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A question of character development

BlisteredBlood

BlisteredBlood

The Crucified Angel
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
Location
Rhode Island
Ladies and gentlemen of the boards, I come to you asking for your input on something that probably has a lot of us thinking the same thing at some point in our writing careers. Now keep in mind, this isn't just limited to just one on one encounters with just you and the other guy across from you on another screen, I'm talking about like as in big groups, too. But then again, it doesn't just have to be within the forums but also when you're playing a tabletop game with your buddies and all that.

When you're developing current characters or even creating new ones entirely from scratch, what is it that inspires you or compels you to see to it that the character goes from point A to point B in the story? Would it be from a book you read, a certain song you listened to or maybe it's from an image. Which ever the case is, folks, I'd love to hear some ideas from you.

The things I've heard so far is as follows.

Self-discovery
Plot/Era based
Stories written by others
Poems by others
Lyrics/Style of a song
Witnessing an event
Pointing out weaknesses/flaws to offset their strengths


More to come when others offer their insight.
 
Normally for me I tend to create my character based on the plot that was put together. Normally I use a basic skeleton and as the story progresses I get more in detail as I want the story to move on. There is one rp I'm doing right now that has my character with amnesia that he doesn't know about and won't know in detail about it until after a certain point in the story. SO in an aspect my character development varies but mostly depends on plot twists that are placed in. After all it isn't looks or speech that develops the character but the experiences they have been through as well as those they have yet to endure. The inner complexities in which make us all individuals
 
That makes sense, for it seems as though we all want our characters to make it somewhere within the worlds we've basically put them in.

How about you, other fellow BM'ers?
 
I like to use the 'self-discovery' concept (the lead characters are not who they first believe themselves to be) . This is also one of things that occurs a great deal in fantasy - and again I don't think there's any need to try and escape it. After all, the character who knows exactly who he or she is, is the most boring character in the book. One of the reasons why this 'fantasy trope' is so popular is because we all long to believe there's something 'other' within ourselves, and as readers we go on our own journey of self-discovery and growth as we read about the character's self discovery (the physical quest, the journey, should only be the physical means by which the characters confront the 'other' within themselves, and discover their true selves).
 
For me, inspiration comes in many forms and often times from unexpected places. Sometimes it can be a tune, the lyrics to a song. Other times it's from the stories or poems written by others. And still other times it's from real life experiences. Even those that may seem mundane on the surface, for instance, when witnessing something in a store or from listening to something a friend says. However, when creating a character I typically like to think about their weaknesses and flaws before anything else. How those weaknesses influence and drive them, how they may hold them back and even how they might possibly be a good thing at times. Once that's been established, my next goal tends to be how will they overcome obstacles so as to improve themselves in some way and maybe even influence another character in a positive light thus making them better as well. Sort of mutual give and take between main characters. I love for my character to have a goal of some sort. That goal may change many times over based on experiences as their story develops. There may even be additional goals that arise. But at all times there more than likely will be some sort of goal they are striving to achieve/accomplish. Something that drives them forward and something that'll eventually shape them and flesh them out to be the character that they are at their core.
 
Are we talking about creating characters or how we take characters from one place to another? Because I think that's inextricably intertwined.

When you create a character for a story, you really ought to know what kind of story you're going to be writing up front. Oh, sure, you can be surprised along the way, particularly if you're doing it RP-style with a partner (like on this board), but basically, you've got to have some kind of direction to go in.

This is one reason I tend to dislike omni-powerful characters, ones who are so badass up front. Mostly, that kind of thing is someone who doesn't feel very confident in real life, and wants to play someone who is. Which is just fine, and psychologically necessary at points, but at my stage in writing and reading, it's not interesting. To me, the only reason you'd make a character a superlative master of a given skill is if you want that skill to be mostly irrelevant to the plot. Oh, sure, if you're a supreme fighter, you have to have one or two fight scenes, just to show off, but most of your story is going to be about non-fighting things. The way to make it interesting again is if the character suddenly loses the ability, or finds something he or she can't handle, and then has to get clever to figure out how to get past that obstacle. It's like... you're reading a comic book, and Wolverine gets into a fight. You have no reason to expect anything but his win, so unless there's some creative violence, unusual imagery in the fight scene, you can safely skip to the end when the real plot comes up again. Wolverine fighting isn't the point. Wolverine doing something unusual during the fight, like finding a clue or explaining a plot point, or <gasp> LOSING, that's interesting.

