#writing character

[redd956]

Don't write blank slate characters for readers to imprint on

Write relatable characters for the readers to connect to.

By relatable, I don't mean the exact demographic and lifestyle of the expected audience. I mean, they are relatable and human enough in tiny little ways that make them so.

[unrelatedbut]

Join us as Christopher and Lore dive into that age old question of what comes first your plot or your character.  While we start out 100% convinced that it's always going to be character we sidetrack ourselves with exceptions and an inevitable discussion of first person narration.

Listen to Unrelated But... on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and Google. 

[thelandswemadeofpaper]

Exiled/Run Away/Leave

Driven Out

Self-Exile

Heel/Face Turn

Broken Pedestal

Migration/Refugees

The Outside World

Escaped from Lab

Send into Hidding

Cowardly Run Away/Abandon

Disowed from Clan or Family.

Send Away (for their Own Safety?)

Land taken by Tyrant/Evil Ruler

Defector (from Decadence? Love?)

Search for Independence or Adventure (Aredhel).

A Unwanted Person (Cursed? Pariah? Scapegoat? Disabled? Outcast?).

Punishment (or to escape one, maybe run away from execution?)

Screw This, I'm Outta Here

To go on a Forbidden Quest or to a conflict or fight without permission.

With an Mission to gain the Pardon and be welcomed again.

To solve things alone (Maybe related to a Dark and Mysterious Past, Sneaky Departure Trope) or reach their goal (Revenge? Find a person or a object?)

Sneaking Out at Night: A brief escape to do something (a ball? a festival? a competition?explore? meet someone?)

Fugitive: a character is declared a traitor by a authority and is on a run, can have earned it or not (Vizards, Seven Deadly Sins, Arya Stark).

Guilded Cage (Marriage? Heirship? Servitude?) or any kind of bad situation (abusive relationship or household? A Evil Faction?). You are part of the Neutral Faction and wants to do something? Family Business? A Flawed Society?

You left after disagreeing with the Leader? After a argument? Is angry about an certain Decision or Action?

Its after what? A reveal? A attempt assassination? A betrayal? A fight?

An estranged heir/person being send/going to live in another place to avoid conflict between rival/hostil parties.

Punished with House Arrest or Temporal Exile in an specific place (an castle, land, another person's house, like Feanor in Formenos)

Not all Rebellions are battles/revolutions, they can just...leave. Like, idk, part of the population rebels and decides to start their own Kingdom.

After making a mistake or reveal, maybe got someone hurt. (Elsa, Turin)

Afraid of Themselves. For their Own Safety (Bruno Madrigal, Elsa)

Usurped/Fallen Dynasty (Yona of Dawn, Daenerys, Giotto)

Tricked to Run Away (Lion King)

After the War (Tsunade?). A hero leaves after begin done with all the fighting, wanting peace.

Banished Deity

The Elites Jump Ship

Moved to Another Country/City

You are just Exiled from your Land or forced to go to a specific place? You could be forbidden to go to an 'magical place', like an Paradise? Persona Non-Grata?

People that could exist in those cases.

Helped them leave (went with them or got captured/killed).

Tried to stop them and got killed or hurt (or even taken with them as a hostage).

Are you allowed to leave in peace? Or they will hunt you? Do you informed someone? Where did you go?

Found/Retrival/Bring Back/Return/Reunion/Hunting/Follow

Send or Went After

Attempt Escape

Deported/Exodus/Visit/Flight/Escaped

In the Middle of a Run

You Can't Go Home Again/I Choose to Stay Tropes

Sealed/Imprisioned/Isolated

Asylum

Political Hostage

Chained to a Rock

Mistaken for Imprisonment

Powered by a Forsaken Child

Kind Restrains

Captured Super-Entity

Genie in a Bottle

Madwoman in the Attic

Reassigned to Antarctica

Kindnapper

Monster in the Basement

Locked into an Monastery

Locked in a Freezer (this is more of a temporary thing plot)

Maiden in the Tower

Sleeping King Under the Mountain

Pieces of God

Taken for Granite

Monster in the Ice

Sealed Army in a Can

Sealed Cast in a Multipack

Sealed Evil in a Duel

Caged Inside a Monster

Go Mad from the Isolation

Locked Inside your Own Mind

Sealed Evil in a Six Pack (sealed in more than one object)

Awakening the Sleeping Giant

Dangerous Prisioner

To stop they from going on a Quest/Helping someone/going to a place.

