Writting Cheat Sheet

Those are interesting concepts, but those are totally not my paths to character creation.

When I started as a wee lad of 16, I used people around me as templates. One friend who was a dick. One friend who was loyal. The girl I had the hots for. Another girl who was a sassy friend. I was a kid with little life experience, so I used what was on hand. As I got older and used fanfics to practice, I used that practice of understanding existing characters. How close could I write them to their original specs, yet as a story progressed evolve and grow them within the realm of their actual character. Then what new kinds of characters were necessary to fill in the growing world I was placing them into. Eventually with my own IPs, I start with the list of archeotypes I need, then their personalities simply grow as I craft the story, and if the story changes, then they change. I currently have two characters in what I’m working on right now that have gone through extensive changes from their original versions. Due to changes in motivations alongside other changes in the story elements all together, they are quite different from who they were in version one of this story (which had 7 full edits over 10 years). Four months ago I decided to do a full rewrite of this particular IP, and the 30-40% in changes I’ve made overall have affected almost all the characters, but these two most significantly…along with one of the villains.

I was always a bit of an actor, so I had no problem altering my mindset to become characters, placing myself in their shoes. I was that kid playing an RPG (specifically Final Fantasy 4) totally voice acting each and every character out loud during cut scenes. That lead me to be able to literally go through an entire set of dialogue for characters slipping back and forth between them, speaking out loud the whole time. I’m also an old school table top gamer, so in the end creating and pretending to be someone else is very easy.

I would say my one and only possible challenge is creating a the kind of character that people want/need to simple hate. Over and over again, especially in anime/manga, I come across characters I simply despise, and I start to wonder if I’m missing something like that. Only time will tell if something like that spawns in the flow of a story. I always have my beginning and end planned, but anything can happen inbetween along the way.

When I write characters, they are alive. Man or woman, hero or villain, I am them when I am behind their eyes in a story. I feel their hopes, dreams, and desires. I believe that if you are truly trying to write a memorable and thriving character, you have to put a little bit of yourself into it to bring it to life.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Roas.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Roas.

I guess it differs on the definition of minor character. Sometimes there are members of the main cast who we never see the world through, but they are main cast in my opinion. They receive the full back story treatment, they have personalities all their own, yet the story never requires us to see the world through their eyes. Some might call that a minor character.

I call a minor character one who is catagorized as adjacent to a main cast character, but we only know a little bit about them. You get a brief history, but they truly are there to support a primary player. Perfect example is a new character I created in my current rewrite. He serves as a window into politics and the ambitions of nations, but also as a man who truly wants to keep his empire from going to war, because he loves his country. By the time he exits the story at the beginning of the third act (to reappear in the epilogue), his idealism is shattered by the reality of the true powers controlling the continent. I surrounded him with three minor characters as his personal party. They appear briefly in several chapters, and the readers know how our Ambassador came to know them. That’s pretty much it in this story. They are each living and breathing and I feel I have made them feel significant as distinct individuals. Now, when we follow the Ambassador as our witness to one conflict in the next book, while our actual heroic party is pushing the main plot, these three minor characters may take on bigger roles, and therefore, grow further. I don’t know yet. As I said, this character and his arc is new to this version, so all previous plot blocking I’ve done lack his influence.

I hope that answers your question. I tend to see text as movies in my mind, so that also plays into m process.