Okay, end of tangent.

Good characters change. Whether good or evil, they alter as they experience the story, learn things, interact with others. The self-discovery method is good and true-to-life, because hardly any of us are really what we tell ourselves we are, and why would characters be any different, except that they tend to find out the truth through the story, and the rest of us rarely do. A character designed to change like in a poem or song lyric is perfectly valid: I once played an RP based on a Browning poem, so I get that.

Ultimately, your inspiration for the character is immaterial. Inspiration comes from literally anywhere. Hell, a melting icicle can spark a thought that leads to a character. The important thing is the character goes from point A to poing B, and is different in some manner along the way.

Look at WALL-E, for example. He doesn't change much, really, as a personality. A little bit, as he "dies" and comes back, and then finds fulfillment. But really, everyone around him changes, as a direct result of interacting with him. And it's organic and believable, but wouldn't have happened without that interaction. Besides being a good example of visual storytelling, that movie shows a lot of good things we can use.
 
I've ALWAYS been in love with the idea of a character's journey to self-discovery using plots and witnessing events. Taking a character from zero to hero will almost always be in my character's future. Since I constantly create characters (a new one for each story and RP) I usually find my inspiration in the plot that they will be set into and generally put them as an opposite or contrast to existing characters or ideas, yet compliments the setting. Like if it's a WWII story, I would make a character who's personality fits the era, and who journey to self discover could start with the Blitz or something.
 
Witnessing events was a biggie for me. As soon as I like...experience something for myself, I can channel that into my character properly rather than just reading how OTHER people feel. My characters are all quite close to my heart in some ways, they all share traits that I have and that's why I have a connection to the ones that have 'staying power', whether they're something I want to be (gorgeous, tall, sky high legs, long ginger hair...if you want a visual, think karen gillan with a less rounded face) or something that I can connect to properly, they're all like...slices of me in some ways, so they react in similar ways to me (but all differently as well) when something happens.

Recently, I experienced a couple of good and bad things which meant I could bring them into a character's past and give it a more...realistic feel than somebody who just throws around diseases like they're trends. "MY CHARACTER IS DEPRESSED BECAUSE SHE HAS CANCER BUT SHE IS STILL FULL OF LIFE AND PRETTY AND ROSY-CHEEKED" and so on and so forth really bother me...having been through cancer with a relative, I know that it definitely isn't rainbows and butterflies and inspiring moments, most of it is completely awful until you get the definite all clear, there's always the background worry that it could come back or they'll take a sudden turn for the worse...

Yeah, sorry, that got away with me a bit. Definitely experiences and stuff, then the character's traits determine how they'd handle it.
 
Mr Master said:
Are we talking about creating characters or how we take characters from one place to another? Because I think that's inextricably intertwined.

When you create a character for a story, you really ought to know what kind of story you're going to be writing up front. Oh, sure, you can be surprised along the way, particularly if you're doing it RP-style with a partner (like on this board), but basically, you've got to have some kind of direction to go in.

This is one reason I tend to dislike omni-powerful characters, ones who are so badass up front. Mostly, that kind of thing is someone who doesn't feel very confident in real life, and wants to play someone who is. Which is just fine, and psychologically necessary at points, but at my stage in writing and reading, it's not interesting. To me, the only reason you'd make a character a superlative master of a given skill is if you want that skill to be mostly irrelevant to the plot. Oh, sure, if you're a supreme fighter, you have to have one or two fight scenes, just to show off, but most of your story is going to be about non-fighting things. The way to make it interesting again is if the character suddenly loses the ability, or finds something he or she can't handle, and then has to get clever to figure out how to get past that obstacle. It's like... you're reading a comic book, and Wolverine gets into a fight. You have no reason to expect anything but his win, so unless there's some creative violence, unusual imagery in the fight scene, you can safely skip to the end when the real plot comes up again. Wolverine fighting isn't the point. Wolverine doing something unusual during the fight, like finding a clue or explaining a plot point, or <gasp> LOSING, that's interesting.

Okay, end of tangent.

Good characters change. Whether good or evil, they alter as they experience the story, learn things, interact with others. The self-discovery method is good and true-to-life, because hardly any of us are really what we tell ourselves we are, and why would characters be any different, except that they tend to find out the truth through the story, and the rest of us rarely do. A character designed to change like in a poem or song lyric is perfectly valid: I once played an RP based on a Browning poem, so I get that.

