#my favorite demented psychology major

[jovial-palace-grounds]

I KEEP DRAGGIN HER SO SHE BALD A BIT.

[adamrenfro]

Character Development - A Quick Look (and All You’ll Need)

Over the years, I’ve developed my own process for character development. I eventually turned the details of that process into a book, Live Action Character Development, which you can find on Smashwords. I’ve used the book with my students, writing groups, and mentees. However, as a writer and writing teacher, I would really rather share the information than earn 90 bucks every year or so. What follows is the gist of the book. 

My process is based on my collegiate studies in literature and writing, teaching at workshops, attending seminars, scouring the internet, participating in countless late-night internet discussion forums, and, naturally, my own writing. From all that, I’ve found there are fourteen elements a writer needs to explore to create a well-developed character. 

This process eschews those Frankenstein charts of character development where you identify arm length, eye color, cat’s name, peanut allergy, favorite sushi roll, etc. Those are a tremendous waste of time, as are lengthy character backgrounds. We don’t have that kind of time to waste. We should be on a relentless drive to finish our story.

I knew a writer who completed 120 pages of his novel when he gave up. He also had over 400 pages of character notes. He spent months, years, working and writing but not in a way that helped him complete his work. 

So I advise writers to forsake the overly copious notes of character development. So much of it will go unused. You want to work on your story, not character notes. These fourteen elements can and should appear on the pages of your book or script, implicitly if not explicitly. 

The goal here is to keep your character development notes to about one page for each major character. I’ve included some sample “character cards” at the end.

And here are the fourteen . . . .

IMAGE: Find an image that best depicts the character. This is for you, not the audience or readers. The image may be an actor, historical figure, friend, acquaintance, or an image you found on the internet. This picture should function as an emotional cue that sums up the character for you. It will trigger all the responses you have to the questions below because you will know these faces like you know your friends.  

EMOTIONAL DRIVE: What is the character's emotional drive? This is the character’s main emotional drive in the story. It’s a character’s inner motor that’s fueled by a dominant unconscious goal they are striving for. Here’s a short list of Emotional Drives and Mindsets.  These emotions are the deep-rooted psychology behind a character’s personality. Choose an emotional drive that represents where the character enters the story. This drive can change during the story. If it does, it becomes part of the character’s arc. Keep in mind, a powerful emotional drive doesn’t always drive a character to make the best choices.

WANT: What is the character's main want / desire / goal in the story? This desire also drives the character.  Make this a clear, straightforward sentence: Jeremy wants to be in a relationship with Lisa.

MOTIVATION: Now we’re looking at the character’s emotional drive and want. Why does the character have his or her want / desire / goal? This reveals the character's motive. It dives deeper into your character’s psychology.  Jeremy is afraid that he will be alone all of his life.  

NEED:  What does the character need to improve in life?  This is not the character's want. This is something she needs. She might want revenge. What she needs is to heal. Your story will be better when the wants and needs are in conflict.

A character's need is usually something the character does not recognize. Be your characters’ life coach. Decide here what they truly need.  Jeremy needs to accept the fact that his parents were demented and that he is a good person.

CONFLICT REACTION:  How does the character react to conflict?  This is THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of your character’s development. Stories are based on conflict, and the way characters respond to conflict says more about them than anything. Jeremy shuts down during conflict. He becomes quiet, choosing to internalize the torment. This continues until his torment boils over. This also helps distinguish characters from one another more than anything. It’s way more memorable than “Claire is the blonde and Jane is the brunette.” Boring.

CLAWS:  What sends the character into a rage? Jeremy’s claws come out if you criticize his kid sister. This is a line that can't be crossed. Explore this in your story. Either let readers see the claws or let them know the red flags that trigger the claws. This adds tension to the story.

DREADFUL ALTERNATIVE: What happens if the character doesn’t achieve his goal? Jeremy is prepared to quit his job, give up on his dream, and move back home. Isolation, depression, and death will follow. The dreadful alternative is what’s lost if the characters don’t achieve their goals. Your hero must be invested in the outcome of the story, or your audience will not care about your hero or your story. If the character doesn’t achieve her goal, then she must face the dreadful alternative.

TRAITS: What are the most pronounced character traits? Make a top five, not fifty. These traits are not descriptions or background trivia. They are, again, more about how the character acts.

Stumped on traits? Check out the Ultimate Character Guide for hundreds of character traits.

