How to Write Nice Things (Character Creation Edition)
Oct 8, 2013 13:37:43 GMT -5
JJoker, Alchaea, and 1 more like this
Post by PoochieHead on Oct 8, 2013 13:37:43 GMT -5
Well since the Character Creation area is likely the first place anyone would want to start, this guide will primarily be focused on creating a great character from start to finish. Main ideas are bolded, italicized or underlined; those are the key ingredients to understanding each Step.
Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming to start a fresh character. You want to get all the little details down about your character, but you have no idea where to start and maybe even keep getting tripped up in the little stuff. I'd say the best area to focus on first when creating a new character would be their personality. Once you have their personality down, things like wardrobe, dialogue, goals, interests, dislikes, peeves, quirks, and superpowers will almost certainly come naturally. All you need to know is what they're like.
Before you go and cement your character's personality, think carefully about how much room you're leaving for growth. The entire idea behind roleplay is to write stories with other people and progress your character as a (fictional) person towards goals that they would strive to reach. So if there's no room for growth, you're probably doing it wrong. How's your character going to progress if you start them where you want them to be? Watching your character grow mentally and physically is half the fun!
The neatest trick I've learned for starting a character off is to make them the opposite of what you want them to be. Here are some examples!
1. You want a badass hero with a righteous sense of justice who doesn't take no for an answer.
2. Maybe start him off as a frail geeky comic-reader who's afraid to intervene when something wrong is happening right in front of him!
1. You want a sexy extraverted villainess with style who could talk her way out of anything and charm any man or woman to his or her doom.
2. You could start her off as a clumsy, socially awkward ugly duckling who had no self-confidence.
NOTE: While we're talking about personalities, I also want to mention that their superpowers should probably tie into their personalities in some way. Not necessarily the opposite personality you made, but your original vision of what you want the character to become. Or... you could even do the opposite of that, and not use your original vision of the character! Use a superpower that fits with the initial personality! The opposite one! It's interesting because it's unexpected. You see? Oh, the possibilities!
Technically speaking, you don't have to do this step before you get your character approved. However I think it's a good idea to know what you're doing next ahead of time, so I will include a brief overview of plot creation techniques.
Now that you have a great character in mind and established who they are, you might not want to just plop them into Character Creation without a lick of thought as to where they're going. There's a bajillion different ways to make plots, some are more efficient than others but there's pretty much no awful way to go about accomplishing it (except not writing plots at all). My favorite method, the one I find easiest, is to start from the end of the plot and work your way back to the beginning. So, let's say you went with the righteous hero example outlined in Step 1. You decide you want to start him off as practically everything that is not what you want him to become so he has tons of room to grow.
From here on out, you need some creative juices. You have to ask yourself questions, such as:
"What would it take for John Doe to change?"
The answer to that is going to be your end point, the point you eventually want your character to get to. Maybe it would take a dramatic showdown with a D-List Villain Sidekick who was hurting an innocent citizen for John Doe to think that his intervention could make a big difference. John Doe doesn't even have to win the fight! The point is he gets past that block that holds him back from becoming the character you, the writer, envisioned. I just thought of the end point of my plot, the scenario that John Doe needs to start moving in the direction I always wanted him to.
The hard part's over! Now all you have to do is use a little reasoning and creativity to figure out how he came to that end-point. Maybe the citizen that the Villain Sidekick kidnapped was John Doe's best friend. Maybe it was John Doe's goldfish, or a trap set by the Villain that inadvertently puts innocents in harm's way!
The possibilities are endless!
That's it. Once you've reached this Step, you are almost certainly fully saturated with the innovative juices of creativity that painted the Mona Lisa. Or maybe you're just drenched in sweat from all this thinking. Gross! Step 3 is take a bath, dirty boy!
One last thing you can do with your character is begin to flesh out the really, reaaaally small details like what kind of ice cream he or she would like. I've found that it's the little things that which make your character truly come to life. Anyway, you're all done with the early stages of the creative process, so go ahead and make your character!
If you've carefully read each of these Steps and applied them to your creation process, my hope is that you'll know exactly what you're doing once everything's approved. Yay! The last thing anyone wants is to be in a position where they're lost and asking "What now?" Ain't nobody got time for dat. Maybe following these Steps will help you avoid this in the future. That's all I got for now, but I hope you all have fun and write nice things!
