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Hello, furballs, and welcome to the next part of my little writer's assistance guide! In my earlier guides, you've learned a bit about how to fight your way through writer's block, how to remain motivated, and how to realize your time amongst other things. But what we haven’t touched on just yet is what’s at the core of any good story of decent length: the characters. These lively buggers jump off the page and guide our imaginations down new and unexplored roads, and become our closest friends and cruelest enemies. And here, I’m going to try to illuminate some of the processes I use for creating my characters.
First, a reiteration of some core facts about this guide. I am NOT a trained writer. I've done no courses, no workshops. I don't attend any writers groups, and I don't claim to have professional knowledge. I HAVE been writing for over ten years, and I HAVE sought out the knowledge that I can to improve my skills. However, this little guide is going to have little to nothing to do with technical writing, if I have my way. Rather, this guide is being provided as a way to motivate and inspire other writers here on this site. I'm not going to tell you what to write, or how to write. I only hope to provide you with some mental ‘tools' that will allow you to craft your words to their greatest potential. That said, let us begin!
The next lesson is this: Characters are core to your story; never neglect them!
I sat down this morning, with a cup of tea in my hand. Actually, two cups. English Breakfast was in my right hand (black, two and a half sugars, as usual!) and, after careful consideration, a cup of chamomile was in my left (with a dash of honey). I took these cups to my bedroom and sat down at my computer desk, brushed aside my laptop and desktop computer’s keyboard, and set the cup of chamomile on the other side of the desk. The English Breakfast was for me. The Chamomile was for Seir Sapienti.
He’s an otter, an alchemist. Somewhat withdrawn and quiet yet good with people, he’s a central character to one of the largest writing projects I’ve undertaken yet. The tea felt like an appropriate drink for someone like him, and he seems to agree. I set it down on the table and sat down at my usual seat, and I imagined that he sat opposite me, rather than my monitor. I asked him how he was, how he was doing, and what was new. He said he was okay, a little concerned with Kallien’s behavior and Tannen’s response to it, but otherwise fine. There was an underlying note of fear in his voice, and I can’t blame him; he’d just recently seen a terrible vision of the past, and a war-torn future to come.
In his setting, he comes from the little town of Sarchessa, in the kingdom of Sulorvis. In my mind, though, he lives in a little cul-de-sac. He lives in a nice little house halfway along the street, and shares his living space with a wolf called Tannen. Faora Meridian actually lives in a little place across the road from him. Sol, Carla and Ivar all live down at the end of the road, in a little apartment block. Quite a few of the residents of this little cul-de-sac are kept up by Carla’s screams late at night, as one of her latest romantic conquests gives her something to scream about.
My mind’s organized a little place, off to the side and out of the way of my normal thought processes, where my characters can run and jump and play however they like. This little cul-de-sac houses those important creations of mine; those who exist to tell the stories that fill my dreams and plague me in my nightmares. There, I can keep track of every character I’ve ever had, and I can go to meet them on their own terms. I can talk to them in their own home (or have their door slammed in my face; I’m looking at you, Kieral!), I can see how well or poorly they keep their living space, and how they behave at their most natural. In this corner of my mind, my imagination transports me to Seir’s side, where I can let him teach me more about himself.
Seir’s just a character of mine, yeah. Just a string of text in a Word document on my computers and flash drives. But that’s no excuse for me, as his creator, to not know what kind of tea he likes. That’s no excuse for me not to know how he converses. That’s no excuse for me not to know his hopes and dreams, his fears and nightmares. Because I’m his creator, I have to know all these things about him. And not just him, either; I have to know these things about the two-dozen-or-so other main and support characters that exist in the world I’ve created around Seir. I need to know how Tannen feels about things. I need to know how Morgaine reacts to the wrong word at the wrong time. How does Rochelle sound, if approached with all due deference?
Characters are all at once more than we can ever be, and far less. They go off on amazing adventures and fight hordes of space monsters, or slay evil wizards, or cross the world in amazing contraptions. The defuse bombs and dance with princes and hunt in darkened alleyways for flighty killers. They live the lives of drama and excitement we wish we could (rather than the lives of drama we furs all too often bring upon ourselves, heh heh). But at the same time, they are completely unable to tell their stories themselves. They lead these fantastic lives, but there’s no oversight, no video camera to document their activities. Unless they are fortunate enough to have a guiding scribe, like myself, and all of you who read these articles of mine. Then their weakness turns into a blessing for us.
Characters share a common problem with people that must be addressed by any writer, and that is how to make them interesting. I mean, sure. He could be a master shapeshifter with immense psionic powers and the skill to handle any weapon with practiced ease, whilst being the Chosen One of any number of prophecies. Yeah… that’s interesting. But really, who wants to hear about him? I wouldn’t. Why? Well, if he’s that good, then there’s not going to be much of a story to tell, is there? He’d cut down amazing armies of skillful fighters with his powers and skills, and nothing would be a challenge for him. It’d be boring. But… well, then you could go to the other end of the spectrum, and create characters that are broken, flawed to the point of retardation, and good for absolutely nothing. But that’s equally boring, and part of why I refuse to pick up any of the Twilight series of books without a nearby vat of acid to dip my hands in afterwards.
We don’t like to read about characters who are too perfect. They make us feel like shit, more often than not. Nor do we want to read about a loser who stays a loser. No, we like stories with character we can sympathize and empathize with. We like characters who feel like they could be real people. We like characters who are flawed, but can still rise above the obstacles placed in front of them. We like that, because we’re all flawed. We want to identify with the real person who overcomes adversity. And sure, while not all readers feel like that (I wrote a character once specifically for another type of reader), a lot certainly do. Most do, I would wager. So, then. What makes a good character, Fae?
Allow me to direct your attention to a little-known videogame called The Sims 3, released by indie publishing house EA. In this game, you create little simulated people and control their lives. In Sims 3, you can assign a character up to five character traits that define their personality. Now, while this is a very simplified system that in no way creates the complex picture of a real living person, it’s a perfect base from which to start from. We all look at people and tag them with traits, based on their behavior. “He’s so immature,” or, “Damn, she’s so… clean,” or, “Wow, what a prude!” I have a very specific system for building a basic idea of my characters, and it goes thusly.
I take my character, and I assign them six basic traits. The first is their core trait; this is a dominant take on the world that pervades everything that the character does. In my character of Tierim for example, that would be ‘Honor’. In all that he does, his sense of morality and honor are at the core of who he is. They’re inextricable from him. You simply cannot have Tierim without his sense of honor, there to guide all that he thinks and does.
Next are the character’s secondary traits. These temper the core trait of that character, and add a little depth to them. There’s usually two of these, though some characters require three. For example, Tierim is honorable to his very core. He’s also very brave, and very dedicated. With those two new traits added to him, a basic picture forms of the kind of character you want to create. With these three traits, headed by his sense of honor, I hope Tierim’s beginning to sound like a sort of noble, templar warrior of sorts. Those are the kind of traits you’d expect from a character like that.
