Your Process, Week 1 - Character Creation.

[JustSnilloc]

*Ahem* This is the first installment in a series of feedback topics that I'm going to be doing entitled, "Your Process", where you can share your preferred methods of handling whatever the subject matter concerns with everyone else. The general idea is that perhaps what is written here will help someone else, or give yet another person a new tool to work with in their writing arsenal.

This week's installment covers character creation, and thus the main question is, "What is your process for character creation?". Other things you might ask yourself in response to this include, (but certainly aren't limited to,) "What do you think about first?", "Where do your inspirations come from?", "How long do you like to take?", "Do you use something like music to set a mood?", etc.

You can be as specific or as general as you'd like, any and all insight into "Your Process" is appreciated!

[jacklamont]

My processes for character creation is often very simple. I have a situation I need for the story, and I find the type of character that can fit the situation. Often it is one that I already have one that works, and if not, I just create somebody that works as they need to work.

[JustSnilloc]

My process for character creation starts with the setting and what I have to play around with to go into character creation (elf, jedi, etc). While I'm certainly guilty of making unlikely combinations, I honestly and simply enjoy going through my options and picking out what appeals to me the most.

After that, I look at what the story demands of a character - Will they need to fight? Will they need to be a good test takers?, and immediately following what the story demands of the characters, I look at what's typical of whatever type of characters I've built thus far (Elf Jedi for example), and I play around with what's typical, and what wouldn't be. This is to separate the character from the norm. (After all, stories aren't written about average joe)

After doing that, I start juggling names, a personality, skills, and appearance. A lot of times I tend to take a while in this juggling phase, even going backwards at times, but my favorite part of the juggling act is probably the name. A lot of times, I'll use my knowledge of phoenetics and create a clever combination of sounds to give birth to a never-before-seen name, while other times I'll look to other languages for name inspirations.

Overall, my goal in character creation tends to be creating a character based off of interesting matchups (like the elven jedi... not that I would ever do that... but then again...)

[iamsuperguppy]

My character creation process all starts with coming up with some element of the character that would make it inherently unique. I want my character to be different at the core, as much as possible, as compared to other peoples' characters. In order to come up with this "uniqueness" I will think of the different race options, technology, magics/force and anything else the environment(s) may offer me. I also usually prefer that this "uniqueness" have a significant tie to combat and it is not merely a unique personality.

Once I have that, I will go ahead and try to figure out what sort of personality would fit with that "uniqueness". At the same time I will consider what sort of back story might have made the character the way he/she is.

Finally, I always leave the name for last. I have a few methods, but these days my most common is to use elvish (even in worlds that have no elves). I just find it to be a very beautiful sounding language and the elvish-english dictionary is an easy way to make a name. Other than that, there have been times where I took an English word or words and morphed it into something different that fits with my character's race ("An'mular" came from "animal" and Ikilit came from "I kill it"). There was also one time where I simply looked at a list of names on Wookieepedia associated with my character's race and just try to create something that has a similar feel (this is where Jakli came from).

[Deleted]

Considering the endless wave of characters I've created, varying between one-note characters serving no other purpose than to show off how awesome someone else is, and more complex characters that have much more central roles in the narrative, I don't think I have any single process when it comes to character creation. Rather, I have a selection of different methods I can call upon to generate the sort of character I want to use for any given situation in the story.

Method one is pretty much the most basic one: copying someone else. Now, obviously not blatant ripoff-caliber copying. But taking a name, or a theme, or a general method of delivery for a character from someone else and adapting it to more suit what I would do with the idea. Imitation is one of the most prevalent aspects of literature; every famous author has read widely and borrowed ideas that they've read to re-purpose for their own writing. When I read something really cool that someone else did, I want to try it myself. Obviously not an exact replication of how they did it, as that would be boring. But something like, my own take at this sort of idea. Other people have cool thoughts, so why not follow their lead sometimes? I've used this one a lot, most notably with the name (and portions of backstory) of my EotD protagonist. Of course, Asuna is so far gone from her Mahou Sensei Negima self that sometimes I forget that's where she's from.

Method two would be "art imitating life", as silly as that sounds. I'm a person, not a bot or a program (gasp!). As such, I have experiences and encounters in the real world. Many of these are mundane, boring, tedious, everyday sorts of things that no one would care to hear about. But from time to time, even real life can be kind of cool. Certain moments that I experience can inspire something within my brain that says, "I wonder how that would look if...", and a new idea is born. This applies particularly to people. While most people are boring, there are some truly entertaining individuals out there with amusing and interesting quirks of their own. Sometimes multiple people have just one little thing that I find fascinating, and when I think about them long enough, I find a way to put them together. Sometimes bits of different people can be combined to create a whole new person! Freaky.

Method three is,

May 29, 2014 14:57:38 GMT -5 jacklamont said:

I have a situation I need for the story, and I find the type of character that can fit the situation.

This. But this is one of the more tedious and boring ways of writing. I hate feeling like I'm just filling out a role call. It needs to be done from time to time, particularly when running story arcs and such, but I try to avoid this method. Even so, it is necessary quite often and I wind up doing this a lot. For instance, the entire Sky Tournament was nothing but this.


Method four is the one I use the least, because it's the one that is the hardest for me to use. I don't start with the character in this method, I start with the story behind them. What sort of life had this person been through? What kind of trials and tribulations had they dealt with? The story generates the person. When I know the events of their life, I just start writing a scene from those events. The character becomes whatever it is that fills in the gaps. I don't even think about the personal details of this person. It's a bit like discovery writing - I don't plan out any specifics like hair color or accent or what have you, I see what comes about naturally based on the situation I create. It's also kinda like reverse engineering. You find a cool thing and try to figure out how it was made so you can make it yourself. Aelius was this kind of character, and Order's 7th is as well.

There are probably other things I did before. I think one time I made a paper fortune teller with colors, numbers, and letters, and there were different combinations that generated a character. Not really gonna recommend that one. >_>