Makkine
Known by Name
Posts : 420
Join date : 2011-01-03
Age : 26
Location : You can only tell the speed OR location of a quantum particle. Guess which I know?
 | |  Character Guide | |
So, you want to roleplay. You want to create a story. You want to just have fun with a new OC. You're all ready to go, pencil in hand, hands resting on the keyboard, thinking that this will be easy. How difficult can characters be? Well, you publish your new OC, you start to roleplay, you show everyone the first chapter of your story, when suddenly everyone rolls their eyes. "Your character's a Mary Sue!" they cry. "Dark characters are not necessarily good!" Where did you go wrong? Well, here's a step-by-step guide to creating characters! - 1) A base personality:
First off, start giving your character a "skeleton". This does not mean choosing what they look like. As a matter of fact, beginning by choosing what the characters look like can occasionally destroy someone's characterization, since you are likely to subconsciously base the character's personality off something that's barely important to the story.
Begin with a base personality. You can go to one of those "Character Traits" lists if you have writer's block, but I prefer to start fresh. For example, I'll give my character a "slightly quirky, but shy" personality. It's an archetype, a skeleton, if you will, that will later help you develop the character further.
PRO-TIP: Be specific. For the base personality, don't choose something overwhelmingly good, bad, or general. Quirky and shy are both character traits that have neither a positive nor a negative connotation, and they're specific. Don't choose things like "evil" "serene" or (yes, people have done this orz) "pretty" unless you're POSITIVE that they'll work for you.
- 2) Expand on your character's less explored areas, get to the numbers, names, and looks:
Once you have your personality, flesh it out. How is she quirky? Does her shyness become an obstacle? Is she afraid of people, or just dislikes them? Right now, my character's a soft-spoken girl who's afraid of people and likes to sing for no good reason, and her shyness becomes an obstacle later in the story.
Now you can have some fun. Which are your character's dreams? Occupations? Hobbies? Favourite colours? Now, don't focus too much on these specifics, because while they help you understand your character well, they aren't what we are here for.
Finally, looks, ages, names. Choose a creative (but not TOO strange) name for your character, give her/him a rough age group, and start brainstorming what s/he'll look like. A nationality, too. These cues will help you a lot with your character's history, so have them well-defined.
For example, my character's from somewhere in Midwestern USA, has around 12-15 years of age, and has short blond hair with a few freckles that are fading. She wants to work with something technical despite the fact that she sucks at computers, and loves to sing even when receiving weird looks.
PRO-TIP: Don't take too long on step 2, I've started stories with no idea where my character's from and her age, as well as a personality which isn't all that specific. Writing the story helped me develop these cues, so don't be afraid to just be general.
- 3) Develop the relations between the character and others in the story, plan other things.:
This is important. No single person is going through life by themselves, and this holds true for characters. If in a rp, the other characters would be the players in the rp. Read the descriptions and try to think how they would interact with your character.
This seems like a short, easy step, but it isn't. You will have to change your mind on the relationships between your character and others several times while writing them, because the story's events will change your decisions. Think this step through.
PRO-TIP: This is a delicate step. Make sure your character doesn't take charge of the story and have all the other characters fawning over them, but also make sure that your characters actually interact with others.
- 4) Start your character's history!:
This is the step that a lot of story-planners and roleplayers look forward to, and with good reason. It is really fun to develop someone's history, as well as seeing how your character got to be.
Make sure that the character's history is just as balanced as the character itself. Nobody should have nothing else than TRAGEDY TRAGEDY TRAGEDY in their backstories, but they shouldn't come from a neat little suburb where everyone smiles all the time. You also need to make sure that the character's history matches their personality. This doesn't mean that everyone needs a Freudian Excuse for every aspect of themselves, but at least try to have both areas be congruent.
My character's a naturally shy girl who's afraid of people. She's from the Midwestern United States, where she went to a school full of bullies and cliques. Eventually, she moved, and she expected her new school to be almost identical to her older one. However, she soon realized it wasn't. She's horrible with any aspect of technology, although she wants to work with something technical when she grows up. She joins a lot of musicals, and sings out loud without caring if other people look at her funny. Kinda naïve, and this gets her into a heap of trouble.
PRO-TIP: Be very specific on the history, but don't give away all of it. In roleplays, you could be able to display it during dialogue with another player. In stories, a character's backstories are almost always spoilers.
- Things to keep in mind:
*Nobody likes the dreaded Mary Sue, but nobody likes the Anti Sue either. Make sure your character has a near-equal serving of good and bad qualities.
*Make sure that your character fits the genre. It can be fun to have a preppy teenager in a historical fantasy, but it's not always recommended.
*The dialogue should fit the character. It's no good to have a full paragraph of exposition explaining how the characters "a happy, energetic boy that can't keep quiet", then have all the character's dialogue be something similar to: "I hate my life I cut myself at night"
*As a matter of fact, don't give a full paragraph of exposition explaining the character's personality at all. If the reader can't figure out the personality just off the dialogue and actions, then start over.
*Basing characters off real people is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can help your character be more realistic, and it can make you feel more comfortable. On the other hand, it can also make them act more like archetypes and less like their own individual character. Basing characters off celebrities, characters in other works, or yourself is a definite NO.
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Sat Dec 25, 2021 7:26 pm by 
