So about Character Development Threads

I've popped into a couple of character development threads and I've never felt like they worked for me and my characters. Disclaimer: I'm not criticizing the threads themselves or the participants therein; if you like them, go for it. This is just a problem I've found.

First problem: These threads work fine when everyone is a character in a "realistic fiction" story, because everyone has the same implicit setting and therefore the event could be something that actually happens in each individual story (your character might well have visited a cantina or carnival at some point). But 99.9% of our stories are sci-fi, fantasy, or otherwise contain a fantastic element, so every one of these threads ends up as a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. But most of the individual characters aren't from fantasy kitchen sinks, so they don't mesh very well.

Half our characters aren't from present-day settings, so their logical reaction would have to be "OMG, I've just traveled into the past/future/a different universe!" The other half would start out fine...until they discovered another character who is from the past/future/a different universe, at which point their reaction would have to become "OMG!" Played realistically, every thread would just showcase everyone's responses to mind-boggling surprise. In order to make the thread about anything else, you have to make your character completely immune to surprise...but once you've changed your character from their canon depiction, it's no longer an aid to that character's development.

Second problem: More subtly, if the thread progresses beyond people chatting about themselves, something significant happens, which affects the character. Alice who met a vampire in a bar will be different from Alice who didn't. The thread immediately sets the character on a divergent path of development and, again, makes the thread not much use with respect to the canon character.

Thoughts on how to avoid these issues?

Well, I've considered this as well, and I came up with a personal solution for my character, but I don't think it will work for everyone:

Basically, if you've read the Cantina and the recent discussion, Qrlil thinks she's in a simulation based off of human fictional concepts, designed to practice interspecies interaction. There is an in-verse explanation for how she could have gotten to the real thing, but that won't come up because of these very concerns - since it's a simulation to her, she has no real issues with the fact that the place is full of vampires, dragon-esque creatures, and so forth.

As for your second concern, I always understood the Character Development Threads to be about developing your ability to write the character, not literal Character Development, which is obviously a silly idea - especially with things like Titanic that exist in isolation from people's canonical characters even more then most of the threads do. And as for things progressing beyond characters chatting, well, I agree there - which is why I'm only participating in the thread that's specifically only about characters chatting.

edited 5th Jul '11 7:05:51 PM by nrjxll

On the surprise point, the levels of surprise can vary depending on how unusual the character perceives the circumstances to be relative to their own experiences. Also, many characters will get over their surprise soon enough to participate in the story and display other emotions.

Concerning character development, I think the goal is to consider how your character would react to different circumstances, not to develop the character in a particular way and retain that characterisation.

So what we usually mean by Character Development isn't "Character Development", but more like "fleshing your character out by putting him/her on a test drive." But if the formal happens, that's just another cherry on top.

I imagine you worry primarily about divergent characterisation, from the original source material. It's perfectly fine for this to happen. The notion your character remains the same as his canon self is an irrelevant ideal, when the real exercise is to see how you develop a character in a shared sandbox with other people's characters. Chasity is not what we're listening for.

So what Chihuahua and Bobby G said.

I believe Artistic License exists for this reason, and especially the Anthropic Principle. I think of Super Smash Bros, where characters from different franchises go head-to-head against each other.

This is what's holding me back from joining the Cantina. The character I have in mind (a normal human from a fairly mundane setting) would react to half of the people in there rather badly. At best, she'd be shocked and/or creeped out. At worst, she'd reach for her gun and make me look like a drama whore. These reactions have the potential to overshadow any other interactions, at least for a while.

@ QQQQQ: By mentioning Anthropic Principle and Artistic Licence, do you mean we should just gloss over these reactions, even when that might be OOC for our characters? I mean, I'm probably going to do that anyway, it'd be neccesary to proceed, but it still rubs me the wrong way - sacrificing IC-ness for convenience.

edited 7th Jul '11 1:20:14 AM by Gaunt88

Most of my characters are Muggles and they've worked out pretty well, in my opinion. I suggest you join.

The beauty of the Cantina, the Garden and the Chatroom was that it wasn't possible for a character to just pull out a gun and start shooting in any of those threads, forcing the characters to act otherwise without actually breaking character.

I would actually like to see a thread about character development in-story instead of characters of our works interacting with each other.

You mean... a thread where you (and possibly ten other people) develop their characters according to how it goes in your own story?

How would that even work?

Since there's other people there, the character interaction that the threads are meant for will inevitably occur. I'm also going to assume that, say, your character develops in-story as a result of shit that you make happen. But then you also have the issue of other peoples' shit interfering with your shit, and the massive spoilers that you may unearth.

The logistics of pulling off something like that would be staggering. And I'm not even sure what you'd accomplish if you've already planned for this shit to happen in your story; wouldn't it just be simpler to practice writing it out on your own?

The purpose of these threads is to learn about your characters by putting them into new situations that will probably cause them to change, or reveal previously unconsidered aspects of their character. In Carnival, I wanted to learn about my character, so that's why I brought him in.

Also, nobody is forcing us to run with the changes that our characters undergo. My own character from Garden had his mind half-broken, and I'm not running with it.

edited 7th Jul '11 7:01:25 AM by CrystalGlacia

Basically this.

Also, it's fun.

