McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Hark! (Characters)

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SirThinks2Much:
I kind of steal. Or rescue, if you prefer.

It usually comes out of watching a film or reading a book that pretty much sucks. They have a cool character or two but dumb things happen. And I think, "So-and-so would be much cooler if he did..." and come up with a whole bunch of things for said character. And come up with more things. Then lay the character aside for a while then come back and add more things. Then change the name, and voila, totally new character.

I don't do this with all my characters, though.

Other times I take stereotypes and turn them upside-down, usually in a fantasy setting. I have a short and stocky archer and a beautiful ogress as a couple of heroes, for example.

And then I'll do photocopying. I have a stock character. I throw him in whatever story I'm thinking up. Then as the story progresses, jazz him up to fit the story.

For minor characters though, I have no clue. Either I borrow traits off of people I know, or they just randomly pop up.

Tasmin21:

--- Quote ---the character just shows up inside my head  one day and says,  "HEY! Oy! *Waves arms* Listen to me!"
--- End quote ---

This is exactly it.  Sometimes they come for a visit, sometimes they move in and set up house keeping.  They all have a story that wants told, and some of them are more patient than others.  I talk to them, get to know them (their likes, dislikes...somehow, it's very important to me to know what all my characters' favorite foods are), and eventually, I figure out what they want the world to know.

It seems easier to me to base the world around the character, than try to fit the character into the world.

The Corvidian:
Mine usually show up in my dreams.

Jack_of_Names:
I like to think I'm a writer but I'm probbaly being pretentious lol

Anyway!

It is my very firm belief that in the center of by brain, and ever so slightly to the left, there is a gateway which leads to every point in in time and space, in every reality there ever was. Now, somtimes, well, quite often, people and/or events come screaming out of this gateway only to find themselves trapped in my imagination. Now, for most of my life, my imagination has been a fun place to be, at least if your a goodie. They could lounge about untill somthing came up, pick up a sword and run around beating Evil into submission, making little witty comments and double entendresm, supported by a colourful array of characters that range from amazonian warrior woment to self-delusional geeks with a highly inflated opinion of their own martial and mental prowess.
Now, however, the hero's get beat up quite a bit.  There's no edge when you characters are invincible. Poor little guys...
What all that means is that yes, my characters just happen in my head. As far as I can remember, I have never created a character step by step that wasn't for some sort of RPG lol.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but, if for whatever reason I try to take my characters in a direction that they would not normally go down, I get partial writer's block untill I let them get back on a path that their personalities like. Anyone else get that?

terioncalling:
Posting because I find this amusing...I'm slowly forming a character who's spawning from a poem that was inspired solely by the word snickersnack.  And he has a mentor/trainer guy who's dead but not dead.  Beyond that, I've got nothing.


But it was all spawned by the word snickersnack.  And I felt I should share.

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