Be sure to include both positive and negative traits. The negative traits are the character's flaws. Even your hero should have flaws. This helps humanize them and it adds tension to the story. How will the character possibly overcome this flaw and achieve what he desires?

THE GHOST: What is something from the character's backstory that haunts him in this story? The backstory ends where the story your writing picks up. Your characters had a life before the point where your story begins. The entire backstory will not make it into the story you are writing. That's why it's called the backstory. However, elements from that backstory will affect your characters in the story you are writing. We are interested in "The Ghost." What past event haunts the character?

ARC:  How did the character change over the course of the story? This is essential for your protagonist. The hero learned something to overcome the main conflict that he or she couldn't do at the start.

THEME: How does the character impact the theme of the story? Each major character should touch some angle or facet of the theme. What is it for this character? Including this in the story ties the narrative together and lets the reader see contrasting views on the theme. This is how you weave the theme throughout your story. This develops a rich tapestry of love, greed, rebirth, envy, desire, isolation, revenge, optimism, power, innocence, sacrifice, justice, or whatever themes you're exploring.  

CHARACTER TYPE: What is this character's "character type"? The Ultimate Character Guide gives you 33 to start with. These go far beyond the simplistic protagonist, antagonist, and supporting character labels that don't help us construct our narrative. These character types are the major archetypes from film and literature. Identifying the character type helps you consistently write that character from scene to scene.

A complex character will likely be a blend of two or more character types. This is important to visualize as you assemble your cast of characters. You want a variety of character types in your narrative just as you have in real life.

FIRST APPEARANCE: You will use some of your most crafted writing when you introduce a character for the first time. You get one shot at this intro. It doesn’t have to be lengthy. You don’t need to reveal everything about a character all at once. Some of the best are short but revealing, like this one from American Beauty:

This is Ricky Fitts. He’s eighteen, but his eyes are much older. Underneath his Zen-like quality lurks something sounded . . . and dangerous.”

Use descriptions that engage the reader with action.

She wears a scarf to hide what her mother describes as a weirdly long neck. She doesn’t care it’s gotten caught in the subway doors twice.

All your descriptions can be revealed with action. Descriptions revealed through actions add tension and develops character. Notice the difference in the two here.

Not so good:

The room was a mess. Litter on the floor. Clothes piled on the worn couch.

Julie entered the room as the phone rang.

Okay, you get the picture but nothing happens. Your story is about people, not their things or setting.

Here’s a better version:

Julie stomped into the living room, kicking the discarded McDonald’s bags on the floor to make a path to her final resting place, the threadbare couch. In one motion, she swept the clean clothes off the couch and onto the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. Then she finally plopped down for the night.

The phone rang.

Character revealed. Tension raised. 

Pitfall: One last thing. Don’t introduce male characters with intellectual characteristics and female characters with physical characteristics. It’s a common mistake (for male writers).

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have three goals with Live Action Character Development:

First - Examine compelling questions that look at the psychology of inner character. Go beyond the superficial character charts that don’t actually reveal a character’s character.  

Second - Don’t waste time and effort. This process should generate enough character notes to fill up one or two pages for each major character, but that’s it!  Once you begin writing, you won't refer back to any notes beyond one page. So you want to keep a character’s resume tight.

Third - These notes are designed to go onto the actual pages of your story or script.

That’s it, and all the best!

Here are some of my one-page character cards.

[dammitkirk]

so, i had a sorta conversation yesterday with @kayvsworld about the lack of rhodey representation in post-cacw fic. SO, i decided to throw my hat in the ring!

or, as it’s tentatively titled “Rhodey Is Precious And Does The Best With What He’s Given Every Time”

The first month is the hardest. Rhodey had never realized how much was out of reach before. Sure, he hadn’t been the tallest guy before the airport, but he’d been able to open the kitchen cupboard for a bowl at 2 a.m.. That was what it mostly was - this sudden loss of half of the world that he’d spent a solid forty years in.

As much as Vision probably felt like he was helping, he really wasn’t. The android followed Rhodey around like a lost puppy. It had been kinda nice for the first 12 hours. After that, it had just been grating. Rhodey understood that much of it was out of guilt, but as much as he’d tried to tell Vision that he didn’t blame him, the android just wouldn’t. Leave. Him. Alone.

And Tony… Tony was trying so hard. Rhodey knew that Tony wasn’t sleeping, and as much as he wanted to help his oldest friend, Rhodey knew that any attempt to help Tony would just be promptly brushed off. On top of that, Rhodey had decided that this was the one time he wouldn’t mind being a little selfish. But, he still went out of his way to make sure Tony didn’t just lock himself away in his labs.

