Little things you know about your characters

I know my characters inside out. I know more about them and their lives than I do about myself. All those tiny details, those tiny things that a person does over their life, are stored in my head with mmy characters.

For example: The reason Acatin listens to her mentor and seeks her atonement is that she is missing a parental figure, since her parents disowned her after she was revealed as a witch. When she is sent to live with Sophie, she slowly starts to adopt Sophie's habits, because she is desperately seeking someone to act as a source of stability, and hopes that by being as much like Sophie as she can, her life will stop being so screwed up. Even if Acatin isn't consciously aware of this, I can tell you that- eve though it is never referenced in-story.

Or, for a better example; as a child, Farrah was very selfish. She never really outright showed it, because her parents already give her anything she needs. However, she never really had any friends; only sycophants who were hoping to gain influence with her parents. However, conflicting with this, she is also a loner; she subconsciously prevents herself from making any friends. As such, when she first meets Acatin and realizes they could be good friends, she is deliberately mean to her and drives her away, driving a rift between them and causing them to hate each other. After Farrah grows up a lot, and gets over herself, she finally rids herself of this. It is the knowledge that she deliberately drove Acatin away that cases her to accept Acatin again- even after all the things the girl does.

Phil from Forgotten Lore has multiple siblings. His parents are also apparently fairly rich (to handwave the fact he can pay university fees despite apparently not having a job). None of his family members live in the same town as he, tho. I haven't really tought of Howard's family and background (Phil's family might feature in one filler story, hence they have some details on them).

The character's landlord is actually the Herald. This will probably never be directly mentioned, but is is alluded to and is the reason why the plot happens (the protagonists just happened to be the neares suitable people that fit into the Herald's plans). Most of the stuff the Herald tells of himself (and by extension most of the stuff I tell of him, as most of the stuff I tell of him is based on the stuff he says in the story) is not entirely true. He rarely lies outright but tends to bend the truth a lot (usually in order to make himself appear more powerful, like forgetting to mention he is arbitarily powerful only in his own dimension, and it is very difficult for him to draw large amounts of his power to the physical universe). He also hates his "job" and does most of the stuff he does purely to amuse himself and to take out his frustration on others.

Zaran has a fairly well defined voice and style of talking, that is pretty difficult to express in written form so I don't even bother. She also apparently has better singing voice than one would expect (her speaking voice isn't all that pleasant). There's also a number of instances of Bizarred Demonic Biology that will atmost be brought up at most once (the fact that she can apparently see in ultraviolet, has a prehensile tail and can eat 25% of her body weight are not exactly plot-critical. The fact that she can sense magic is, however).

Speaking of Zaran, there's a quite a lot of details about the Netherworld that will not get brought up since I don't know how to include them in the story (Forgotten Lore barely touches the subject, and Zaran's own comic is not plot-driven enough), mostly about the history of the world and about the various Demonic Legions that currently rule it (they were not the first rulers of the world). The reason why we never see Zaran's mother is another thing that I have an explanation for, but is unlikely to get more than a passing mention (once again, I just don't know where to tell that story. It wouldn't really fit in eighter one of the series).

Really what I've mainly been working on in this area is family life. For example, I recently thought that perhaps Milo's parents had a late-term miscarriage when he was 12. While the story will probably never come up, thinking about their reactions to that gave them some depth, which they seriously needed.

I just get into my character's head. Learn everything about them, so I can see what they would do, what they would think in a given situation.

As it stands now; give me a situation, any sitation, and I'll be able to tell you how Acatin or Farrah would react.

I'm getting close to the same level of detail with the other protagonists. Then, once I get into the antagonists, everything will fall into place.

(Don't worry, you should see the levels of detail I went into for On Broken Wings- Kate and Veritas' story. I had to rewrite the entire bloody plot to accomodate minor details ^_^;)

edited 29th Dec '10 3:38:46 AM by CyganAngel

Mm, yes. Although, my style is such that almost all of these little details do make it into the story at some point. Here are some that haven't yet.

