Developing characters thread (not a forum RP)

So it turns out we don't have any thread just about getting help developing characters—figuring out their quirks, likes/dislikes, and so on. I guess this is as good a place to start it as any.

We'll keep things easy and informal, like the Random Questions thread. Just post what you've got so far for your character and what you think needs help, and a team of highly skilled professional writers will stop by to provide advice. But they're usually busy, so it will probably just be a bunch of guys from Writer's Block instead.

Double posting to keep this distinct from the OP.

I've got more than a few characters I need help with, but I think I'll start with just the one.

Vikranti (thank you, Nocturna, for the name) is the main character, religious, and a skilled swordswoman. Her main drive is joining the army, where her mother is already a well-placed captain. At the start of the series, she meets a boy with similar interests, who she immediately hits it off with. Then she finds out that he is (in simplest terms) the Antichrist. Her character arc is currently about learning to trust him over her church, but that's a little bit on the cliché end, so I was trying to edge away from that. Oh, and she hates lies, and is a Living Lie Detector.

Any ideas for any improvements? Character tics, hidden flaws?

I'd be way cautious about 'tics and flaws'. Beginning writers read that characters should have them so that they aren't Mary Sue, so they grab a few at random like munchkinning tabletop roleplayers picking supposed flaws to earn more points to spend elsewhere.

Rather, your character's essential nature must be a flawed one, and while people can be complex, their natures generally have a theme (especially in fiction). Aspects of their nature live together and grow familiar with one another. Think about natural conflicts in their nature, especially tensions between outward seeming and inner fears and needs.

The same with quirks and the like; they should fit, should come organically from the character's nature and history. Not just grab-bagged.

I agree wholeheartedly. The way I usually do with developing my characters' personality is to flesh out their backstories simultaneously. How a person is brought up and what he/she has to endure in life play a crucial part in shaping his/her worldview, personality and quirks.

An unique backstory also keeps characters with similar personalities from each other. Even if two people happen to share the same trait, they would not behave the same way given a particular situation.

edited 11th Apr '12 7:16:32 AM by Nightwire

I've got this character I have a really hard time writing. His name's Bill, he's The Big Guy of the team, towards the higher end of the age range (38 compared to 21, 28, 33, and 44), and generally a pretty nice guy. He's kind of a father / big brother figure to the leader (the 28 year old), and the only person said leader is willing to drop his guard around. Problem is, he also generally comes off as either bland or superfluous. There's the seed of something I can use (i.e. he likes joking around, but occasionally goes over the line), but I'm not sure how to make him interesting.

As I said earlier, an unique and interesting backstory does wonder to a boring character. Whatever happened in his part that gives him this particular set of personalities, etc. Perhaps you could give him one.

Another thing to look into is that never, ever make a character whose personality can be described with just one or two words (funny, nice, rebellious, etc.). Such a character tend to be vapid stereotype and/or caricature. A real person has more nuanced layers to his/her personality than meet the eye.

For example, your character being not very serious has potential. Maybe he's trying to hide his insecurities or something. Just try and see what works and what doesn't. Nobody knows your character as well as you do.

edited 11th Apr '12 9:24:20 PM by Nightwire

My first thought when reading the combination of insecure and father figure was that he used to be a father/older brother, and something happened to the person in question.

I have a main character but no plot for her to act in yet.

Sekhmetka was a starving street orphan until the royal family adopted her. Since she's older than the King's eldest biological son, she becomes a major contender for the throne. She has some martial arts training and so is an agile fighter, but she isn't particularly physically strong. Sekhmetka's underclass origin gives her empathy for the less fortunate, but she suffers from a fiery temper and a vindictive sense of justice.

Anything I could flesh out some more about her?

EDIT: NM, I'm finally working out a plot for her to act in.

edited 16th Apr '12 11:14:22 AM by Jabrosky

Here's what I've got (note that there's a lot of setting details here that I don't have room for): Bill was raised in a fairly conservative household, and his parents kicked him out once he came out of the closet. He spent a few months trying to make it on his own until he met up with a guy about his age. The two hit it off and started dating. Thing is, the other guy was a member of the Resistance. Bill had a pretty low opinion of the government, so he joined in. At the time, that resistance cell was being run by a middle aged couple who had taken in their niece and nephew after their parents were killed in the second Civil War. The nephew was 12 and suffering from severe PTSD, while the niece was 4 or 5. Bill befriended the kids and helped bring them out of their shells. As the kids grew up, they also found out about the Resistance and joined in. When the aunt and uncle were killed on an op, the nephew immediately took command and got the rest of the team out alive. After that, Bill pretty much decided that the nephew would be a good choice to head the cell, and things stabilized. Finally, Bill's boyfriend (Husband?) was killed a month before the main plot kicked off.

OK, I think I've got a few ideas just from writing this out. And this is without all the spoilery crap I don't want to reveal just yet.

One of my writing mentors (Kal Bashir over at http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html ) argues that character development starts with FUNCTION. You look at what the character needs to do before assigning "character." So for example, if the character FUNCTION is a mentor, then that is the first thing you need to know and then you create a persona around that. So it's a wise old man that gives your main character advice or your MC's too-smart kid sister.

