Character personality (need feedback)

Hey guys as some of you know I've been working in a guide to develop character personality.

I would like some feedback before finally launching it on Monday. It has been too much time at the YKTTW becuause I want it to be the best guide it can be and if possible the best guide there is.

The guide can be found here https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=gdokvfwv1nbm7e71ohmwgrnm

I am planing to add more stuff post launch tough (character likeability and silent protagonists) I wouldnt be this far withour you :) thanks!! Any feedback before launch would be appreciated.

edited 24th Jul '11 12:27:12 AM by FallenLegend

I've left a comment.

It looks like you've put a lot of work into this. I haven't got time to read it now (but I will later, possibly after launch), but the parts of your text that I've skimmed sometimes have a monolithic/didactic tone, as in "you have to do this". You need to soften that up a bit. Otherwise others will do it for you, post launch, because it is a fact that there exist highly commercially successful characters who violate some (probably all!) of your tenets. It's good advice you give, but it's not 100% necessary to adhere to it.

I'm also a bit annoyed that you don't have a section on realistic male characters. I understand well that there are far more problems (of several different kinds) with female characters than with male characters, but a few thoughtful paragraphs about male characters could be helpful. Even if you just write some tame and nearly contentless crap, others will go in and expand the section - as long as you've put in the section in the first place.

Or if you want to get into it, working on such a section, think about all the standards that we men have to live up to in order to be recognized as real men. Granted, it was worse in the past, but it's still there (and a lot of fiction takes plae in past-like setting, and a little fiction even takes place in the actual real past), and the verbal attack of "you're not a real man" is much more damaging, in terms of how others view the victim of such a attack, than is accusing someone of not being a real woman.

So, maybe talk about self-image, standards of masculinity, fitting the gender role to some extent, but rarely perfectly, nor often being completely outside of it (I think most who are completely outside it have deliberately abandoned it, e.g. flaming gays).

Your 3-point subsection on what makes a person what he is is not unsound, but I think more emphasis on the character's history would be well, i.e. expanding section #3 "enviroment". Past events can sometimes have a powerful effect on personality and worldview.

This isn't pertinent to your article, but with long texts like this, it's really annoying that there isn't an auto-generated Table-of-Contents with hyperlinks to the various sections and subsections, The Other Wiki-style.