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]

You know, this is remarkably difficult. I'm realizing as I think about it that characters, and character relationships in particular, tend to grow on me slowly, and the scenes that really stick with me, or the scenes that made me go from being "meh" to "OMG MORE PLZ" about a character, are ones that rely on a long build-up for effectiveness; they don't really work out of context.

Context-free, possibly the best thing along these lines that I can think of is the opening scene of Good Omens with Aziraphale and Crowley/Crawly talking in the Garden of Eden. There is a ton of characterization packed into that exchange, about who they are (Aziraphale giving his flaming sword to the exiled humans because they looked cold!) and the way they relate to each other.

[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.