Finally, we have their flaws. We all have them, and our characters must as well. Without them a character is flat and lifeless, and they just aren’t any fun to read about. Tierim’s personality would be very stuffy if it were to be left the way it is above. And so we add a few flaws, to distinguish him and add that last layer of depth to his personality. Tierim, to continue with him as an example, is vengeful, prideful, and deeply emotional.
But, I hear you cry, being emotional isn’t a flaw! Maybe not all the time, no. But if you look at the different traits that make up Tierim’s personality, you start to see how it could be. Anyone with a strong sense of honor and is dedicated to the task at hand and brave enough to surmount anything… that is a dangerous person to have misdirected. Added to his swollen pride and vengeful nature, it would just take one emotional trigger to send him far off his noble course. The character is driven down a dark path that exposes his strengths and weaknesses for what they truly are.
Your character’s positive and negative traits are interchangeable, if you hope to create different kinds of character. A villain’s primary trait may be his genius, or his brutality. The latter is distinctly negative, while the former could be twisted to an evil agenda. Shuffle the traits of your characters about, to create the base personality for who you want to view in your story. I’ll reference these traits again in future guides, when I attempt to deal with the specific creation of hero and villain characters.
However, it is not enough to even know just your character’s personality, and this is where my little tea party comes in. To have a basic template for your character is all well and good; it’s a solid foundation that will allow you to build greater things. However, it alone does not a good character make. I mentioned earlier that I know Seir’s preference in tea. I discussed (in my mind) with him the recent events of his life, and listened to how he told the story. I learned how he spoke and held himself, because I imagined it when I brought him that tea. I had the template of his personality in my mind, and I had the basic backstory to his life alongside it, and together I was able to meld them into a coherent being. And he is a coherent being, one with thoughts and feelings all his own who resides in my mind and on my page.
Of course, that implies that there is a lot of voices in my head. And I suppose there are. Such is the life of the writer, he or she who views the world again and again through the eyes of their creations. I would challenge anyone who wants to create a real, living, breathing character to even act like that character, even if only in private. People might stare, after all, heh. Speak like them. Play out a scene as if you were on a stage. Actors regularly have to become the character they are given, but as writers, we have the gift of creating those characters for ourselves. We should know them more intimately than anyone else, as an inherent truth behind their creation.
And yet, as with all things, we must ground ourselves back in reality once again. Our characters are not our friends, and if they were they probably wouldn’t want to call or write us. We must be cruel to them. We must hurt them. We must put them through hell, so that they can be exposed to our readers in visceral detail. We throw everything at them, because it would be a crime for us to do anything less. These characters, these beings of our imaginations, live for the story. They exist to dance across the page, and sweep the reader away amidst a smile, or scowl, or shed tear. And we cannot do those things to our characters if they are considered to be our friends. Because you don’t actively try to hurt your friends now, do you?
Sympathy with a character is necessary. Empathy with them is necessary. But there is a line there, etched in the sand, where you become too close to your characters. You might pull them out of the fire at the last second, to alleviate their suffering. You might guide them on a kinder, gentler path, that they might not have to see the horrors of the other. You might make them stronger, or smarter, or faster, so that they can avoid the villains rather than confront them. Yeah, you could do all that. But if you did, where would the story be? Where would be those inviting words to lure an unsuspecting reader into your world? They simply wouldn’t be there, because you would have closed the world off not only to the reader, but the character within it.
And finally, a word on Mary Sue characters. Eeesh. I try to avoid the term, I really do. I hear it batted around all the time as a great big bucket of wet, sticky insult, dumped over a character’s (and author’s) head. Simply put, a Mary Sue is a character who breaks the world they are in through various means. They might have magical powers that outright defy the laws of your world, they might have beauty that no one can resist (in spite of sexual preference), they might even be so utterly pitiful that everyone rushes to their side and makes them the center of attention (I’m looking at you, Bella). A Mary Sue character breaks the world that they’re in, simply because of their presence. And the big problem with them (not counting of course the fact that they inject a healthy dose of Sudden-Onset Reality into the reader) is that often they are difficult to spot from the inside, especially if your character is your friend.
If you like your characters a bit too much, you might not see what you’ve truly created. I’ll return to Tierim for a very pointed moment, because he was designed specifically to seem Mary Sue-ish. His traits don’t make him seem that way, but his physical and magical skills far exceed those found on just about any person in his homeland, or the continent as a whole. He rose to prominence earlier than others of his people, and is part of an ancient prophecy. Seems a bit much, doesn’t it? What sets Tierim apart from a Mary Sue however, is his flaws. The ones that I mentioned above, you may remember, seemed a little weak (especially knowing what feats he’s capable of). But again, with that one core flaw, all of the greatness and power that he contains can be twisted and turned off the heroic path.
A character that breaks the world is a character that needs to be dropped on their head a few more times. A character that pushes the boundary of the world while retaining an essence of humanity is a character for fans of concentrated awesome in a story. And a character that exists within a world, a simple cog in the machine that grows to become something more, is a character that everyone will enjoy reading about.
Characters can be one of the hardest parts of the story creation process. Oftentimes we can do too much with them, or too little with them. Finding the mark with our characters can too often be a time-consuming process that never quite comes out the way we planned it. But for all the effort that we put into our characters, our readers will appreciate our stories orders of magnitude more. These are the stars, these are the true storytellers, and we need to do them justice.
Bullet point time! What can we take away from this?
- Characters must be living, breathing people. If they aren’t, how will they keep the interest of the reader?
- Characters cannot be too perfect; any story is a process of growth, and perfection cannot be improved.
- Characters cannot be too broken; people don’t often enjoy stories about loser characters that don’t improve.
- Assign your characters a core trait that defines their every action, emotion and thought, and always reference back to that trait when you feel lost.
- Support your core trait with a few more secondary traits, to add a bit of depth to your character. Otherwise they’ll be very flat and lifeless!
- Don’t forget to add a healthy dose of flaws to your characters; define your character through their flaws, and how they overcome them (or, conversely, how they’re controlled by them!)
- Do not become the friend of your character. Friends are kind, and you cannot afford to be too kind to your characters.
- Do not be afraid to throw hell itself at your characters; the greater the challenge and the greater the stakes, the more dramatic the tale of their triumph or failure.
- If your character defies the very laws that govern your setting, then your character needs to be on the receiving end of a serious tweaking. Characters must live in the world as a part of it, not as a tear in the fabric.
- Excellence in a character doesn’t always make it a ‘Mary-Sue’, as long as the writer is willing to supplement the character with humanizing flaws. Excellence beyond the capacity of the setting requires some repairs.
- Characters are the stars of the show. Give them the effort they deserve.
Again, this is a guide that’s somewhat more suited to someone who is writing on a larger scale than the average furry story piece. Writers of long-term series or novel-length works should be able to take more away from this piece, but I encourage even writers of shorter fiction to try to take away some of these ideas. It might be harder to apply the full depth of a character to shorter stories, but your characters will benefit from the extra consideration you grant them.