• Lux III listens to opera when Kenichi isn't around. Someone left a whole box of recordings in an abandoned bedroom in the tower, the only music remaining in it at all. He is trying to teach himself to sing, but it's not going too well.
• Upon coming to the city of Iosethep penniless, one of the first things a young Aubrey did was paint the arms and claws of several unearthly creatures on his face as if they were creeping out of his hairline, then sit on a streetcorner holding a sign that said "They're in my head. Need money for exterminator." He was shocked when people paid any attention to him, more that they were impressed.
• Tama cuts Kenichi's hair, though not often enough.
• Vox carried a doll around with him everywhere up until he was fourteen years old, and then, the only reason he lost it was because he destroyed it himself to get his brother's sympathy. It didn't work.

edited 29th Dec '10 6:00:37 AM by SPACETRAVEL

I'm not really surprised by my characters' spontaneous details anymore because they tend to evolve out of their "big" traits, then the small details eventually get mentioned or alluded to due to role play's wandering nature.

It's te small characters like NP Cs or short story protagonists that surprise me with the details. I didn't know one of my European NP Cs had a british accent. Didn't know she picked it up from oxford. Also didn't know that another character consciously averts the 'aboot' stereotype for canadians. In fact, I just realized that now.

Although, my style is such that almost all of these little details do make it into the story at some point.

We must have a similar style, then. I know some really minor details about my characters, but I can't think of any I haven't already put into the story, or at least have plans to mention in the story later on.

I don't talk about my characters often, because they have a tendency to grow a tad organically and get out of control. They're also likely to have very strong personalities combined with authority issues, so the little details have the strangest way of popping up, for instance;

• Iha - likes catching frogs, even though she's almost thirty and is allergic to cocoa (though she has no access to cocoa). This an a few other details, like she still has her dolls from when she was a child and the fact that she still plays the games she learned in the refugee camps made me realize that she's really a lost little girl in an adult body. Not all the time, but sometimes.
• Blue - likes poetry but can't read. This little fact is a good thing for Blue who's really the stereotypical brooding warrior with memory problems type. Only he's way more approachable than Wolverine.
• Mhai was tougher, he doesn't like to share info with me, but I did learn that he's secretly a bit of a butterfly fanatic. He is, in fact, a budding lepidopterologist.
• Bee - Came out of nowhere one day with the fact that he's an accomplished mechanic who loves children and has really bad cat and dog allergies. This was really good for him because he'd been a bit of a Smug Snake up until then, though he's not a bad guy. It also helped provide a personality to shield with his charming persona.
• Tulla - is a [[Cloudcukoolander]] and therefor doesn't usually catch me off guard with little facts, but I did learn she likes the in-universe equivalent to jazz and dresses up as the Santa Clause expy every year. That last one is in keeping with her personality, but the jazz? I guess everyone needs a little mellow sometimes.

I have (and this is quite possibly an accurate number) 100s of characters running around, but this is the current batch who got the limelight. They're a fun group, and I just realized they make and excellent Five-Man Band.

My work is still in its early stages so a lot of the little details may very well wind up in the text. Like the fact Julian was born in Miami or the fact Ace is a virgin who’s never even been kissed.

I also have personality and backstory for Jess, Ace’s roommate and best friend who exists mostly to die of the plague very early in the story. She was painfully shy (much worse than Ace) and spite of having 2 parents and an extremely normal home life (unlike Ace). She went to an out of state college in a bid to overcome her shyness. She had a much younger brother who she has a hard time relating to. She was a straight A student and a total nerd. She was also a bit of a gamer. Ace never understood how such a meek and gentle person could play violent videogames, but to each his own.

