Ultracondensed characterization

[magibrain]

Random question, but I need it for reasons research.

If you had to sell me on two characters – gen or ship – and you only had 500 words or a 30-second video clip to convince me that they were the best no seriously really... what clips or works or excerpts of works would you point me toward?

I am going to think on this and see what I can come up with... after I sleep for a while.

(Context is that I'm playing with a story-in-the-background-of-a-story in one of the things I'm working on, and I want to pick apart some mechanics of what makes for minimum effective doses of getting people engaged with characters.)

Comments

[sholio]

As an addendum to the above comment (and the Good Omens part in particular) -- now that I'm thinking about a variety of characters who've had me at "hello", or at least within a few chapters of "hello", I think one of the big things that sells me on a character is a certain element of incongruity for their place, time, or social standing. They're kind when they should be cruel, or dressed down when everyone else is dressed up; they laugh where anyone else would have cried, or they're hurt and angered at something that makes everyone around them laugh. They're just a little bit unexpected. You think you know how the story is going to go and then it veers that tiny bit off its tracks.