So, what’s next? Your characters might be core to your story, but the story cannot exist without a setting for it to be told in. Be it an expansive and ancient kingdom, a feudal alternate reality or a galaxy torn asunder by interstellar war, next time I will discuss the thoughts that flit through my head every time I create a new setting. Until then though, take care and keep writing!
Faora
First, a reiteration of some core facts about this guide. I am NOT a trained writer. I've done no courses, no workshops. I don't attend any writers groups, and I don't claim to have professional knowledge. I HAVE been writing for over ten years, and I HAVE sought out the knowledge that I can to improve my skills. However, this little guide is going to have little to nothing to do with technical writing, if I have my way. Rather, this guide is being provided as a way to motivate and inspire other writers here on this site. I'm not going to tell you what to write, or how to write. I only hope to provide you with some mental ‘tools' that will allow you to craft your words to their greatest potential. That said, let us begin!
The next lesson is this: Characters are core to your story; never neglect them!
I sat down this morning, with a cup of tea in my hand. Actually, two cups. English Breakfast was in my right hand (black, two and a half sugars, as usual!) and, after careful consideration, a cup of chamomile was in my left (with a dash of honey). I took these cups to my bedroom and sat down at my computer desk, brushed aside my laptop and desktop computer’s keyboard, and set the cup of chamomile on the other side of the desk. The English Breakfast was for me. The Chamomile was for Seir Sapienti.
He’s an otter, an alchemist. Somewhat withdrawn and quiet yet good with people, he’s a central character to one of the largest writing projects I’ve undertaken yet. The tea felt like an appropriate drink for someone like him, and he seems to agree. I set it down on the table and sat down at my usual seat, and I imagined that he sat opposite me, rather than my monitor. I asked him how he was, how he was doing, and what was new. He said he was okay, a little concerned with Kallien’s behavior and Tannen’s response to it, but otherwise fine. There was an underlying note of fear in his voice, and I can’t blame him; he’d just recently seen a terrible vision of the past, and a war-torn future to come.
In his setting, he comes from the little town of Sarchessa, in the kingdom of Sulorvis. In my mind, though, he lives in a little cul-de-sac. He lives in a nice little house halfway along the street, and shares his living space with a wolf called Tannen. Faora Meridian actually lives in a little place across the road from him. Sol, Carla and Ivar all live down at the end of the road, in a little apartment block. Quite a few of the residents of this little cul-de-sac are kept up by Carla’s screams late at night, as one of her latest romantic conquests gives her something to scream about.
My mind’s organized a little place, off to the side and out of the way of my normal thought processes, where my characters can run and jump and play however they like. This little cul-de-sac houses those important creations of mine; those who exist to tell the stories that fill my dreams and plague me in my nightmares. There, I can keep track of every character I’ve ever had, and I can go to meet them on their own terms. I can talk to them in their own home (or have their door slammed in my face; I’m looking at you, Kieral!), I can see how well or poorly they keep their living space, and how they behave at their most natural. In this corner of my mind, my imagination transports me to Seir’s side, where I can let him teach me more about himself.
Seir’s just a character of mine, yeah. Just a string of text in a Word document on my computers and flash drives. But that’s no excuse for me, as his creator, to not know what kind of tea he likes. That’s no excuse for me not to know how he converses. That’s no excuse for me not to know his hopes and dreams, his fears and nightmares. Because I’m his creator, I have to know all these things about him. And not just him, either; I have to know these things about the two-dozen-or-so other main and support characters that exist in the world I’ve created around Seir. I need to know how Tannen feels about things. I need to know how Morgaine reacts to the wrong word at the wrong time. How does Rochelle sound, if approached with all due deference?
Characters are all at once more than we can ever be, and far less. They go off on amazing adventures and fight hordes of space monsters, or slay evil wizards, or cross the world in amazing contraptions. The defuse bombs and dance with princes and hunt in darkened alleyways for flighty killers. They live the lives of drama and excitement we wish we could (rather than the lives of drama we furs all too often bring upon ourselves, heh heh). But at the same time, they are completely unable to tell their stories themselves. They lead these fantastic lives, but there’s no oversight, no video camera to document their activities. Unless they are fortunate enough to have a guiding scribe, like myself, and all of you who read these articles of mine. Then their weakness turns into a blessing for us.
Characters share a common problem with people that must be addressed by any writer, and that is how to make them interesting. I mean, sure. He could be a master shapeshifter with immense psionic powers and the skill to handle any weapon with practiced ease, whilst being the Chosen One of any number of prophecies. Yeah… that’s interesting. But really, who wants to hear about him? I wouldn’t. Why? Well, if he’s that good, then there’s not going to be much of a story to tell, is there? He’d cut down amazing armies of skillful fighters with his powers and skills, and nothing would be a challenge for him. It’d be boring. But… well, then you could go to the other end of the spectrum, and create characters that are broken, flawed to the point of retardation, and good for absolutely nothing. But that’s equally boring, and part of why I refuse to pick up any of the Twilight series of books without a nearby vat of acid to dip my hands in afterwards.
We don’t like to read about characters who are too perfect. They make us feel like shit, more often than not. Nor do we want to read about a loser who stays a loser. No, we like stories with character we can sympathize and empathize with. We like characters who feel like they could be real people. We like characters who are flawed, but can still rise above the obstacles placed in front of them. We like that, because we’re all flawed. We want to identify with the real person who overcomes adversity. And sure, while not all readers feel like that (I wrote a character once specifically for another type of reader), a lot certainly do. Most do, I would wager. So, then. What makes a good character, Fae?
Allow me to direct your attention to a little-known videogame called The Sims 3, released by indie publishing house EA. In this game, you create little simulated people and control their lives. In Sims 3, you can assign a character up to five character traits that define their personality. Now, while this is a very simplified system that in no way creates the complex picture of a real living person, it’s a perfect base from which to start from. We all look at people and tag them with traits, based on their behavior. “He’s so immature,” or, “Damn, she’s so… clean,” or, “Wow, what a prude!” I have a very specific system for building a basic idea of my characters, and it goes thusly.
I take my character, and I assign them six basic traits. The first is their core trait; this is a dominant take on the world that pervades everything that the character does. In my character of Tierim for example, that would be ‘Honor’. In all that he does, his sense of morality and honor are at the core of who he is. They’re inextricable from him. You simply cannot have Tierim without his sense of honor, there to guide all that he thinks and does.
Next are the character’s secondary traits. These temper the core trait of that character, and add a little depth to them. There’s usually two of these, though some characters require three. For example, Tierim is honorable to his very core. He’s also very brave, and very dedicated. With those two new traits added to him, a basic picture forms of the kind of character you want to create. With these three traits, headed by his sense of honor, I hope Tierim’s beginning to sound like a sort of noble, templar warrior of sorts. Those are the kind of traits you’d expect from a character like that.