Almost none of that is in the story and with Jess dead it isn’t that likely to get in there. Maybe in flashbacks. (Well flash-further-backs the whole thing is flashbacks)

edited 31st Dec '10 12:23:52 PM by HistoryMaker

Random things about Holz:

• Eats meat very raw (because he had a job burning corpses, and therefore hates the smell and sight of toasty flesh)
• Only smokes cigars (which he gave up for a while for the same reason as above).
• Extensive reader of philosophical treatises, but also likes trashy romances as a way to escape his darker life.

Random things about Itou:

• Never wears anything around her neck due to getting into a fight in her youth where she was nearly strangulated with a necklace. She's fine with all other forms of jewelery as long as they don't shine.
• She never sits properly on chairs, but always perches on the back of the chair. It's partly an unexplained quirk and partly calculated behavior so she has high ground if negotiations turn sour.
• Compulsively tries to distance herself from almost all other people.

I never used to be able to do this, until a while ago I made a list of all my named characters, categorised by plot-importance, to try and help me know more about them, and all these details started coming out. For example, all that is actually mentioned in-story is that the protagonist lives alone with her father, but I worked out a while ago that her mother was her father's second wife, they had a son who died before she was born, and her mother died of an aneurysm when she was seven. Then there are really random small things, like 'Kestrel can play the piano', 'Marie has a son called Alexander who lives in Vienna'. But the list helps.

Bai Mao's favorite smell is almond essence.

As a man-turned-fox-furry, I've been keeping track of lots of little things that would affect my most recent protagonist, Tom. Just one of the things that I thought up was certain reflexive actions: his hearing, for instance, is far superior to that of a human, but his eyesight is crap (colour-blindness. Yeah, this is where that idea went). Now, were he a born furry, he'd be used to scanning with his ears, because foxes are naturally reliant on hearing and smell.

But Tom was originally human, and relied on sight more than hearing. So if he heard something of interest, he'd turn his head to look instead of turning his ears to listen.

No idea how I'm gonna fit that bit into the story, but there you go.

edited 6th Jan '11 2:03:06 PM by TBot_Alpha

I've been developing the same characters for over four years now so I've got, like, a ton of little things like this stored away in my head.

Robert's best and only friend in highschool was a straight Manic Pixie Dream Girl type character named Lucille, or 'Luc', who'd had a crush on him since elementary school. He doesn't really have a taste for any kind of music and views all works he likes outside of a few select pieces of literature and occasionally theater to be guilty pleasures. Has an IQ of 155 he insists means nothing but is secretly very proud of.

Daniel drew characters for a children's book he would never get to write and was rejected from an art school he never told anyone he applied for. Very fond of rats, but would never want one for a pet considering he had a bad track record when it came to small animals. He loves the smell of patchouli and red and brown plaid shirts.

edited 6th Jan '11 3:50:08 PM by Razputin

It's kind of irritating that you know all this stuff about them, but are unsure how to use them:

Bratsk:

• Flirts with tonnes of girls just to see if his rival will be jealous
• Likes killing too much for even an assassin
• Purposely overspends his money so that he will have to borrow from his crush (a loanshark)
• Doesn't like keeping flowers in the house because they die

• Loves the smell of brine
• Is jealous of the villain's freedom
• Likes to lie in the snow
• Plays the piano whenever she's confused about what to do

• Is claustrophobic despite living in an elaborate underground lair
• Has five broken ribs
• Gets very uncomfortable around crying women
• Loves flirting with married women to screw with their husbands' heads.

edited 9th Jan '11 3:35:47 PM by StolenByFaeries

• Johnson Viandas, one of my favorites:
  • is a pervert on the inside, even though he maintains "Knightly Vows, Knightly Vows..." he is a black knight, has taken no vows, and is just nervous. He grows out of the nervousness.
  • likes using BFS style swords because he knows most enemies assume he is a slow foe, and thus try to get into close range. Big. Mistake.
  • likes the perma stubble look because otherwise, he's a cute shotaro boy.
  • has a guilty pleasure of being a Cake Eater.

I do this both for original characters and characters from shows/books, both major and minor. I love the little details.