Energy or Material Source/Living Weapon (Noroo, Yukina, Kurama).

To be keep safe (they know something, are being hunted down, are accused of an crime)

Anti-Interference Lock Up (You are threat in someone plan, to stop you for doing a thing in general, can be a messenger too)

Defeated Villain or Hero. Or a Defeated Enemy and/or people associated to them (personal friends, loyal servants and followers, familiars, children, even if they never meet or love the Enemy in question...)

You really did something/are dangerous, but had a good reason (or at least an grey one, like a roaring rampage of revenge).

The character in question is deformed/considered a abomination or pariah in some way, maybe hidden because of a special condition? Or locked for being unwanted/shameful? (Can be willing isolation like the Phantom of Opera)

Too dangerous/wanted/hated power or curse (its since childhood? After an incident? You hurt someone) thats better keep away from normal people.

A creator/builder is locked up after finishing their job. (Daedalus).

Or being used for another thing, like for service or work, because you have talent or a power? (maybe the prisioner is the real artists/inventor? Captured by a fake one that takes credit?)

Disagree/Is a Threat to Someone (Nimue from Trollhunters, King Henry VIII's daughters, a secret keeper?)

False Accused or Misunderstanding (Sirius Black, Inuyasha)

Living in isolation after an tragedy/failure. Or went missing/hidding after wanting neutrality in a conflict.

Being under the custody of a dangerous person, like an Evil Mentor, they can be or not aware of your identity, but you're without a way of escaping or you need their help.

Or a unwilling member/servant of a Faction. Maybe you were kidnapped or maybe you were born here.

A situation similar to the Man in the Iron Mask. A character whose existence or survival is a secret?

A Rebel (Xanxus, Alexiel)

Wake Up in the Future (Aether/Lumine, Aang, Samurai Jack, Allura, Steve Rogers). Survived a event? Defeated? Accidental? With a Mission?

Can be a more temporary thing, like a Foreign being arrested trespassing the Realm while doing something (a first meeting then?).

In some type of slumber? You're healing maybe?

You could find (accidentaly of not) an sealed being who can help you. Maybe save them from the people who were using them.

Having a person keep prisioner in secret from everyone.

You can still have contact outside even being sealed. (Leaking Can of Evil Tropes, but you can be good too). The villain can have a alliance/partnership/mentoship with them (or using them).

It can be a mysterious imprisioned individual with that you decided to free and drag to your found family.

An Legendary Sealed Being that you released to fight against the enemy, a lesser than two evils situation? Maybe a local village/city legend nobody sure its real?

You random found a McGuffin with a sealed person (kinda like Lapiz Lazuli). A experiment of the villain, maybe?

An specific action/event is needed to free them

A character frees a prisioner/sealed/beast by accident.

A entire house begin banished to an prision island.

Capture can also be cutting off their escape by burning a bridge, shutting down an portal or stealing (maybe burning) their ship, just begin stuck in a place without means of travel?

Someone could Free the Prisioner/Being sealed or they could escape.

Escape by Yourself or with Help (Internal? An unknow? A friend? You take them with you?)

Its normal to go mad from isolation.

Released? Escaped? Freed?

The Prision in question: Ice? A Island? A Cage? A Object?

[askyourwritergrandma]

Hi so my main character is a vain 23 year old girl. She's not into long term relationships and prefers flings filled with infatuation. She flaunts her body a lot. She's cold and aloof most of the time. My question is how do I depict someone like that without making her a stereotype or making it seem like she's just there for the 'male gaze'. Thanks.

Hi anon!

My advice is going to sound deceptively simple but it's the best advice I can give you: just write her like a person.

Ok so she's vain. That's a character flaw, she's going to make choices in a certain way and have priorities of a certain type because she's vain. Vain is not the same as shallow or it doesn't have to be. She could be incredibly intelligent, live a nuanced and full life and be vain. She can be manipulative, clever, rude, uneducated, rich or poor and be vain.