Finally, we have their flaws. We all have them, and our characters must as well. Without them a character is flat and lifeless, and they just aren’t any fun to read about. Tierim’s personality would be very stuffy if it were to be left the way it is above. And so we add a few flaws, to distinguish him and add that last layer of depth to his personality. Tierim, to continue with him as an example, is vengeful, prideful, and deeply emotional.
But, I hear you cry, being emotional isn’t a flaw! Maybe not all the time, no. But if you look at the different traits that make up Tierim’s personality, you start to see how it could be. Anyone with a strong sense of honor and is dedicated to the task at hand and brave enough to surmount anything… that is a dangerous person to have misdirected. Added to his swollen pride and vengeful nature, it would just take one emotional trigger to send him far off his noble course. The character is driven down a dark path that exposes his strengths and weaknesses for what they truly are.
Your character’s positive and negative traits are interchangeable, if you hope to create different kinds of character. A villain’s primary trait may be his genius, or his brutality. The latter is distinctly negative, while the former could be twisted to an evil agenda. Shuffle the traits of your characters about, to create the base personality for who you want to view in your story. I’ll reference these traits again in future guides, when I attempt to deal with the specific creation of hero and villain characters.
However, it is not enough to even know just your character’s personality, and this is where my little tea party comes in. To have a basic template for your character is all well and good; it’s a solid foundation that will allow you to build greater things. However, it alone does not a good character make. I mentioned earlier that I know Seir’s preference in tea. I discussed (in my mind) with him the recent events of his life, and listened to how he told the story. I learned how he spoke and held himself, because I imagined it when I brought him that tea. I had the template of his personality in my mind, and I had the basic backstory to his life alongside it, and together I was able to meld them into a coherent being. And he is a coherent being, one with thoughts and feelings all his own who resides in my mind and on my page.
Of course, that implies that there is a lot of voices in my head. And I suppose there are. Such is the life of the writer, he or she who views the world again and again through the eyes of their creations. I would challenge anyone who wants to create a real, living, breathing character to even act like that character, even if only in private. People might stare, after all, heh. Speak like them. Play out a scene as if you were on a stage. Actors regularly have to become the character they are given, but as writers, we have the gift of creating those characters for ourselves. We should know them more intimately than anyone else, as an inherent truth behind their creation.
And yet, as with all things, we must ground ourselves back in reality once again. Our characters are not our friends, and if they were they probably wouldn’t want to call or write us. We must be cruel to them. We must hurt them. We must put them through hell, so that they can be exposed to our readers in visceral detail. We throw everything at them, because it would be a crime for us to do anything less. These characters, these beings of our imaginations, live for the story. They exist to dance across the page, and sweep the reader away amidst a smile, or scowl, or shed tear. And we cannot do those things to our characters if they are considered to be our friends. Because you don’t actively try to hurt your friends now, do you?
Sympathy with a character is necessary. Empathy with them is necessary. But there is a line there, etched in the sand, where you become too close to your characters. You might pull them out of the fire at the last second, to alleviate their suffering. You might guide them on a kinder, gentler path, that they might not have to see the horrors of the other. You might make them stronger, or smarter, or faster, so that they can avoid the villains rather than confront them. Yeah, you could do all that. But if you did, where would the story be? Where would be those inviting words to lure an unsuspecting reader into your world? They simply wouldn’t be there, because you would have closed the world off not only to the reader, but the character within it.
And finally, a word on Mary Sue characters. Eeesh. I try to avoid the term, I really do. I hear it batted around all the time as a great big bucket of wet, sticky insult, dumped over a character’s (and author’s) head. Simply put, a Mary Sue is a character who breaks the world they are in through various means. They might have magical powers that outright defy the laws of your world, they might have beauty that no one can resist (in spite of sexual preference), they might even be so utterly pitiful that everyone rushes to their side and makes them the center of attention (I’m looking at you, Bella). A Mary Sue character breaks the world that they’re in, simply because of their presence. And the big problem with them (not counting of course the fact that they inject a healthy dose of Sudden-Onset Reality into the reader) is that often they are difficult to spot from the inside, especially if your character is your friend.
If you like your characters a bit too much, you might not see what you’ve truly created. I’ll return to Tierim for a very pointed moment, because he was designed specifically to seem Mary Sue-ish. His traits don’t make him seem that way, but his physical and magical skills far exceed those found on just about any person in his homeland, or the continent as a whole. He rose to prominence earlier than others of his people, and is part of an ancient prophecy. Seems a bit much, doesn’t it? What sets Tierim apart from a Mary Sue however, is his flaws. The ones that I mentioned above, you may remember, seemed a little weak (especially knowing what feats he’s capable of). But again, with that one core flaw, all of the greatness and power that he contains can be twisted and turned off the heroic path.
A character that breaks the world is a character that needs to be dropped on their head a few more times. A character that pushes the boundary of the world while retaining an essence of humanity is a character for fans of concentrated awesome in a story. And a character that exists within a world, a simple cog in the machine that grows to become something more, is a character that everyone will enjoy reading about.
Characters can be one of the hardest parts of the story creation process. Oftentimes we can do too much with them, or too little with them. Finding the mark with our characters can too often be a time-consuming process that never quite comes out the way we planned it. But for all the effort that we put into our characters, our readers will appreciate our stories orders of magnitude more. These are the stars, these are the true storytellers, and we need to do them justice.
Bullet point time! What can we take away from this?
- Characters must be living, breathing people. If they aren’t, how will they keep the interest of the reader?
- Characters cannot be too perfect; any story is a process of growth, and perfection cannot be improved.
- Characters cannot be too broken; people don’t often enjoy stories about loser characters that don’t improve.
- Assign your characters a core trait that defines their every action, emotion and thought, and always reference back to that trait when you feel lost.
- Support your core trait with a few more secondary traits, to add a bit of depth to your character. Otherwise they’ll be very flat and lifeless!
- Don’t forget to add a healthy dose of flaws to your characters; define your character through their flaws, and how they overcome them (or, conversely, how they’re controlled by them!)
- Do not become the friend of your character. Friends are kind, and you cannot afford to be too kind to your characters.
- Do not be afraid to throw hell itself at your characters; the greater the challenge and the greater the stakes, the more dramatic the tale of their triumph or failure.
- If your character defies the very laws that govern your setting, then your character needs to be on the receiving end of a serious tweaking. Characters must live in the world as a part of it, not as a tear in the fabric.
- Excellence in a character doesn’t always make it a ‘Mary-Sue’, as long as the writer is willing to supplement the character with humanizing flaws. Excellence beyond the capacity of the setting requires some repairs.
- Characters are the stars of the show. Give them the effort they deserve.