Ultimately, your inspiration for the character is immaterial. Inspiration comes from literally anywhere. Hell, a melting icicle can spark a thought that leads to a character. The important thing is the character goes from point A to poing B, and is different in some manner along the way.

Look at WALL-E, for example. He doesn't change much, really, as a personality. A little bit, as he "dies" and comes back, and then finds fulfillment. But really, everyone around him changes, as a direct result of interacting with him. And it's organic and believable, but wouldn't have happened without that interaction. Besides being a good example of visual storytelling, that movie shows a lot of good things we can use.
Click to expand...

I know this topic is a bit old by now, but you bring up a very valid point. Besides, take a look at Chrono from Chrono Crusade. He goes through a bit of a Heroic BSOD (link for the explanation here) in the manga when he doesn't want to draw upon his Legion - because in turn, it would ultimately kill Rosette due to a contract they forged years ago if he drew upon it too much - but that's all I plan on revealing at the moment. You'd have to read it for yourself in order to get the full gist of it.

I suppose what I'm trying to get at here is what does someone use to draw upon the inspiration to either create a character or develop it further to make it more believable. Do you draw upon events that happened to you in the past, from watching something on TV that you wanted to try for yourself or is there something else more that inspires you to do it? Whatever the case may be, I think that your post virtually explains the whole theory in a nutshell, MM. +1 Internets for you. :cool:
 
As MM said, the melting of an icicle can spark a thought that leads to a character. This is how it works for me. I'm a very visual person and things tend to spark ideas to me. Once I have a general idea like sex, gender, race/species, and a few behavioral traits, I do something that's kinda hard to explain.

I try to visualize myself as this character. I start asking myself questions as if I was this character who's suffered a blow to the head, trying to remember everything. For some characters, the details wash over my brain pretty quickly. For a very few and rather special characters, the details come at a slow pace. Sometimes even in the middle of an RP, it's as if a memory is 'unlocked' by certain actions. That particularly sounds cheesy, but that's the easiest way to describe it.

While I'm RPing a character, I honestly try to put myself into who they are to try and make decisions or dialogue. That can make things kind of hard as getting into their skin, so to speak, takes some effort if I've been doing several RPs. It's one of the leading causes if me being unable to reply to an RP for some time, outside of depression.

I don't really have anything to add on character believability. I've typed out about seven different paragraphs trying to add something new, but MM really simplified the thoughts I share behind making mine believable. I wish I had more to add, but it's been well said.
 
That much is true, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Though if you really want to get into specifics such as the character's mood at the current point, it all really has to deal with the current situation. As I outlined it in the previous post that what the character goes through is played straight to a T, it can lead to defining moments in the RP, ranging from Crowning Moments of Awesome, Heartwarming and (or if for a comedic purpose) Funny.

I suppose another example of this is if you took a look at the one I have currently going - and one of the hottest running RP's I've had in perhaps the longest time! - with Devxx. In that, you can see for yourself that my character Thanatos suffered such a case when he had to deliberately fall off the Willis/Sears Tower despite there was a major league twist to it. The example can be supplied through here[url] on page 11 and continue onward, proving that despite that massive damage, he wasn't really above it all.
 
For me at least. When I'm writing a story. Sometimes when I roleplay. I try to distance myself as much from the character but at the same time I'm trying to understand him as I develop him. Try to know him or her, when I create them and add them to the world I create. (Don't know if that makes sense...)

Most important thing to me though is avoiding creating a Mary Sue or Marty Stu who may turn into a self insert. I've already ready to many fanfics and even some stories that have such characters. I also think it's important to show flaws and show the characters overcoming the flaws

Wesely Wynddam Pryce from the buffy universe to me is a prime example of character development. Look at him. HE went from a bumbling fool who could barely take down a vampire, to a competent hunter who is capable of far more ruthlessness then ever possible. And in the end he went out dying like hero even after everything was taken away from him.
 
Wesley is a great character. He's a good example of planning, in that all he became had its groundwork laid out over a lot of time previous to anything happening. He was also very sympathetic, in that you could understand all his choices, whether or not you would have done the same in his place. And he was very frequently the series whipping boy, in that nobody escaped wounds, but if you really needed someone to suffer, you could go to Wesley pretty reliably.

Such a good performance by Alexis Denisof, as well.
 
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