He’d finally reached the tipping point during the first testing of Tony’s bionic-legs, which had been a SNAFU from the very beginning.

The metal bit into his hips, chafing in ways that Rhodey hadn’t felt since Afghanistan. But, he was finally able to stand. Which brought a whole new set of angers with it. His mind had, for some foolish reason, been under the impression that getting vertical was all he need to walk just like he once had. He didn’t know how the hell that had happened - he certainly hadn’t thought that.

Rhodey was placing the blame all on that nasty thing called hope.

Vision had been helping him cross the room when he finally snapped. He shoved the android, knowing that if Vision put his mind to it, that push would do fuck all. But, Vision allowed himself to be pushed away, obviously realizing that what Rhodey needed the most at the moment was space.

“Fucking hell!” Rhodey screamed, letting all of his built up anger out. “This is all such bullshit! I’m walking like it my first goddamn steps! And what the fuck for? For Steve motherfucking Rogers to walk away from it all? To take the pussy route? To hide out in fucking Wakanda, away from the goddamn public eye, while we get stuck with the shit show his team left behind? It’s just so fucking unfair!”

Both VIsion and Tony stayed silent, allowing Rhodey his anger.

“I accepted the risk. I knew that every time I went on a mission, I might not come back. You know what I didn’t accept? Or, more accurately, you know what I never expected? That I would end up in fucking wheelchair because of my own goddamn team!”

Rhodey reached for the vase on the table he had stopped besides, grabbing it and hurling it against the wall.

“And I sure as fuck didn’t sign up for this bullshit!”

Rhodey paused, taking deep breaths to calm himself. He felt more pissed then he ever had - even worse than when he’d found out that Stane was a traitorous bastard. Because as much as he loved Tony, in ways he could never put into words - hell, in ways that words couldn’t even cover - this was different. This was…

This was himself.

And Rhodey had never been this way. He’d never been the type to put himself first. It wasn’t in his DNA. As a kid it had always been his mother, than it had been Tony, then it had been the entire country and Tony, and it had ended with the entire world and Tony.

And after 50 goddamn years, Rhodey felt like he deserved a day where he was the priority. And if being the priority meant that he was allowed to be furious with the series of shit hands he’d been dealt, he’d let himself be the motherfucking priority.

It was a good couple of minutes before Tony finally tried to approach Rhodey, and as the inventor did, Rhodey let himself be wrapped up in Tony’s arms. He dashed his hands at his eyes, unsurprised to find them coming away wet. 

“I was wondering how long it would take for you to finally get angry,” Tony murmured, rocking Rhodey where they stood. “I knew that you hadn’t jumped straight to the acceptance stage - I mean, you’re perfect, but not even you can beat basic psychology.”

“Never thought I’d see the day when you’d give credit to psychologists,” Rhodey replied, wrapping his arms around Tony, his voice broken. “Obviously I’ve been dead for over a month, and this is just some sick demented hell I’ve been put in. Figures I’d be stuck dealing with your sorry ass for eternity,” He said, squeezing Tony even tighter - hoping that his actions would belie his words.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony said, his own voice heavy with emotions. “I’m a fucking delight.”

Rhodey chuckled, pulling Tony’s head down and giving his forehead a kiss. “Yeah, ya kinda are…”

It wasn’t perfect - he still couldn’t walk, and Tony was still a shit show… But, it was them, and they’d never been perfect. Two kids from MIT, thrown together by nature of their majors and one professor who’d insisted on his students sitting alphabetically. They were two kids who could have been more different - Anthony Stark, the billionaire’s kid and James Rhodes, the third in a long line of military men.

There would be hard days. Hell, every day seemed like it was destined to be a hard day. But, they’d scrape by, just like they had done before. Because they were Iron Man and War Machine, the last of the Avengers. Because they were Anthony Stark and James Rhodes, America’s favorite friends.

Because they were Tony and Rhodey, and they both had forgotten how to get by without the other.

A.N.

So, obviously this is probably a little rough - in my defense, I finished writing it a 3:15 am, and started it at like 2:45 am. Also, the timeline is kinda handwavy, but I mean the source material is comic books and it's not like they have a basic understanding of how time works, so...if you’ve got any comments, please share them! I tried to write it realistically, but??? Who knows???

Also, I think I might have accidentally written Rhodey x Tony????? And honestly, don’t even mind.

I hope you enjoyed!