Building Character - Creating people for your stories.

[Bluelantern]

So, when I created the topic about writing some people said they have problems with (among other things) characters. I felt it could be interesting to have a topic about it. So here it is.

(plus i couldn't waste that pun)

[DanielH]

So, I first posted this in the Sandbox Prompts thread and it was decided I should move it here.

I want to come out of the woodwork and try things, but don’t have any characters. I’ve come up with skeletons for a pair of characters which, at least at first, would always go together and are fairly portable; however, I don’t have ideas for other characters or any idea how to flesh out my existing pair.

Does anybody have any pointers? Should I create a new thread asking this question?

I’ll get this thread started by giving a pointer to my several-hours-past self: for the characters you already have, try to explain them as best you can. You’ll find yourself writing several paragraphs and a short bulleted list about them, which will help with making them templates and help with their original setting you were stalled on.

I don’t think describing them here in as much detail as I originally planned will help flesh them out any more. I still have some questions, though: I have the broad strokes, backstories, goals, etc. of these characters, but no clue how to give them distinctive voices instead of all sounding like me. I also have no clue how to generate new characters; the ones I came up with were practically narratively required in their original setting and I added traits as needed to make them fully fleshed out.

Here’s a brief summary of the templatized aspects of the pair of characters:

• A character who is not actually part of the standard law enforcement network who can notice crimes, perhaps because of extra powers most people don’t have (if applicable, especially ones that can detect magic influence or a specific class thereof), but also definitely because of having/using more sources of information than other people, especially current events (example: reads pretty much every article by Fox, CNN, NBC, the BBC, the Washington Post, and pretty much every major news organization in any country he can learn the language of; this makes him more likely to notice patterns that others don’t). Spends most of his time looking at these extra sources of information. Trusts the system implicitly to be set up to do the right thing; though obviously mistakes are sometimes made, the laws exist the way they are for a reason; his response to something like the NSA scandal would be agreement that this would help national security, and even if (for the sake of argument) that much spying wasn’t the right action, they still must have had the peoples’ best interests at heart. Probably is separated from society somehow, while still keeping an eye on it. When noticing a crime, pairs up with:
• A character who is a regular part of the police network, there to actually help people (instead of for power or because it’s just a job). He usually does this by enforcing the law, and trusts that, in most easy cases, this is a good thing (even with the problems in the real world with police, their existence almost certainly does still lower the murder rate). He knows the system can and often does go wrong (he would condemn the NSA for the Snowden leak), but wants to believe it’s mostly good. He will accept half-baked explanations for the publicly-known status quo in the abstract, but when he sees actual people actually suffering, he needs a more concrete reason for this to keep happening. As an example from Harry Potter, he’ll believe the various reasons about why magic should be kept secret, but if he were to encounter a Muggle dying that he could help with a simple charm, he would do it.
• If there’s some sort of big secret, they’re probably in on it.

As an example of how this could fit into glowfic, here’s how I would fit them into an Eos-like world (with both greens and purples, with my projections of how they’d act):

How my templates could fit into Eos

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They would both know about magic, and the first character would be an ingot with some information-sensing ability. He’d be in Libby’s sinister network, to gain information about things. Libby wouldn’t tell him that a large part of the network was organized crime. He would use his information-gathering abilities to notice that this kid Delaney Hammond whose dad was just convicted of child abuse (he read about the trial) seems to be working with an unknown mint or ingot (there was some magic influence around the dad’s lawyer, who usually isn’t that bad). He asks Libby about this, but she doesn’t know anything about the mint in question (except that there may be two of them). Since he’s good at learning things, she asks him what more he can tell her. After investigating a bit, he’d realize Delaney was friends with the police chief’s daughter, who has a lot of magic influencing her and apparently wouldn’t even be alive without it.

He reports this to Libby, who decides to introduce him to her mundane-but-in-the-know friend in Forks PD, the second character. They investigate, interview Bella (getting an introduction through Charlie) and the kid who apparently goes by Alice, and eventually gets Bella to admit she wants to take over the world because it isn’t being run well. The police officer is all for this, except he’s afraid whatever she builds will also be corrupt; the first guy is against it, as the systems in place are mostly good systems, and if you must change things you should build onto the existing systems instead of replacing them. They talk to Libby who wants to meet Bella personally; cut to Adventures in Effulgence 4.1. a city and a mint who sleep very little between them.

Apart from not having names for them, though, I also don’t know how to write them in everyday conversation. If I tried to get much more detailed than the above, I’d stall out as soon as the first character needed to talk to Libby. I think the dialogue I’d write would sound too much like something I’d say. I also, again, don’t know how to come up with new ones. If I had to do an Eos-like world without purples, I’d have no clue what to do. I don’t think my existing characters work well as main characters, especially when the main other character is in highschool, and I’d have no clue what to do with characters other than those two.

