Time to agitate the forum again. This thread is going to be a running catalog and commentary on character development tools and articles. As I find things, I will post them and give commentary. Feel free to contribute your own. You never know when an article or way of approaching the problem will speak to someone else.
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The 9 Ingredients of Character Developmenthttp://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/the-9-ingredients-of-character-developmentThis is a Writer's Digest article which gives you the main ingreedients of character development fairly succinctly... once the author finally gets to the point:
I prefer to write plot-driven suspense thrillers. But how does the low-brow thriller writer create good characters? I’m still a novice on the subject so this is by no means a definitive exposition, just 9 ingredients I jotted down to make a clever acrostic: CHARACTER.
1. Communication style: How does your character talk? Does she favor certain words or phrases that make her distinct and interesting? What about the sound of her voice? Much of our personality comes through our speech, so think about the way your character is going to talk. Her style of communication should be distinctive and unique.
2. History: Where does your character come from? Think out his childhood and adolescence. What events shaped his personality? What did his father do for a living? How about his mother? How many siblings does he have? Was it a loving family or an abusive, dysfunctional one? What events led him to the career choices he made? You may not need to provide all this background to your reader, but it’s good to know as the writer. It helps give him substance in your mind as well.
3. Appearance: What does she look like? This may be the least important ingredient to make your character a person to the reader, but you should still know it in your own mind. Not every character needs to be drop-dead gorgeous, by the way. Most people aren’t.
4. Relationships: What kind of friends and family does he have? How does he relate to them? Is he very social or reclusive, or somewhere in between? People can be defined by the company they keep, so this can be a good way to define your character.
5. Ambition: Just as this is the central letter of the acrostic, so too this concept is absolutely central to your character and plot. What is her passion in life? What goal is she trying to accomplish through your story? What is her unrecognized, internal need and how will she meet it?
6. Character defect: Everyone has some personality trait that irritates his friends or family. Is he too self-centered? Too competitive? Too lazy? Too compliant? Too demanding of others? Don’t go overboard on this. After all, you want your reader to like the character. But he’ll feel more real if he has some flaw. This is usually connected to his unrecognized need (see Ambition) and often gets resolved through his character arch.
7. Thoughts: What kind of internal dialogue does your character have? How does she think through her problems and dilemmas? Is her internal voice the same as her external? If not, does this create internal conflict for her? In real life we don’t have the benefit of knowing someone’s innermost thoughts, but a novel allows us to do just that, so use it to your advantage.
8. Everyman-ness: How relatable is your character? While James Bond is fun to watch on screen, most of us aren’t uber-trained special agent-assassins so it’s a little hard to relate to him on a personal level. On the other hand, Kurt Russell’s character in the movie Breakdown was far more ordinary and relatable, creating a more visceral experience. Be careful not to make your character too elite or he may be too difficult to live vicariously through. And that, after all, is the key to suspense.
9. Restrictions: More than a personality flaw, what physical or mental weakness must your character overcome through her arch? After all, even Superman had Kryptonite. This helps humanize your character, making her more sympathetic and relatable.
The goal is to make your readers feel something for your character. The more they care about them, the more emotion they’ll invest in your story. And maybe that’s the secret.
This one is pretty straightforward. I don't really disagree with any of it, so there isn't much commentary here. However, I will emphasis the last point he made. Even though we are not writers, giving your fellow players something to attach to emotionally is highly important. Emotional attachment will bring people back to RP with you, it will make people seek you out for RP, it will make sure people remember your character for a long time, and it will be more fun to play.
Always, always,
always keep in mind the need to make your character interesting and engaging to others.
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Yay, we get to the requisite TVTrope.org page..
Character Depthhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterDepthThis page gives a nice definition and handy quick ref guide for character depth:
This is how "deep" a character is. It involves questions like why the character does what the character does, what the character thinks, feels, desires, and hates, backstory, and/or how the character sees the world. It may be there in Sub Text, but it still affects the depth of the character.
The Three Dimensions can be thought of thus:
Height: How important the character is to the story/society/main character. Most one-dimensional characters are defined by this and one or two character trait(s).
Breadth: Variation within a character. The amount of different traits that define them and how well these interact.
Depth: How the character changes the better you know them. If your ogres are like onions, they do indeed have depth.
I really like a point that is made on the page but not quoted here. Not all characters need to be three dimensional. Characters that are not important to a story but fill them out can be less deep. The page goes on to give a guide of what characters needs to be in which category: one, two, or three dimensional.
However, I would state the nature of the third dimension different. Depth can involve how a character changes over the course of a story but it is not necessary that a character changes. Sometimes it is a matter of how the reader's impression of the character changes over the story. Sometimes you learn more and you will find that you no longer think of a character as unsympathetic or maybe you don't think they are as nice as they first appeared. This is why three dimensional characters involve so much work, they have facets. Different facets will appear differently when different spotlights are thrown on them.
Further, three dimensional characters are not only the focal point of interest, they are also the ones pushing the story along. It's important that at least one or the other, story or character, progresses in some way, but they can develop semi independent of each other.
What I mean is that a story can center around a character that never changes and a character can change because of things not related to their main story. This is most true in RPs. Many characters will be the same year in and year out but can be involved in mulitple interesting RPs. On the other hand, a character can go through a major character shift because of a small detail in a side RP that had nothing to do with the character's main personal story.
When RPing, look for ways to either advance a character's development or the story's development.
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For now I'll leave it at these two. Feel free to go to the sites and read the full articles then come back and comment on them.