Again, this is a guide that’s somewhat more suited to someone who is writing on a larger scale than the average furry story piece. Writers of long-term series or novel-length works should be able to take more away from this piece, but I encourage even writers of shorter fiction to try to take away some of these ideas. It might be harder to apply the full depth of a character to shorter stories, but your characters will benefit from the extra consideration you grant them.
So, what’s next? Your characters might be core to your story, but the story cannot exist without a setting for it to be told in. Be it an expansive and ancient kingdom, a feudal alternate reality or a galaxy torn asunder by interstellar war, next time I will discuss the thoughts that flit through my head every time I create a new setting. Until then though, take care and keep writing!
Faora
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Well thank you for the kind words. I hope that the article meets that standard, and that it can provide new thoughts and methods for the creation of good characters. Hope this guide is useful to you, and you enjoy the others as well!
Faora
Faora 
Now this is indeed a very true, and very informative article about how to make sure your characters do not exceed the boundaries of possibility,or fall into the pit of forgetfulness. I kyself, have been writing for a good 24 years now, and only fairly recently (the past 7 to 10 years), I have gotten to actually seriously develop the characters that live in my longer story projects. In the beginning, I have been guilty of creating mostly Mary Sues (and even now, I sometimes find myself doing it if I don;t pay attention). And I have also been guilty of being too kind to some of my characters. A perfect example of this is my utterly lovable and totally bonkers hippie valley girl cheerleader character Lilac Plush. She developed into that totally lovable and always happy and bouncy nitwit, and it seemed like nothing could change that, until my mate and me... well, broke her. We put upon her an unimaginable grief that in a completely unexpected turn of events, changed her. And even though we have, afterwards, been saying things like "we should go a bit more easy on her" and "she deserves a bit more happiness" and such things, I have to admit, after what we did to her, and I continued to work with her, it showed that the change she had gone through actually made her an even much deeper and way more interesting character; it, you could say, unlocked things in her that we did not know had been there before, or could even be there in this specific character.
A thing that I often do, mostly together with my mate, and also with other friends I write together with, is in fact taking the ideas we come up with for stories, and then play them out in a RolePlay session wherein we take on the role of our respective character. This is, I have found, one of the best ways to write good scenes for your stories with several different characters, because when you write it all by yourself, you are 'in charge' of how each character will act and react to one another; when you RolePlay the scenes with someone else as the characters, the other can (and will, I know from experience) sometimes throw you for a loop or totally surprise you with their reaction, which might be completely different from how you yourself would have made the character react, and this in turn requires you to have your own character come up with a new reaction. It's not anymore: "I say and do this, and she reacts with those words, and then I say and do the following", but it turns into "I say and do this, and she reacts... whoa, I didn't expect that. Now what do I do? Mmm... maybe this could work instead".
What I also started doing at one point, when I found the online RPG community of Furcadia, was taking main characters from stories I was working on and create them as a Furcadia avatar, and then began playing as them, which turned out to be a good help for me to learn about my characters and develop their personalities; some of my characters developed in a way I would never have thought of otherwise.
I have to admit, that for short stories, and even for longer, ongoing projects, I still tend to create my characters from only a basic idea, without specifically assigning them any defining traits. Rather I go with only one base idea, one trait to at least differentiate the characters from one another, and build from there as I work more with the characters and they show me how they act and live (an example of this is the characters I created for the short weekly stories I write for the Thursday Prompt writing exersize, hosted by
poetigress here on FA; in the first story I wrote with these two characters, they were kind of bland, but as I wrote more stories with them, they began to develop and grow and become more distinct, get more defining traits that showed who and what they are).
Nevertheless, I found this article you wrote very interesting, and it has definitely given me a number of good pointers and ideas of how to even better get to know my characters, work with them, and create new ones. Due to my own personality, I have, for instance, a big problem with creating villains, and I do believe that taking tips from this article will certainly help me with that!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, and I will be looking forward tot he next installment!
A thing that I often do, mostly together with my mate, and also with other friends I write together with, is in fact taking the ideas we come up with for stories, and then play them out in a RolePlay session wherein we take on the role of our respective character. This is, I have found, one of the best ways to write good scenes for your stories with several different characters, because when you write it all by yourself, you are 'in charge' of how each character will act and react to one another; when you RolePlay the scenes with someone else as the characters, the other can (and will, I know from experience) sometimes throw you for a loop or totally surprise you with their reaction, which might be completely different from how you yourself would have made the character react, and this in turn requires you to have your own character come up with a new reaction. It's not anymore: "I say and do this, and she reacts with those words, and then I say and do the following", but it turns into "I say and do this, and she reacts... whoa, I didn't expect that. Now what do I do? Mmm... maybe this could work instead".
What I also started doing at one point, when I found the online RPG community of Furcadia, was taking main characters from stories I was working on and create them as a Furcadia avatar, and then began playing as them, which turned out to be a good help for me to learn about my characters and develop their personalities; some of my characters developed in a way I would never have thought of otherwise.
I have to admit, that for short stories, and even for longer, ongoing projects, I still tend to create my characters from only a basic idea, without specifically assigning them any defining traits. Rather I go with only one base idea, one trait to at least differentiate the characters from one another, and build from there as I work more with the characters and they show me how they act and live (an example of this is the characters I created for the short weekly stories I write for the Thursday Prompt writing exersize, hosted by
poetigress here on FA; in the first story I wrote with these two characters, they were kind of bland, but as I wrote more stories with them, they began to develop and grow and become more distinct, get more defining traits that showed who and what they are).Nevertheless, I found this article you wrote very interesting, and it has definitely given me a number of good pointers and ideas of how to even better get to know my characters, work with them, and create new ones. Due to my own personality, I have, for instance, a big problem with creating villains, and I do believe that taking tips from this article will certainly help me with that!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, and I will be looking forward tot he next installment!
Wow, thanks for the lengthy reply! I'm very glad you found it informative, and I hope I can continue the trend with my future articles! Here's hoping that you can also take something away from my previous ones, as well; I aim to help!
I think that writers make Mary-Sue characters unintentionally far more often than intentionally. The idea I presented of not exactly considering your characters your friend is designed to be a tool to help temper that attitude. Being mean to your characters -- as you and your mate did with Lilac -- is a great way to add depth and purpose to a character that otherwise would be bland and dull. Writing for twenty-four years must have really rubbed off; I approve of the learn-by-doing approach! That's pretty much how I've learned, myself!
I used to role-play as some of my characters, to try to get a better feel for how they act and feel and think. It's a good method! Since then I've moved on to just thinking about them a whole lot, and letting my mind take control of how they want to behave. I've gotten very good at slipping into a whole different mindset personally, but I'd agree and wholeheartedly suggest that anyone who has a hard time thinking about their characters find a partner and roleplay a little as that character. It's a good, fun way to consider your characters in another light!
Most characters are created from a very basic template, and the one I gave with Tierim as an example in the article follows that pattern. The six-trait method works as a good start point, and personally I usually flesh them out with little quirks and the like that further defines the character, along with a proper background that defines why they behave the way they do. I could (and probably will!) go into deeper character creation another time. Maybe when I go into hero/villain creation. Hmm...