Step 1.
(Make An Interesting Character)
Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming to start a fresh character. You want to get all the little details down about your character, but you have no idea where to start and maybe even keep getting tripped up in the little stuff. I'd say the best area to focus on first when creating a new character would be their personality. Once you have their personality down, things like wardrobe, dialogue, goals, interests, dislikes, peeves, quirks, and superpowers will almost certainly come naturally. All you need to know is what they're like.
But hold up!
Before you go and cement your character's personality, think carefully about how much room you're leaving for growth. The entire idea behind roleplay is to write stories with other people and progress your character as a (fictional) person towards goals that they would strive to reach. So if there's no room for growth, you're probably doing it wrong. How's your character going to progress if you start them where you want them to be? Watching your character grow mentally and physically is half the fun!
The neatest trick I've learned for starting a character off is to make them the opposite of what you want them to be. Here are some examples!
1. You want a badass hero with a righteous sense of justice who doesn't take no for an answer.
2. Maybe start him off as a frail geeky comic-reader who's afraid to intervene when something wrong is happening right in front of him!
It works with everything! Here's a different example!
1. You want a sexy extraverted villainess with style who could talk her way out of anything and charm any man or woman to his or her doom.
2. You could start her off as a clumsy, socially awkward ugly duckling who had no self-confidence.
NOTE: While we're talking about personalities, I also want to mention that their superpowers should probably tie into their personalities in some way. Not necessarily the opposite personality you made, but your original vision of what you want the character to become. Or... you could even do the opposite of that, and not use your original vision of the character! Use a superpower that fits with the initial personality! The opposite one! It's interesting because it's unexpected. You see? Oh, the possibilities!
Opposites RULE!
Step 2.
(Create A Plot)
Technically speaking, you don't have to do this step before you get your character approved. However I think it's a good idea to know what you're doing next ahead of time, so I will include a brief overview of plot creation techniques.
Class, put on your plothats!
Now that you have a great character in mind and established who they are, you might not want to just plop them into Character Creation without a lick of thought as to where they're going. There's a bajillion different ways to make plots, some are more efficient than others but there's pretty much no awful way to go about accomplishing it (except not writing plots at all). My favorite method, the one I find easiest, is to start from the end of the plot and work your way back to the beginning. So, let's say you went with the righteous hero example outlined in Step 1. You decide you want to start him off as practically everything that is not what you want him to become so he has tons of room to grow.
From here on out, you need some creative juices. You have to ask yourself questions, such as:
"What would it take for John Doe to change?"
The answer to that is going to be your end point, the point you eventually want your character to get to. Maybe it would take a dramatic showdown with a D-List Villain Sidekick who was hurting an innocent citizen for John Doe to think that his intervention could make a big difference. John Doe doesn't even have to win the fight! The point is he gets past that block that holds him back from becoming the character you, the writer, envisioned. I just thought of the end point of my plot, the scenario that John Doe needs to start moving in the direction I always wanted him to.
The hard part's over! Now all you have to do is use a little reasoning and creativity to figure out how he came to that end-point. Maybe the citizen that the Villain Sidekick kidnapped was John Doe's best friend. Maybe it was John Doe's goldfish, or a trap set by the Villain that inadvertently puts innocents in harm's way!
The possibilities are endless!
You could even make this a whole arc spanning several threads that finally leads up to that showdown!
Ahem. Naruto. Bleach.
Step 3.
(Go For It!)
That's it. Once you've reached this Step, you are almost certainly fully saturated with the innovative juices of creativity that painted the Mona Lisa. Or maybe you're just drenched in sweat from all this thinking. Gross! Step 3 is take a bath, dirty boy!
One last thing you can do with your character is begin to flesh out the really, reaaaally small details like what kind of ice cream he or she would like. I've found that it's the little things that which make your character truly come to life. Anyway, you're all done with the early stages of the creative process, so go ahead and make your character!
If you've carefully read each of these Steps and applied them to your creation process, my hope is that you'll know exactly what you're doing once everything's approved. Yay! The last thing anyone wants is to be in a position where they're lost and asking "What now?" Ain't nobody got time for dat. Maybe following these Steps will help you avoid this in the future. That's all I got for now, but I hope you all have fun and write nice things!