Actually, there's one little beef I've had with Character Development, and that's the "good" and "poor" examples of roleplaying listed on the Wiki page, because all the "good" examples are really long and all the "poor" examples are short, even though I can't see a problem with them myself.

I'm sorry, but we are roleplaying, not writing a novel. The most important thing for your text to do is to clearly and concisely communicate information to your characters. That's why I don't like to elaborate much more than I need to.

If your post doesn't have to be five plump paragraphs to get your point across, don't write five plump paragraphs. If all you need is two sentences, write two sentences. There is nothing inherently wrong with being concise, and as a a matter of fact, there are authors like Ernest Hemingway who would agree with me.

edited 7th Jul '11 7:13:59 AM by annebeeche

Conciseness is good. But it is also people can get lazy with their writing— it's not a biggie in simple conversation. When it gets to storyline follow-through though, more often than not you can't see the character's energy flowing from them. You lose a major sense of immersion like that, and coupled with ninja'ing from typing posts so short, people stumble over each other, and it becomes frustrating for everyone.

Of course, I see the other view where you'd type up five sentences worth of padding, instead of one effective sentence that conveys it all. I mentioned this also in the guidelines— I proposed to add more substance to your post (such that it advances something significantly).. You have one effective sentence, sure. What if you have 5+ of these sentences?

To push ourselves to do that, we make an exercise in our writing— a while of making strong posts can help our writing habits. It's a continuous learning experience.

edited 7th Jul '11 8:05:08 AM by QQQQQ

"HAY GUYZ I HAVE THIS GUY AND I'M NOT SURE IF HE'S REACTING IN A BELIEVABLE MANNER LIKE THIS AND THAT ANY IDEAS"

"HAY GUYZ I HAVE THIS GUY BUT I DON'T HAVE A GOOD IDEA ON WHY HE'S DOING WHAT HE'S DOING SO HELP"

"HAY GUYZ I DON'T REALLY KNOW HOW TO CHARACTERIZE THESE CHARACTERS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THIS STORY WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST"

And so forth, and so forth.

edited 7th Jul '11 8:07:44 AM by Kraken

Posts that ninja or get ninja'd can be edited. It happens, no matter how verbose people get.

I see what you mean. It's just that if all my character's doing is sitting down and saying something, I don't see any need to elaborate further.

I imagine you mean some of the topics on this board already, do you? But satirizing what they say won't do much good. (Did you ever see something like this happen in one of CDT threads? What a rude way to put it, Kraken.) It might be we can write some tips, guides of our own to share, so others may learn them for themselves. If anyone asks, we can always offer our views how their character is doing, and how they might improve.

Ninja'ing happens. The problem comes with the editing, and you're anxious because the postings will come so fast by the time you're done checking your own post you have to keep catching up. With mainly substantial posts, ninja'ing still happens, but now everyone's offering more consideration what to say, you can revise - breathing easier.

True. Might be we learn distinguishing relaxed situations, with ones where a strong conflict is ripe to emerge.

edited 7th Jul '11 8:19:24 AM by QQQQQ

That's a feedback and questions thread, not a Character Development Thread. Something like that could be stickied, perhaps; I've seen at least four or five character help threads in the depths of the board.

There's really no reason why a character feedback and questions thread needs to be affiliated with us.

...Come to think of it, Character Development Thread may actually be a misnomer of sorts.

edited 7th Jul '11 8:21:13 AM by CrystalGlacia

A Writer's Block Shared Setting Thread? maybe. It may be we'll have to rename, so people get better ideas first impression.

Let's wait for a consensus before we start moving around and cutlisting pages.

No need to cutlist them, you could just make 'em into redirects. Though I have to say, that's a lot of pages to change, and I don't really think it'd be necessary.

If somebody wants to make a general characterisation thread, I'll sticky it.

Let's make a general characterization thread too.

I like the name Character Development Thread, even if it's slightly misleading. But before we made the wiki page, I used the term Character Thread.

edited 7th Jul '11 1:46:57 PM by chihuahua0

I wasn't trying to make fun of those threads. No, that is what I legitimately think a character development thread should be like, and was trying to be funny.

Apparently, I failed. My apologies.

I'm still leery about characters' reactions to all the weird stuff that's happening; a simple "meh, they'll get over it" is not sufficient for suddenly finding yourself in an alternate universe. (If I were writing a story where a character got transported to a totally different time/place, their reaction and process of adjusting could easily be the entire story, as it is in many accidental-time-travel stories.)

And a Hand Wave like Q was suggesting isn't terribly helpful; either "my character, except s/he's not surprised by any of the crazy stuff that happens" or "my character, except the version that lives in this universe" is tantamount to an entirely new character.

There's potential to threads that apply some limits so that everyone comes from kinda-sorta similar circumstances, like a space station thread where everyone comes from a universe with space travel, or a vaguely-medieval fantasy thread. Would anyone else be interested in that sort of thing?

I've just been viewing the Character Development Threads as a way to practice writing and my characters' personality in a shared setting.

It is also fun.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind more plot-driven or restricted shared settings, like the space station idea.

We already have Translator microbes in effect. I don't suppose we could have some sort of a Weirdness Censor field too? As in, unless they're actually talking to the person in question, they don't register anything wierd about them?

edited 7th Jul '11 4:56:26 PM by LoniJay

It took people a little while to think something was really off about the Cantina until the weird patrons started walking in.