Thank you for the reply, and again I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed and found something worth taking away from it. Cheers!
Faora
I think that writers make Mary-Sue characters unintentionally far more often than intentionally. The idea I presented of not exactly considering your characters your friend is designed to be a tool to help temper that attitude. Being mean to your characters -- as you and your mate did with Lilac -- is a great way to add depth and purpose to a character that otherwise would be bland and dull. Writing for twenty-four years must have really rubbed off; I approve of the learn-by-doing approach! That's pretty much how I've learned, myself!
I used to role-play as some of my characters, to try to get a better feel for how they act and feel and think. It's a good method! Since then I've moved on to just thinking about them a whole lot, and letting my mind take control of how they want to behave. I've gotten very good at slipping into a whole different mindset personally, but I'd agree and wholeheartedly suggest that anyone who has a hard time thinking about their characters find a partner and roleplay a little as that character. It's a good, fun way to consider your characters in another light!
Most characters are created from a very basic template, and the one I gave with Tierim as an example in the article follows that pattern. The six-trait method works as a good start point, and personally I usually flesh them out with little quirks and the like that further defines the character, along with a proper background that defines why they behave the way they do. I could (and probably will!) go into deeper character creation another time. Maybe when I go into hero/villain creation. Hmm...
Thank you for the reply, and again I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed and found something worth taking away from it. Cheers!
Faora
You're very welcome! And indeed, I found a number of the tips you provided in this article very helpful, and I will definitely be going back to the other articles as well to see how they might be of help to me! I always appreciate good help, both in receiving it, and giving it; I have helped other beginning writers with their work and shared my tips and tricks with them, because I know how important it can be to have such help to develop and improve your writing; I never had very much help in that myself, I mostly had to learn everything by just doing stuff, figuring out things on my own, and making mistakes. It's only in these past few years, when I started finally posting some of my finished works online, that I got feedback on it from a wider range of people, people whom I did not know, and who did not know me, so I got objective opinions on my work, and tips on how to improve my writing.
I started out, as I know many others did, with writing fan-fiction, using characters that were already long established by some kind of company through comics, movies or TV series; that was actually an easy way out. However I did find that there was much more fun in creating your own characters, because then you're totally free to make the character look and act the way you want to, without having the restriction of having to stay true to the original when you're using, for instance, a character from a popular cartoon. Making your own gives you that much more freedom, and I have found how much fun it actually was to dig into a character I created and come up with a complete biography for them =^_^=
Indeed, many (if not most) of the Mary-Sues I created over time, were mostly unintentional; I started out making my characters after dreams and goals I had myself, giving them talents and such that I wished I had myself, and because I personally was not good at those things, I made my characters be over-perfectly good at it. And oftentimes, one character would have way too many talents than was believable (my own fursona Zinzoline is still an example of that; a great First Priestess of the Circle of Bastet with magickal powers, while at the same time being a mistress to several pets, a mother to an adopted daughter, a successful singer/guitarist/pianist leading a musical band which has big success, and in the evening hours, a successful street racer with a respectful reputation, knowing everything there is to know about cars and being able to do anything with cars). It was only later, when I got more into the realistic settings of my stories, that I started taking better critical looks at my characters and thought; "that's too much, there's no way anyone could be perfect at so many things at the same time." It's indeed not the talents that make a good character, it's their flaws =~.^=
I'm the first to admit I still, even after 24 years, have bunches to learn, about character creation, story settings (I'm still more or less sticking to just one genre; modern-day realism, because I'm good at that and I know how to do it well), and especially plot development (I absolutely suck at creating story plots, hee!). But it's things like these articles that help even seasoned writers who have been doing their stuff for as long as I have to learn and improve their craft! So yes, I would definitely pull that well-known line out here and say it; keep up the good work! =^_^=
Purrs,
~Zinzoline Venus Velvetpelt =~.^=
I started out, as I know many others did, with writing fan-fiction, using characters that were already long established by some kind of company through comics, movies or TV series; that was actually an easy way out. However I did find that there was much more fun in creating your own characters, because then you're totally free to make the character look and act the way you want to, without having the restriction of having to stay true to the original when you're using, for instance, a character from a popular cartoon. Making your own gives you that much more freedom, and I have found how much fun it actually was to dig into a character I created and come up with a complete biography for them =^_^=
Indeed, many (if not most) of the Mary-Sues I created over time, were mostly unintentional; I started out making my characters after dreams and goals I had myself, giving them talents and such that I wished I had myself, and because I personally was not good at those things, I made my characters be over-perfectly good at it. And oftentimes, one character would have way too many talents than was believable (my own fursona Zinzoline is still an example of that; a great First Priestess of the Circle of Bastet with magickal powers, while at the same time being a mistress to several pets, a mother to an adopted daughter, a successful singer/guitarist/pianist leading a musical band which has big success, and in the evening hours, a successful street racer with a respectful reputation, knowing everything there is to know about cars and being able to do anything with cars). It was only later, when I got more into the realistic settings of my stories, that I started taking better critical looks at my characters and thought; "that's too much, there's no way anyone could be perfect at so many things at the same time." It's indeed not the talents that make a good character, it's their flaws =~.^=
I'm the first to admit I still, even after 24 years, have bunches to learn, about character creation, story settings (I'm still more or less sticking to just one genre; modern-day realism, because I'm good at that and I know how to do it well), and especially plot development (I absolutely suck at creating story plots, hee!). But it's things like these articles that help even seasoned writers who have been doing their stuff for as long as I have to learn and improve their craft! So yes, I would definitely pull that well-known line out here and say it; keep up the good work! =^_^=
Purrs,
~Zinzoline Venus Velvetpelt =~.^=
Very nicely put.
I've thought of it as sort of a rollorcoaster of ups and downs; you can't have a real rollarcoaster without going up and going down and back and forth several times. It works when thinking about the character's traits, their fortunes, and just the general flow of the plot. Though I'd be lying if I said I myself didn't lean toward huge resonding crashes every now and then.
Mary Sues... I actually once had an idea about how to make a "Mary Sue" work. They can be so great at everything they do, but in the story emphasize moral ambiguity; by what grounds, what goals and motives are they working? Even if they accomplish most everything they set out to accomplish, you can't please everyone as we all have different values and morals, so someone's going to end up with a raw deal. Just a random idea I had...
Moving on from tangental musings, one extra bullet point (though quite possibly just a variation of what's there) could be something that I try to keep in mind when I write; make a character a combination of the grand and the pathetic. Whether these are ideas in their heads or deeds they act, some aspects of them will reach up to the heavens while others will unseemingly drag through the mud.
I've thought of it as sort of a rollorcoaster of ups and downs; you can't have a real rollarcoaster without going up and going down and back and forth several times. It works when thinking about the character's traits, their fortunes, and just the general flow of the plot. Though I'd be lying if I said I myself didn't lean toward huge resonding crashes every now and then.