[Anya]

Kind of character building, more magic building really.

I've been thinking about having a go at rping with my genie character, but am having trouble with the actual wish portion of the wishing. She can't do 'world peace' type wishes, since that involves A LOT of magical power, which she doesnt have, so I've been going around my friends asking them for their three wishes and trying to find a way to grant them.

My first friend wished for all her debts to be paid. Theres a couple ways for my genie to grant this.

First, and easiest way, would for her to focus on the debt part and then let her magic auto grant. Which isn't really the best way to do things, since she has no control over how it grants it. It might have someone suddenly die and have her be the benefactor of all their money, or some other morally dubious way.

Second way would be if she really buckled down and thought through the whole process of getting her the money. Lottery ticket would be one way, if she were being geneous she'd have her win more than she actually needed....

Can you guys think of another way?

And also hit me with some wishes!

[Marri]

It helps if you try to come up with speech patterns each character might use, and why. Ideally you start with really little things. I'm still not great at this, but I've been trying, so have my thoughts :D

- What does your character say when stalled? Have they had speech training at some point, and simply pause to think? Do they say um or uh? (This is a regional thing in the US, so it would probably depend where they're from.) Are they impatient and jump to the next thought without trying to puzzle it out, or just pause until they get it?

- How do they swear? Do they not? Only in certain situations? Are there swear words they'd be more likely to use then others?

- How large is their vocabulary? What kinds of words would they use? Any words or expressions they use a lot?

- How verbose are they? Do they tend towards longer sentences and ramble on, or are they fairly curt?

[Kappa]

An admission about dialogue: Probably the way I learned how to write dialogue that didn't just sound like me talking was through years of RP experience and voracious consumption of media. "Sounds too much like something I'd say" is a perfectly acceptable starting point.

As a stepping stone to creating new characters, maybe you could try scooping existing ones from fiction you like? It is a time-honoured glowfic tradition!

Three wishes for Anya, off the top of my head: I want perfect health, unlimited or at least vastly expanded working memory, and for all my friends to each get three wishes of their very own.

[DanielH]

You could also solve the debt by having the lending institution forgive it or the legal institution declare it invalid, instead of coming up with the money to repay it. I’m not sure how to do that, but it’s another avenue.

I’d wish for perfect health (indefinite length, not instant; this gives healthy immortality), if possible for everybody; unlimited memory (with the ability to forget things if desired), again for everybody if possible; and the ability to myself do magic. If any of these aren’t possible, I’m also considering a perfect mental health wish, but that sounds impossible to get right, and a wish for less akraisa, but that sounds less important. If the first two wishes couldn’t be granted to everybody, I’m not sure how I’d handle that; I may not be the best recipient or there may be a greater good possible.

Thanks for suggestions regarding character voices. I have also considered taking other characters, but I’m having a hard time coming up with good ones who I could do well and who would work in the types of situations glowfic characters encounter. I may try combining characters from fiction, in a JokerSherlock way without the other components present, though.

[Marri]

On a somewhat related note: man, writing Alli texting is horrible and almost physically painful and I'M SORRY I KNOW SHE'S A BUM.

[DanielH]

Don’t worry, it’s also painful to read.

I’d never have considered a character texting differently from how I text, and I really should have.

[PlainDealingVillain]

One thing that has worked pretty well for me is to model character's voices on other people you know in meatspace; I tend to be much more aware of their quirks than a character in a book or my own. I have a character I haven't written yet, Sam, who largely sounds like the DM of the tabletop game where he first appeared; jokingly callous, tends to talk like he possesses absolute true knowledge of things, swears very imaginatively when he swears at all. (Also, he's a literal lucky bastard and this makes him look obnoxiously overconfident.)

For finding a voice for characters you already have in mind, it might also help to look at similar characters from a movie or television. (Radio would work, too.) That gives you a sample of consistent voice to keep in mind, and since you're writing it, it won't get too similar. (I suggest looking at the core four of Elementary for your pair of cops. But I suggest Elementary for basically anything.)

For completeness's sake, my other pair of characters: Arthur basically sounds like me, with touches of Arthur Penhaligon from The Keys to The Kingdom series. Suzy sounds like Suzy Blue from the same series, with slightly larger touches of my ex/best friend.

And for a wish: Besides the standard living-forever kind of wish, I'd wish for my akrasia and social anxiety to stop stopping me.

[Endovior]

Regarding wishes, I can't imagine making a wish without first interrogating the genie regarding the wish-interpretation process; I wouldn't want to wish for immortality outright without ensuring that I got the Required Secondary Powers, like protection from aging and disease, regrowth of damaged or lost tissues, and a memory that's up to the challenges of an immortal life. Not sure if that's helpful or not, but you might want to consider how the genie character reacts to people probing out just how much they can get from a wish.