Tala Ivanov does not drink or smoke, and especially hates alcohol, as his mother was an alcoholic. He despises the thought of suicide, because his mother killed herself, and has a certain complex about it. He's an incredibly good gambler, particularly with cards, and has a perfect poker face. He prefers showers, and has a strict schedule for each day that he follows to the letter. An efficient cook, but nothing terribly fancy, like most of the rest of him. He is prodigally intelligent, great with math and logical processes, but dry in creativity. He's very good at handling a knife, and while he usually seems calm and cold on the outside, his temper is secretly quite the beast. He's Half-Irish Half-Russian, his biological father was a rapist, and he speaks English as well as Russian.

Alexander Hiwatari prefers to speak Japanese over Russian, despite living in Russia all his life, because his parents always spoke Japanese at home. He is 3/4 Japanese and 1/4 Russian, and takes after his father, who was a musician and a warm, loving man, but who was murdered by Alex's grandfather. Alex's mother and grandfather scared him. He has perfect memory, and is naturally gifted, especially with linguistics, art, and music. He's bisexual, the two scars on his face are from a fight he got in with his roommate Tala at 9, and he has vivid dreams (usually nightmares). He hates darkness, silence, cold, and being alone. He is suicidal, but you could never tell by looking. He has a Dissociative Disorder bordering on multiple personality, but you couldn't tell unless someone pointed it out. He has a sever phobia of needles, doctors, being tied or strapped down, and a mild phobia of white coats, showers, and nightmares.

Boris Kuznetsov was once shy, weak, easily frightened, and sweet-tempered. He is an albino, and was treated as a black sheep for this anomoly by his grandmother and relatives before finally being kicked out as bad luck. When he's with his brother Lyle and no one else is around to here, he enjoys to sing old tunes from their childhood. He is a much better chef than Tala.

Lyle Kuznetsov is a bit of nymphomaniac, has a deep phobia of snakes, and is a fantastic singer and actor. He occasionally works as a dancer and/or prostitute for extra cash, but his brother doesn't know that. He loves warm rain, and he smokes and drinks heavily.

Ivan Papov ran from home, and was in gang before being caught by the authorities. He is a raging homophobe, and mildly racist and sexist, with no concern toward being PC.

I could go on, about many of their parents, and even grandparents, and their life stories and love lives and siblings and myriad details that would never ever make it to the page, but I've gone on enough. And this is just one concept. I've got tons of story ideas, each with tons of characters with complete backstories and family trees. It's bad. It's a problem.

<3 ali

I generally find that the more I think about my character, and what I want them to do in the story, the easier these things become.

Diablo, one of my villains, loves old-school rap and trolling Image Boards, and cannot be aroused by anyone other than an artificially created living weapon. He is half-Sumerian, and half-Anglo Saxon, and doesn't believe in books that aren't comic books, manga, and Tomes of Eldritch Lore.

I sat down and wrote up favorites and stuff for several of my characters, but I haven't typed it up yet...

A few I can remember: - Swordcat was a jerk to his family before he got changed to a half-cat humanoid - Joel likes to fly RC helicopters - Wild Rush is type O - Both Wild Rush and Gimmick dated Jill

Leo Beck was a bit of a delinquent in high school, which is very briefly implied in my script.

Dorian's least favorite foods are mushrooms and ice cream, both because he can't stand the texture. He actually has an incredible sweet tooth, which he fights to keep in check because he's paranoid about his weight, but he still hates ice cream because the coldness and slipperiness undermines any good taste it might have.

Kaiya and Zialana share the same grandfather on their mothers' sides, one Admiral Zadmin Torriss. Zadmin had an affair with a Centuran woman during the war, but was never aware that a daughter resulted from the union. He went back to his homeworld and got married and had three additional daughters, one of whom was Zialana's mother. His unknown first child, meanwhile, had a daughter of her own, Kaiya, making Kaiya and Zia first cousins. Nobody within the context of the story is aware of this, however.