She's not into commitment and she's comfortable with showing off her body. So maybe she doesn't want commitment because she's more into herself than she is anyone else. Maybe because she wants to be in control of her own life at all times. If she's showing off her body, that can also be a showing of power. She's beautiful and she's vain and everyone deserves to see exactly how beautiful she is. They deserve to want her because she craves that adoration and because she's amused by how willing people are to do things for her.

Make her motivations about what she wants. Make her flaws as ugly as they really are. Let her be beautiful and wretched in equal parts.

Good luck!

[purplepotatobread]

Does anyone else struggle to write smart characters because you're too dumb.

[shelby-bach-books]

So….I did actually go ahead and start releasing the Season I started talking about this weekend: People Are Stories-in-Progress, the first Season of the JourneyPen Project.

Each Season is a deep dive into a certain topic the writing craft, and this one explores the intersection of story structure and character development, both in fiction and in individuals.

Here's a quick excerpt that explains what inspired the topic: When I started the first iteration of the Journeypen Project, I put out a call for topics—what did my readers want to know?

Here are some of the questions they asked:

How do you come up with subplots?

How do you come up with a plot that all fits together – like subplots and everything?

If you wrote one book at a time, with editing and collaborating, how did you have plot points from book 1/2/3 to fit perfectly in book 4? I mean, take Lena’s ending for example… which idea came first? Lena’s Tale, or Lena becoming a sorcerer?

People Are Stories-in-Progress will answer each of these questions, including the ways I crafted Lena’s subplot.

But when I read these questions for the first time, I knew what it would take to answer these questions.

It wasn’t simple.

It wasn’t fast.

In fact, it's called People Are Stories-in-Progress--and it'll take the rest of the summer, and some of September too, to finish answering.

To answer these readers’ questions and to fully explain how I create plot, subplot, and character arcs, I had to explain how I worked with all of these elements together. It’s a lot of territory to cover, more than most writers would tackle, but I can’t pick and choose.

Either these skills come as a set, or they arrive incomplete.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Some spins on the "mostly male team with a token woman" trope:

The woman is trans and stayed in her old circle of bros even after transition

The woman is the only one in her circle of "girls" who didn't turn out to be a trans man

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[sylvies-kablooie]

i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.

[rubyleaf]

Honestly? My main piece of advice for writing well-rounded characters is to make them a little bit lame. No real living person is 100% cool and suave 100% of the time. Everyone's a little awkward sometimes, or gets too excited about something goofy, or has a silly fear, or laughs about stupid things. Being a bit of a loser is an incurable part of the human condition. Utilize that in your writing.

[ukrainian-groove-metal]

I love the "came back wrong" trope but from the opposite side.

Imagine you are dead. And then you are RIPPED from the embrace of decay into the world of the living again. Your memories are hazy and you don't recognize any of these people, but they act like they're close to you? Like they love you? So you try to get your memories back, to act like you belong here, but everybody tries to forget you died. And you can't. It is omnipresent. And just trying to grapple with that fact pushes the people who "love" you away, and they're incapable of understanding, and they're so confused, what's wrong N̶̄̀O̶͛͗T̷̉́ ̷͋͝Y̴̎̌Ȍ̴̈U̸̓R NÄM̴̃͑E̵̾̇? And you just need them to understand, you aren't that person! You aren't! You don't know who that person is! You don't know why any of this is happening, but they're unwilling to bend, they keep insisting you are that person, your memories will come back, everything will be normal again, and you want to scream and cry and claw yourself open to show them you're different. Your existence as a being wholly separate from whoever you "used to be" is a sin unto itself. All you can do is scrabble for life and to them, you're killing whoever they loved to do it.

just. lots of fun in that concept, you know?

[redd956]

Use character to appearance to do more:

They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but appearance sure can say a lot. Unfortunately when writing (or even drawing) it is more than easy to forget that factor. Using character appearance to describe the world, add personality to the character, and give the reader more information does wonders. 

It makes sneaking in character appearance much easier, and gives the writer plenty of chances to expand on the world on their page.