I'm not sure I agree with that at all.

I don't think that's a very good practice if you want readers to view your characters as three-dimensional people. Since when do you see a real-life person whose existence revolves around mentoring? That kind of approach could very easily make your characters seem like plot devices.

What a character does and who a character is are two different animals. They can be related, but it cannot be the end-all be-all for the character. For example, you could have a mentor who's trying to steer the Big Bad's son onto the path of good (Iroh to Zuko, Avatar The Last Airbender), one who's reaching out to comfort/train someone like him (Batman to Robin), or simply one who's a hardened alcoholic who has -5 fucks to give about anything (Haymitch to Katniss and Peeta, The Hunger Games). They all take on the role of "mentor," but that has nothing to do with their personality.

This also reminds me of Misfits when Robert Sheehan left and they replaced his character with Rudy. Everyone was complaining that Rudy was the same character as Nathan when, in actuality, Rudy was just playing the same role of Plucky Comic Relief/Guy who says horrible things

edited 16th Apr '12 2:01:15 PM by SalFishFin

There are certain professions where such a thing makes sense, military for example, but, in general I'd agree it's a bad practice. Yes, your characters may require certain traits to make the plot work; having them be their primary features merely spotlights that. You usually don't want to be seen in the act of writing a story by the reader, so that's a bad thing.

@Kyle: Perhaps Bill feels alienated and generally too old fashioned to relate to some of the younger characters due to different cultural upbringing? Perhaps all of his humour and joking is merely his way of dealing with the loss of his husband and his attempts to come off as a father figure are partially out of fear of losing loved ones and an attempt to try to seem like a bigger man than he really thinks he is.

I dunno, it sometimes works for me. As in, if I want a character who will eventually betray everyone, I can reverse engineer that. It works fine in the early brainstorming stages.

I have a character at the moment who's role is the leader of a Revolutionist party in alternate Britain. Meaningful Name is a plenty, but that's unrelated, anyway here are my notes on him (may contain spoilers though)

Thomas Winter: Charismatic, Strong speaker, Intelligent, façade of extremism, aloof when face to face with people, well studied in politics, law and history, often plays chess and often uses a Chess Motif in talking about the tactics, doesn’t care for individual lives lost and Utilitarian in his views though this is just a Façade still to give the media more fuel against him, but recognises that this is still a necessary evil

edited 19th Apr '12 11:52:54 AM by Olivetree

Why would he want to turn the media against himself?

Part of a spoiler, I'll write it down here anyway: It's part of a gambit, the organisation wishes to install a republic, but he's using the organisation as an enemy to rally against for more of a pro-monarchist state and to increase patriotism, I haven't figured out why he'd want to do that yet though, I could just put it down to his opinion being pro-Arbitrary government

edited 19th Apr '12 1:06:25 PM by Olivetree

It seems like it would make a lot more sense if he's secretly the Mole in Charge. Just being ideologically aligned with a group is honestly a bit far-fetched; if he's secretly working for them, it becomes much more plausible. Then again, I have a surprisingly similar plot element in one of my works, so I may be a bit biased here.

I'd agree with you there but he's not aligned with a group for Pro-monarchists, he's not part of one at least, and he founded the organisation for a republic to solidify opposition against the opposite to his beliefs, and in the end reinforce his beliefs within the minds of the nation (the organisation is called the roundhead party by the way)

I think I may have figured out a character.

They're something of an Extreme Doormat, but when it comes to things that they are actually really uncomfortable with doing, they claim things like they're being "guilted into" whatever the other person is asking to do and generally painting themselves as the victim because they have no idea how to say no as a valid answer.

Does this make any sense? I kind of had this epiphany at like 3 in the morning so I'm checking now to see if it does.

I am developing a character that while I love her in concept I think she is still pretty bland and in practice (personality) she bores me.(and as an author I am the one supposed to like her the most...)

Not very original I know but I was inspired by Goku's personality and best traits )I know not very original). I don't want another naruto/luffy etc clone. I mean more of a spiritual successor than an imitation. Got inspired when Goku said that he could't be around forever.

On latin America goku is a very big deal and just as England loves Doctor Who... Dragonball was the childhood of everyone here.

She is supposed to be and average human and not special in anyway at all (no secret reincarnation/princess/rich/robot/alien/chosen one etc)

One idea I have for her is to be a big eater as Goku...But ironically having to be on a diet

I am trouble making her my own character, what do you think?

The first project of mine that I can think of that has characters with enough definition to work on yet would be Floating Castle. Where to start...

