McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Handicapping your characters.
hatshep2:
--- Quote from: Quantus on October 12, 2010, 08:54:31 PM ---In general I tend toward the world imposing natural handicaps vs personal ones. This, however, is more due to my long RPG background and personal need for system balance, and well as my aptitude for world-building which far outweighs my somewhat stilted ability with character development. That being said one thing that has worked for me somewhat it to take the uber-awesome character, and make that the character at the end, then think on what it would to get there. Its basically coming at it from the other direction. You think about situation where the character might manage to overcome certain things, and the limitations that lead there will often naturally fall out. Dont know if that's helpful, or even makes much sense, but it works for me.
--- End quote ---
Sounds like a pretty decent way to me. I tend to start with flawed characters and work from there but this way of looking at things could offer a nice new perspective on some of my budding new characters. Thanks! :)
prophet224:
@Quantus - Gotta say, it made sense and I like it!
Lauriane:
I have a series I started coming up with ideas for when I was 13. I knew my character needed SOME kind of handicap (basically, something to make him not be Aragorn), so I just gave him a physical one: he gets a bad leg/knee injury in the prologue. As I got deeper into the story, though, he ended up developing some organic character flaws that made him both more human and more interesting. So I'd say give your character an external handicap if you want, and go from there. Hopefully, as your story develops you'll see how to work in some character development.
hatshep2:
I tend to prefer emotional/psychological handicaps - and then there's also the simple fact that my characters are human. Yes, they have some psuedo-magical assistance but the fact still remains that they are humans facing off against really tough enemies and having to overcome really bad odds. As if that's not bad enough of a physical handicap, my characters then get injured thanks to said handicap. Although my characters usually recover from these injuries eventually they still serve as an extra handicap in the mean time. So I guess I'm basically just really cruel to my characters.
Thrythlind:
Well, I have to say that there are many perceptions on an event.
Look at Vash the Stampede. Saving the world for him is mechanically very easy. At least in the anime, it seems clear that he could easily defeat and kill Knives and that simple act would save the world. (click to show/hide)However, he's not just trying to save the world, he's trying to save Knives and that is much more difficult to achieve.
You might have a story where a character has won the treasure, defeated the villain and protected their friends and loved ones.
Something where those outside the character's perspective view everything as an uproarious success, but the Hero still failed in their goals.
Itachi Uchiha (click to show/hide)likewise had a long, complex plot to redeem his clan and set up his younger brother as a hero as well as killing Madara Uchiha and preventing him from threatening the world any longer. His plot even required him to be a villain and die at his brother's hands. However, he has ultimately failed, (unless that crow in Naruto is another step).
And people do like to read about or watch the unstoppable force.
That's why Columbo was so popular for so long. You knew that Columbo would catch the killer every time, the only question was how he would do it.
As to handicaps and awesomeness, it is all in how they are applied.
Lucretia from my Bystander books can see electrical currents and temperature shifts, even through some walls. Her vision is so acute, that she could recognize people just on their electrical or heat patterns alone and I eventually plan to have her comment that racy pictures only produce a half-hearted reaction from her, because they don't have everything she usually notes in watching people.
However, these two senses are one of Lucretia's most often cursed abilities. Because of her ability to see electrical currents, computers, televisions and most of the movie theaters in her setting (year 2035) tend to be nothing to her except a jumble of electrical signals that completely obscure anything else on it. She even has to have a braille translator for when she's working on the computer at the library she works. Which brings the matter to the temperature vision. Unless the temperature is at a steady rate and her brain starts editing out the extra information, the heat vision washes over her normal vision in a thick overlay which makes reading more or less impossible.
Someone misdiagnosed her with dyslexia and she goes with that even though she's vaguely aware that it's not true.
This is a problem for Lu because reading is actually her favorite activity (yes, she's that desperate for an escape) and she is occasionally described doing something like reading a history of OPEC or the Magna Carta.
By the same token, despite being incredibly stronger, faster and tougher than most of the other characters, she's practically worthless in a fight compared to the humans she commonly hangs out with. All because she lacks any shred of combat training. The leader of the merc team her parole officer hired even goes so far as to point this out in Making a Point. It doesn't help that her official files are free to the public and make clear to the well-trained exactly what her weak points are (joint locks, palm strikes, other vibratory attacks due to the fact that her resilience is because her skin hardens in anticipation of an attack...heat also hurts her more than other things might....). Of course, "weak point" for a superhero translates to "something that they are less invulnerable to", but still.
Lu's strongest points are that she's a cunning little street rat who would probably be rated as beyond a master in terms of picking pockets or locks, and very competent at the short-con and reading people.
any sort of story can make a good one:
Superman, Hamlet, Spiderman, Vash the Stamped, Harry Dresden
It doesn't matter whether your character is always successful or always fails. What matters is that you entertain the audience.
I have been talking about some specifics to writing on my blog.
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