We were saying to some of our learners that it's a good idea perhaps to look and listen to people. You listen to the way they talk and you get all sorts of details form that. Do you this when you start making up your characters for a story or a play? Are you have a watcher and a listener? >> Yeah, at a certain point but I always find that I'm so wrapped up in the characters in the story, that I don't have to observe at that particular time. >> Right. Yes. >> I have so much stored in me. >> Yes. They live inside your head. Yeah. I get very fond of my characters. They become like real friends to me in the story. Do you find that happens for you, too? Yes. >> Yeah. >> Yes, very much so. >> Because one of the lovely things about your picture books is that there's so much warmth for the animals comes across and I got the feeling the animals in Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper and others, they are Tololawa's friends. Is that the way you feel about them? Yeah, yeah. They're something nice, even the nasty ones, there's something nice about them. They have to be something that brings them alive and I try not to make them one dimensional. Yes. >> So, I put stuff into them so that I give them their right to live as characters. >> That's a lovely way of putting it, thank you for that.