Oh, I've got one! Or two, actually, who are kind of connected. Garon (who I will think of a better name for when I get around to it) and Benecia are twin brothers from a world that, while well-advanced and safe in a few areas, is by and large quite dangerous. Garon is much more athletic, and Benecia is mostly interested in the workings of science. They grew up in a sort of border town, close enough to the edge of a major city that their fairly rich father could send them to the high-class universities in the area, but far enough out into the wilderness that the general attitude towards scholarship and advanced science is that it's prissy, frivolous, and not really 'work.' As a result, Benecia grows up to be extremely bitter at Garon for getting so much attention and praise, and also at his father for not paying him enough attention or showing respect for the career that he wants. Although Garon doesn't really understand that Benecia is becoming increasingly bitter and hate-filled, and in fact thinks that they're the best of friends, he grows up with the sneaking suspicion that Benecia really hates him and is just hiding it.

Things come to a head right before Benecia graduates from the university; the night before he moves to the city for his new job, he explodes and bitches Garon right out, telling him that he couldn't stand him growing up and that it was all Garon's fault for taking all of his respect and making his childhood a misery. Feeling vindicated, if guilty, Benecia heads out and never looks back. Garon, on the other hand, is utterly crushed. Not only has he lost his 'best friend,' but the fear that has been hounding him all of his life— that everyone secretly hates or pities him— has been basically smashed into his face like a brick.

Years later, Benecia has more or less worked through his issues and become a pretty decent guy as well as a bright scientist on his way up in the world. He's convinced that, while Garon wasn't really at fault for his childhood being as awful as it was, he had just been blowing off steam and getting things out into the open, and that Garon is probably just fine. Garon, on the other hand, due to having grown up with the philosophy that psychological issues are the last things on the list of Things To Be Bothered About, has not gotten any help or tried to figure out his problems. Instead, he's gone around the world as an explorer, monster-fighter, what have you, being over-the-top and kicking ass in order to make people like him. Which usually works at first, but for most people it gets old after a while. And whenever someone starts to show signs of disliking him— any signs at all, including perfectly reasonable things— he panics and tries even harder to get them to like him. Eventually he manages to alienate pretty much everyone he meets in a given area this way, until he finally just moves on to another place with new people, more firmly entrenched than ever in his belief that everyone secretly hates him.

And then, one day, the well-balanced bitter-Jerkass-turned-Nice Guy and the hammy, attention-seeking semi-Miles Gloriousus, both with Freudian Excuses of their own, are transported to and trapped on different, scattered sections of a broken floating castle, flying through an endless sky on an unknown mission, where they must learn to survive and co-operate with the other trapped people from different worlds.

My main characterization problems with these two and the supporting cast of their backstory so far are thus:

(A.) I'm having a hard time balancing them between being unsympathetic Jerk Asses and having been mistreated terribly by everyone else in their backstory. For example, Benecia had a genuinely sucky childhood, being more or less constantly told that his gifts weren't really important and seeing his brother being frequently praised for the strengths that he himself lacks. On the other hand, his father and the other inhabitants of the town aren't supposed to be horrible people who are just picking on some poor little kid because he's different (although they could have handled the situation a whole, whole lot better). They live in a place and culture that, although safer than a lot of other places, requires a lot of work and care and vigilance to maintain without maimings/starvation/heatstroke/so on, and as a result places a great deal of value and honor on those qualities. So here they have this kid who idolizes the things that they think are useless and indicative of snobbery (and they're right in Benecia's case; he's gotten better about it, but most of his life he's thought of himself and other sciencey types as being better than everyone else).

Likewise, Garon's got some issues with self-image, self-esteem, crowd-pleasing, loneliness, and the like, and it's supposed to be hard not to feel sorry for him; at the same time, though, he was inconsiderate and blind to the suffering of others around him as a kid, and now he's become a self-centered semi-Miles Gloriosus whose obsessive need for attention often drives him to jerkassery.

(B.) I'm trying to find a way to show their connection as brothers without too much influence from the fact that they're twins. I wanted them to be twins in the first place because I already have another big-brother/little-brother duo in the story, and also because they're supposed to illustrate how two very similar people can, through various circumstances, turn out to be very different. What I don't want to do is overemphasize the fact that 'omigosh they're twins! They're not going to have a psychic link or super-deep connection beyond being brothers, but I'm not sure how to portray the scientist/adventurer dynamic without it seeming like a cheap yin-yang-twin gimmick.

(C.) I'm also trying to keep from making either the advanced sciencey-type civilization or the living-off-the-land civilization come off as a Strawman Political. It's supposed to be that each one has its pros and cons, that they're simply two branching groups and that neither one is intrinsically good or bad, and that they both have their reasons for disdaining each other. Instead, though, it keeps coming off that the advanced group is all snobbish and prissy and disconnected from the world, and that the rural group is a bunch of macho idiots who think intelligence is a sign of girliness. It's really bothering me, and I'm just not sure how to fix it.

Anyway, sorry for the extremely long infodump. I've been bouncing this one around in my head for a while, along with many other characters, worlds, subplots and such from Floating Castle, and I thought some opinions from other writers would be an enormous help.

@ Fallen Legend: The character sounds good, so far, but I don't know much about her, exept for the fact that she's an average girl who likes to eat. What does she love? What does she hate? What is her personality like? Does she have any friends? Enemies? Secrets? What is her home life like? Just some basic things to think about as you create your character. It sounds good so far, but there's so much more that you could think about.