Mary Sues... I actually once had an idea about how to make a "Mary Sue" work. They can be so great at everything they do, but in the story emphasize moral ambiguity; by what grounds, what goals and motives are they working? Even if they accomplish most everything they set out to accomplish, you can't please everyone as we all have different values and morals, so someone's going to end up with a raw deal. Just a random idea I had...
Moving on from tangental musings, one extra bullet point (though quite possibly just a variation of what's there) could be something that I try to keep in mind when I write; make a character a combination of the grand and the pathetic. Whether these are ideas in their heads or deeds they act, some aspects of them will reach up to the heavens while others will unseemingly drag through the mud.
I think that in the process of developing a character, those resounding crashes and absolute wrecks are the points that are most necessary. Without them, I honestly find it a little hard to imagine many of my characters being all that challenged by their me-imposed destinies. That could possibly be a reflection on the general competency levels of my settings, but still something to consider! Suffice it to say that leaning towards those massive crashes would, I personally think, help push a character to their limits to show what they're made of. It humanizes, it provides motivation, and it can often take an 'overpowered' character down a peg.
That's not a bad idea in theory, but if I may, I can spot an instant problem with it. The idea of moral ambiguity is fine, and personally I often like to wrestle with the idea of who the real 'good' guy in a story of mine is, I rarely make things as black and white as they could be, and even the most noble hero can be turned to evil ways (especially for good reasons!). The problem that I see is that even if your story contains that ambiguity, you've still got a character that excells at everything. If every challenge that is raised in the way of that character is overcome with ease, the morality of the character's actions isn't going to be in question. How interesting they are to read, on the other hand, would be. Moral ambiguity in a story is awesome. A character that's never challenged never grows and evolves, and is considerably less than awesome. At least to me!
You make a good point of a character being a combination of the grand and the pathetic. That's an expansion of my trait idea, because I mentioned having a trait that rules your character, a pair of traits that support them, and three traits that define them. There should be flaws in there, of course; no character should ever be comprised entirely of pros, and lack any cons. They should have weaknesses, be it in their personality, morality, past or the like. It's all about balance though, and I find that's the hardest mark to reach with any character.
Thanks for the reply, and it's nice to hear that you liked the article!
Faora
That's not a bad idea in theory, but if I may, I can spot an instant problem with it. The idea of moral ambiguity is fine, and personally I often like to wrestle with the idea of who the real 'good' guy in a story of mine is, I rarely make things as black and white as they could be, and even the most noble hero can be turned to evil ways (especially for good reasons!). The problem that I see is that even if your story contains that ambiguity, you've still got a character that excells at everything. If every challenge that is raised in the way of that character is overcome with ease, the morality of the character's actions isn't going to be in question. How interesting they are to read, on the other hand, would be. Moral ambiguity in a story is awesome. A character that's never challenged never grows and evolves, and is considerably less than awesome. At least to me!
You make a good point of a character being a combination of the grand and the pathetic. That's an expansion of my trait idea, because I mentioned having a trait that rules your character, a pair of traits that support them, and three traits that define them. There should be flaws in there, of course; no character should ever be comprised entirely of pros, and lack any cons. They should have weaknesses, be it in their personality, morality, past or the like. It's all about balance though, and I find that's the hardest mark to reach with any character.
Thanks for the reply, and it's nice to hear that you liked the article!
Faora
Going over point number two, this would very much be the case if such a character was the main character. Perhaps I should have clarified, but I was thinking along the lines of telling the story through the surroudning cast who would actualy be the the main characters. The "Mary Sue" is not so much a "character" as so much as they are a force of nature that everyone else has to react to.
I can actually think of one example that immediately comes to mind: Heath Ledger's Joker. That character was not a dynamic or flawed character in the traditional sense; in fact the film gives him an almost inhuman, pure anarchic and evil air about him. He's less of a man than a force of nature, never really challanged to his core and forced to evolve, but the whole point of the story is his effect on everyone else, who are all very much human and prone to character evolution.
I can actually think of one example that immediately comes to mind: Heath Ledger's Joker. That character was not a dynamic or flawed character in the traditional sense; in fact the film gives him an almost inhuman, pure anarchic and evil air about him. He's less of a man than a force of nature, never really challanged to his core and forced to evolve, but the whole point of the story is his effect on everyone else, who are all very much human and prone to character evolution.
While I can see where you're coming from, I might put forward the thought that you should consider the villain of a well-written story. While they're usually tangible (either as an individual, or as a group or organization), they are almost always a force that the heroes need to face. You're suggesting a character that would fit probably into the definition of an anti-hero, and one that could go either side in the end, at that. It's an intriguing idea, and one that I would love see done. I feel like I'm missing something that you've latched onto with this, but I've got this pleasant little thrill when I think you've hit on something.
It's a very daring claim to make, that Ledger's Joker is a Mary-Sue. At the same time though, I can see exactly where you're coming from. You explained it well above, and the character himself considers himself a force of chaos and nature. But at the same time, I would argue that he's not as insane as he seems. He's quite mad, certainly, but it's the insanity of pure genius. He's calculating, intelligent and deliberate in everything he does, which I would dare suggest contradicts his character. This little conflict is what I find to be the most facinating aspect of the character for me, though the constrast between the personality of Batman and the Joker and their methods makes for interesting psychoanalysis anyway.
I would argue that the evolution of the character would have happened in his past, whatever it is (I'm not as familiar with the canon of a lot of story worlds as I'd like to be). Something, or several somethings, shaped him into the person that he was in the film. In that respect, I'd call the film a climax for the character. He'd reached the pinnacle of his 'abilities' and overcome all the challenges set before him. Of course, at the end of the film we see that he's still defeated; the character is forced to grow and evolve for the future as, like he told Batman himself, that they're destined to fight forever.
The character of the Joker in that film is (and I hate myself for saying it) a tool for the development of the Batman/Bruce Wayne characters. At least to my eyes, that is; analysis is subjective, after all. He's the most well-conceived and perfect tool to shape a hero in the history of film, I would even go so far as to say, but I still consider the character to be more tool than anything else. I shy away from that sort of thing; all characters are tools to shape the hero, but not all tools are characters. And I consider the Joker character to be that highly-developed, sharply-honed tool more than a character, simply because of the points you mentioned above. His evolution as a character had passed, and was set to be in his future. Of course, the argument could be made that Batman himself is a symbol rather than a man, too...
Ah! I love a good discussion! Sorry for the longwindedness, heh heh.
Faora
It's a very daring claim to make, that Ledger's Joker is a Mary-Sue. At the same time though, I can see exactly where you're coming from. You explained it well above, and the character himself considers himself a force of chaos and nature. But at the same time, I would argue that he's not as insane as he seems. He's quite mad, certainly, but it's the insanity of pure genius. He's calculating, intelligent and deliberate in everything he does, which I would dare suggest contradicts his character. This little conflict is what I find to be the most facinating aspect of the character for me, though the constrast between the personality of Batman and the Joker and their methods makes for interesting psychoanalysis anyway.
