Character Development Thread--Discussion

Fuck yeah, degrees! I remember you posted something here some years ago about taking a 'thrice-damned' Calc III class so you could get your degree and get out, only to have to wait five more years... God, that sucks.

No, that sucked. Past tense, thank the Creator.

Right now, with a physical degree inches away, a bellyful of mead, and eardrums full of Altars of Madness? I'm thinking the world is actually a pretty awesome place.

EDIT: I think I may have permanently damaged my hearing; my ears are still ringing. I Regret Nothing.

edited 9th Feb '16 5:59:17 PM by KillerClowns

Congrats KC, enjoy your well-deserved celebration.

In other news, I hope to post for Frontier later tonight.

Welcome to the family, Biological Sciences here. Good work getting it, college isn't easy.

edited 9th Feb '16 8:54:23 PM by Slysheen

Congratulations KC! Boy, that must have been a super long wait. I'm sure you're glad to have gotten over that hurdle.

Yay KC! Awesome work! (Also a Science degree, but in Business Management.)

CONGRATULATIONS KC! :D

Good job!

Congradulations.

Grats KC. Comp Sci isn't an easy thing.

Hi ho, way to go!

Seriously though, it's got to feel pretty good to have all that toil pay off at long last. Hopefully this is just the start of good things to come for you. You earned it.

@Ryuzha: Just curious; is Davey and the others part of the same universe as Joseph or Howell? Or are they in a completely different story?

Also, when do you want to introduce your new character that you mentioned before? Sorry if I sound like I'm rushing you.

@KC Congrats! Wish I could finish my degree. Having trouble finding a legit online college that will take my credits and has a graphic design program. ^^;

That's right. I'm pretty sure (at this point in time) that every character I've ever written for in the CDTs is a part of the same universe, though not necessarily the same story. Many are years and/or worlds apart. For instance, Joseph and Howell share the same universe, but their stories on Earth are separated by 48 years, and I don't have any plans for them meeting. Joe might encounter the three at the bed & breakfast though (not in thread, but in his own story.)

And don't worry, I was planning on doing it today. I always like to have a visual aid for character descriptions, and the new character's has reached the "good enough/roughly what I imagined" stage. Plus I've sorted out how I want to approach the writing, so, yeah, I'll get on it shortly.

edited 10th Feb '16 1:57:22 PM by Ryuhza

Is Lord Greyjoy around? It's been quite a while.

Oh, before I forget, I would also like to jump on the "congratulate KC" bandwagon!

But seriously, though. Congrats, man.

Greyjoy just posted in Frontier today, so you could try prodding them with a PM.

edited 10th Feb '16 6:10:52 PM by CrystalGlacia

Many thanks for all the kind words.

Sorry that took so long, I was trying to beat a record involving distracting myself. Here's◊ the illustration to go with the new guy. I made his head too big for his face, but it'll have to do for now.

You are very good at drawing faces. I must say how jealous I am.

In other news, I'm going to make a post tomorrow, I'm trying to maintain a better sleep schedule.

edited 10th Feb '16 9:45:55 PM by DarkbloodCarnagefang

You just need time, patience, and a willingness to improve. It helps to develop a more discerning eye. Drawing "good" or whatever you think of as good is largely about recognition. 5-6 years ago, my faces looked like this. At the time, I only vaguely knew what was wrong. Over the years I've compared what I've got to other drawings or even real life to find out what was missing, and I've incorporated new details, bit by bit.

Even then, the proportions are off. There's lots of room to improve.

Hey, folks, there's something I was hoping you could help me with. I considered posting this elsewhere, but I've come to trust many of you and even in some cases envy your authorial skills, so I thought I'd better put it here instead.

When it comes to people who are interested in writing, I figure that most of them have some idea of, "Hey, I have this idea of a story I want to write someday."

Thing is, I don't. With me it's more like, "I have this idea of a world I could set a story in," and this has been giving me persistent trouble with actually starting work on a real project.

Prioritizing worldbuilding was how I first approached the idea of writing, and I fear it has bit me in the ass. I wanted to focus on the world first so that, when I developed plot, it wouldn't seem contrived- like if I was trying to hammer characters and plot into a world that didn't fit them.

But now, I've got a handful of worlds that I've developed on fairly heavily and no actual story to set in them. I can turn out reams of notes and create intricate worlds with grand conflicts that keep me interested in them virtually indefinitely, but actually coming up with a cogent plot- I'm just at a loss.

I desperately want to do more with them than just chat about their details with close friends. So, I thought I'd raise the issue here and ask some of you about your own projects. What was the big idea that motivated you to start writing? How do you decide what kind of plot you want to write? What interests you so much about your story?

It's been a bad week, but I'll most likely be able to finish my posts for both threads tonight.

Is it bad that I've been asked similar things countless times and the best answer I can give after scrutinizing every personal project I've worked on in the past ten years is to shrug and say "it just kind of happens"? I guess I can kind of answer the third one, though, I'm a sucker for good character arcs, so I try to write good character arcs for my own entertainment. Everything else mostly serves to hold the character arcs together and give me more things to play with... for the character arcs.

Once I embraced being a character-focused writer, stories come a lot more naturally to me. Sometimes in writing club exercises I'm told to come up with a conflict in a world created by another person and I tend to fall back to "one person does something that disrupts the entire world order." So what I might do if I had "intricate worlds with grand conflicts" is forget "plot" for a moment and pick a person involved in one of those conflicts and find out who they are. Office drone? Military general? Family life? Weird hobbies? What do they think of this conflict? How does it affect their daily lives? How might they effect change in this world?

edited 11th Feb '16 7:20:41 PM by SnowyFoxes

I just want to make sure that no one missed the post where I let Moreena approach the forest group. Mainly thinking of Darkblood and Greyjoy here.

I feel like I usually have the opposite issue, coming up with a plot early on but struggling with the worldbuilding. Of course, I ended up worldbuilding the setting I'm writing for right now for almost a year before even considering the plot, so I guess that doesn't really apply to me anymore.

I think that when you have a large world, it can be incredibly helpful to focus on a few specific locations while coming up with a plot instead of worrying about the world as a whole. Once you've got the main conflict and the characters down it's easier to expand it to other locations.