Things you can use character appearance to do (but not limited to)

Hint at a character’s economic status

Add personality to a character

Add to a character's backstory 

Make notes about a character’s health

Worldbuild the fashion

Describe a character’s occupation

Make references to a character’s passion or hobby

Hint at a character’s relationship status

How a character feels about their own appearance

Family relations

Hint at a character’s education

Subvert expectations

Explore character’s potential gender identity

Align the character alongside dynamics or trope

Explain the time frame the story takes place in

Hint at the level of technology in a world

Describe a character’s culture, race, ethnicity, etc.

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

things to ask yourself when designing a female character:

how much blood is she covered in

are her eyes filled with madness

can she rip things to shreds with her fingernails

[askyourwritergrandma]

Hi! First I wanna say thanks for all your advice! I feel like all my male characters sound the same and and all my female characters sound the same, how do I differentiate my characters and give them personality?

Hi anon!

This is A Question

One of the answers is just to practice creating characters. Even if you don't use them in anything, use some of your daydreaming or writing time just coming up with new people. This will add to your toolbox of side characters you can put to use when you need a throwaway line delivered AND give you practice.

Ok but what to practice?

almost all characters start with a cardboard cutout. You pick an archetype and you build off of that. So high school jock, cheerleader, nerd, crone, love interest, Generic Woman, etc. This is only the starting point because if you move on from this point your Character, we'll call her Cynthia will have no distinguishable personality.

Cynthia needs context. So we start thinking about what Cynthia is currently doing in her life. Let's say she works in retail, she's a shift lead. Now, is she also in school? Is this her career? How much money is she making? Is she married? Roommates? Is she happy in this job? You don't have to have the right answer the first time, in fact explore each question to a conclusion. See if you like the Cynthia that emerges. For argument's sake lets say she's not in school, this is her job but she wouldn't call it a career even if she has no prospects of moving on. She's making better than minimum wage but nowhere near manager salary. She's not married but she's just started dating Kevin. She has a roommate that's not necessarily a friend but they are friendly with one another. She's not THRILLED at the job but she's in line to be a manager and that means money she can live off, so things could be worse.

Cynthia needs Traits. So we start throwing things at her. Physically attractive, plain or ugly? Flirty? Serious? Foul-mouthed? Religious? Loyal? Fun or serious? Bar or library? Jealous? Content? Sure of herself or self-doubting? The answers to these questions will absolutely shape the story that you're writing. A confident Cynthia who is fun, loyal, pretty and religious is going to be worlds different from a Jealous, flirty, beautiful, foul-mouthed Cynthia. It also changes the kind of things they would say. A fun, loyal, religious Cynthia would still rely on Her Religious Figures and bring them up to comfort herself. Foul-mouthed Cynthia would absolutely sit in traffic and call people names.

Cynthia needs Backstory. Does she have a family? Siblings? Does she have a good relationship with both of her parents? Was she raised by someone not a mother/father? Does she have a best friend? how long? What was her experience in school like? What was her childhood like? Does she have a secret trauma in her background? Any memorable past boyfriends? (or girlfriends?) All of these things are the building blocks of who Cynthia is at this moment. If she was raised by a single mother and butts heads with her there's a good chance Cynthia is very much used to doing things on her own and nothing relying on anyone and probably doesn't trust people as fully as others might. This will change the way she talks to people because she will be more guarded about what she shares and she'll also expect others to have the same sense of self-reliance that she does. So maybe she's even impatient because of it and that's one of the things keeping her from advancing to manager position?

Now, that's a lot and I advise you to brainstorm it but if you don't have it all down before you start that is OK, as you write you can discover more and it'll change how your character sounds. You can go back and fix previous things she did or said to make them make more sense to who she becomes. That's OK.

How a character sounds is absolutely as much about the narrative you put around their dialogue as the actual dialogue you write. Those 'who said this' quizzes always pick well-known or recognizable dialogue and that's why it's possible to pick out who said what. If you took most lines of dialogue that didn't have identifying names or places in them and laid them out on a table they would be indistinguishable. It's the context of what's being said that matters.

I hope that helps anon!

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

[daily-prompts]

I need everyone’s best character advice. STAT.