I would argue that the evolution of the character would have happened in his past, whatever it is (I'm not as familiar with the canon of a lot of story worlds as I'd like to be). Something, or several somethings, shaped him into the person that he was in the film. In that respect, I'd call the film a climax for the character. He'd reached the pinnacle of his 'abilities' and overcome all the challenges set before him. Of course, at the end of the film we see that he's still defeated; the character is forced to grow and evolve for the future as, like he told Batman himself, that they're destined to fight forever.
The character of the Joker in that film is (and I hate myself for saying it) a tool for the development of the Batman/Bruce Wayne characters. At least to my eyes, that is; analysis is subjective, after all. He's the most well-conceived and perfect tool to shape a hero in the history of film, I would even go so far as to say, but I still consider the character to be more tool than anything else. I shy away from that sort of thing; all characters are tools to shape the hero, but not all tools are characters. And I consider the Joker character to be that highly-developed, sharply-honed tool more than a character, simply because of the points you mentioned above. His evolution as a character had passed, and was set to be in his future. Of course, the argument could be made that Batman himself is a symbol rather than a man, too...
Ah! I love a good discussion! Sorry for the longwindedness, heh heh.
Faora 
I have to give this another read through but as for the bullet points; I don't always get them right, but you still have me nodding my head in agreement.
I am reminded of a general rule of thumb I've observed that has worked out reasonably well for me: One Character, One Paragraph. For every character, you have/need one paragraph to give the reader a decent first impression of the character's motives and physical appearance. Somewhere in there, you also have to give the reader a reason to give a crap about this character.
I am reminded of a general rule of thumb I've observed that has worked out reasonably well for me: One Character, One Paragraph. For every character, you have/need one paragraph to give the reader a decent first impression of the character's motives and physical appearance. Somewhere in there, you also have to give the reader a reason to give a crap about this character.
I'm very glad to hear that you managed to take away something from these! You make a very good point about the One Character, One Paragraph rule, though generally I would put forward that this becomes an automatic thing once a writer has a basic grasp of writing convention. That's how it worked for me, at least; it became a logical extension of what I was taught in school, how when writing dialogue you always start a new line for a new speaker. Still, I feel you're absolutely right, and it's a good point to make!
I would suggest however that if the reader's affinity for a character comes down to individual paragraphs at different points in a story, then the writer has failed to capture the essence of the character early on. I would suggest focus on the absolute core of the character: who they are, what they believe, how strongly they believe it. Any introduction to a character has to set the tone for that character, be it showing their contempt or love for something (preferably a consistant theme), their inner nature, or the secret desires.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope you continue to enjoy my guides!
Faora
I would suggest however that if the reader's affinity for a character comes down to individual paragraphs at different points in a story, then the writer has failed to capture the essence of the character early on. I would suggest focus on the absolute core of the character: who they are, what they believe, how strongly they believe it. Any introduction to a character has to set the tone for that character, be it showing their contempt or love for something (preferably a consistant theme), their inner nature, or the secret desires.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope you continue to enjoy my guides!
Faora 
I love the guides you've posted here; they're really quite enlightening, as well as usefull. I especially liked this; glad I'm not the only one who uses these techniques for character development. It really boils my potatoe when people neglect them and use half-baked creations in their literature and comics, leaving many a being without personality or likeability. Please, continue to post these guides in the future.
I find it more pitiable than frustrating or enraging to read a story that could really be something special, only to fall flat with its characters. And while I think a good story is comprised of a lot of elements come together to form a massive, beautiful picture in our minds, I would argue that the characters themselves are the most important aspect of any story. In that regard, characters that fail to perform just make me sad I've wasted my time on what could have been a good read. Or am I just too easy to disappoint?
Oh, I'll keep posting guides as long as someone keeps reading them and I have something to say! I'm glad you enjoy them and can take something away, and I hope you can continue to do so! Cheers for the comment!
Faora
Oh, I'll keep posting guides as long as someone keeps reading them and I have something to say! I'm glad you enjoy them and can take something away, and I hope you can continue to do so! Cheers for the comment!
Faora 
I've often spurned most guides I come across due to some misplaced pride, but I have to admit, this is very useful advice to writers both old and new. I especially like the core traits and secondary traits, I think I am going to try to apply that to my current characters. Maybe I'll see if I can define them a little more, and make them a bit more real. Ones that a reader can really relate to. I think that's a huge part of any character, come to think of it, letting the reader connect or relate to them in some way. Of course, the best way to do that is through those character flaws, but one thing you addressed that I have never seen addressed before is the opposite end of the spectrum- too many flaws. It's very true, "broken" characters just aren't that interesting to read about, and I am happy you made sure to include that in your guide.
All in all, well done.
All in all, well done.
Thank you very much for the comment, and I'm very glad that you found something to take away from this! Pride's not been a motivating factor in my production of these pieces, and I certainly don't want people to think that my way is best, or the only way, or anything like that. *chuckles* I've still got a lot ot learn myself. I like that I can spark discussion of different techniques, and present a few new ideas that some writers may not have considered before. I like to help, heh heh!
Yeah, the common issue with a writer's characters is that the character are 'too good' more often than not; it's a rare thing for the trouble to lie with a character that's not good enough. In my experience as a reader, it results in a character that you laugh at in the best of circumstances and an abandoned story in the worst. Maybe I'm just harsh, but there it is! Characters are the core of any story, and if the writer doesn't want to put the effort in to make them dynamic, 'real people, then the readers are going to find little, if anything, to identify with.
Cheers again for the comment, and I hope you can continue to take something away from these guides!
Faora
Yeah, the common issue with a writer's characters is that the character are 'too good' more often than not; it's a rare thing for the trouble to lie with a character that's not good enough. In my experience as a reader, it results in a character that you laugh at in the best of circumstances and an abandoned story in the worst. Maybe I'm just harsh, but there it is! Characters are the core of any story, and if the writer doesn't want to put the effort in to make them dynamic, 'real people, then the readers are going to find little, if anything, to identify with.
Cheers again for the comment, and I hope you can continue to take something away from these guides!
Faora 
I was reading over this and couldn't help but shake my head xp in the past *I started writing like at age 11* my charaters where, fanatic to say the least. But I did come up with the charaters I still use for my massive project that I'm working on x3 For some reason I've always found charater development basically easy. The core traits and secondary traits, they all pop into my head. Then again my imagination can always be crazy as all hell =3 In the past though, good kami, my charaters where either completely emotinally broken or way to freaking prefect. All these charaters now tho, there like other personalitys in my head, when I'm writing and I put them even the slightest bit off, i hear them biting at the back of my mind x3 i think that really does help when you could put yourself as your charater, well I think so. This was all very helpful tho =3
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