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thatfrenchhelper:

I just found this while lurking around deviantart for writing resources and thought it could be useful to some.


Admin Note: This post is a rebloggable copy of our page on character morality. The page is being phased out, so from now on all updates will be made on this post and not on the page. 

Is your character moral? This is a very complicated question. First of all, what is “moral”?

Moral (n): focused on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom.

Okay, so moral characters are concerned with right-mindedness; they care about doing the right thing. Right? Notice that, by the definition, morality supersedes legality and customs, which are constraints imposed on people by society. These constraints may be immoral like the military draft which forces people into a situation where they may have to kill another person (killing is pretty much immoral, folks) or the common custom of the “little white lie”. And because these constraints may be immoral, a moral character may, on occasion (or all the time), ignore them.

What are the principles of moral behavior? How can you tell, basically, if a character is moral?

“If you ask anyone, ‘What is morality based on?’ these are the two factors that always come out: One is Reciprocity, and associated with it is a sense of justice and a sense of fairness, and the other one is Empathy and compassion. Human morality is more than this, but if you would remove these two pillars, there would be not much remaining, I think, and so they are absolutely essential.” - Frans de Waal

What do Reciprocity and Empathy mean?

Reciprocity (n): responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind action

Empathy (n): the ability to understand and share the feelings of another

If your character is moral, he or she will almost certainly have a sense of fairness and compassion. Both of these are considered part of the Seven High Virtues, with Empathy commonly referred to as “Love” or “Charity”, and Reciprocity most often called “Justice”. Very moral characters will, most likely, have either Love, Charity, or Justice as their peak virtue.

Moral characters are often good listeners. They care for other people, and they want to do right by them. They are willing to take action to create positive outcomes for others. They have little to no concern for themselves.

Don’t get us wrong, morality is a sliding scale. Many heroic characters are basically moral, though they may sometimes kill, lie, steal, or cheat depending on what life-threatening or otherwise difficult situation has arisen. But if you’re looking for straight-up a moral character, the most common indicator will always be cooperation.

Does your character play well with others?

Morality arises from the need for cooperation, and the understanding of cooperation as essential to human interaction. There is no need to be moral if you are, for example, the last human on Earth. Who is there to be moral with or to? Therefore, moral characters desire to interact with others in a positive way. Immoral characters don’t care about offending or harming others, so they are cool with interacting in a negative way.

Moral heroic characters are often great leaders because they are good at cooperating. Immoral heroic characters are often loners because they are awful at cooperating.

Alright, so if your character moral, they will (most likely):

It is worth noting that morality is different for different people in different places at different times in history. Generally, there are universal ideas of morality instilled within us from infancy (these are cooperation, justice, compassion, a sense of “rightness” and “wrongness”, etc). Deciding what you, as a writer, think of as “moral” is fundamental in determining the morality of the character in question. We can’t tell you what moral is for you in your story or for yourself, but once you decide that, you will be able to define your character’s morality.

If you are very interested in determining the morality of your character, you can take this quiz for yourself and/or for your character to help you decide. Be warned that some of the questions may not be truly applicable to your characters (for instance, whether or not stem cell research is wrong may not be an issue in your world because there is no stem cell research), but do your best to answer for your character in those situations.

For more on morality, check out our Videos about Morality post!

-C


In our post on character morality, we sought to answer basic questions about how to understand and convey a character’s morality. In the interest of thoroughness, here are some great video resources to learn more about morality.

Morality:

BONUS: Justice:



Source: writerscorner

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

About back story: My characters tend to have a lot of it, and I understand that this is a good thing. But I also have trouble /pacing/ it throughout the story so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed. And it just feels like I’m doing this: IjustlovemycharactersomuchandIwanttotellyoueverythingaboutthemrightawaysothatyoulovethemtooooooooooo. And yeah, that’s annoying and the reader will probably get a headache. So, do you have any tips for pacing character back story?
 Anonymous

When it comes to revealing backstories, I really think that less is more, and I’ll tell you why.

  • Realism: Real people (and good characters) are complicated, multilayered, and have been living their own lives prior to when you met them. However, when you first meet someone, do they pour out their life story to you in a Scheherazade-like epic retelling? Not usually. Usually, you get to know them over time, and you learn new things when they come up in the time you spend together. In time, you may even know quite a lot about that person- but it takes time. Knowing about someone’s history, their childhood, and their current life is a mark of trust and a lot of time spent together. I can only claim to know a handful of people as well as you’d normally get to know the protagonist of a book. 

In short- there’s a lot about characters and people that you don’t know. Trying to tell your audience ‘the whole story’ about someone will likely only cause you (and your reader) a headache. While they may learn a great deal about the character over the course of the narrative, they’ll learn it better in bits and pieces. 

  • Relevance to plot: While it’s good to throughly develop a character’s background for your own purposes, when you’re writing, ask yourself: Is this relevant to the story at hand, or would this be something that would be better placed in a prequel about that character (whether you intend to write one or not). 
    For example: If I’m telling you a story about how Pen and I got chased by a dog, it’s relevant that she’s scared of dogs after one treed her as a child, and would come up in the narrative naturally. It’s irrelevant that I had a bad experience with lemon popsicles as a child, and would feel out of place.  

Additionally, your character will probably be developing and changing within the story- so the focus should be on how they’re becoming a different person than who they were in the times of their backstory. People evolve continually, so really, ‘backstory’ is kind of a broad term. Exceptions include purposefully static characters, characters who are caught in the past themselves, and the like. 

  • Finally, why it’s good to keep readers in the dark just a little bit: Now, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘show not tell’ approximately 10^23 times by now. But it applies here too! When possible, it really helps to try and demonstrate a character’s backstory, rather than tell it straight. Harking back to Pen and I’s hypothetical dog adventure- if she turns pale when we go by the dog park, the reader can infer that something happened in her past involving dogs. This in many ways is better than flat telling, because a block of telling backstory can be boring, but if you make it just enough of a puzzle, the reader will feel really clever for having figured out something about the character that wasn’t explicitly stated (and we want them to feel clever, it keeps them interesting). From there, you need to decide if the shown not told detail is a segue in to a written explanation, or a noodle incident. Segues are good if you need to do a lil bit of an infodump that’s relevant and important and all that to the plot. The trick is, keep the reader feeling clever. The ideal is that when you reveal that Pen has a crippling fear of dogs since she was five, the reader screams bloody murder about how they called it. When it comes to a noodle incident (a noodle incident being a past event that is frequently brought up, but not properly explained. ie, ‘Budapest’ in Avengers) the first rule is that is that you never explain the noodle incident. Instead,you let the readers draw their own conclusions or make their own theories, as they will almost invariably be disappointed with your answer. Decide which is better or more suited to your story.

IN SUMMARY,

some tips for you include:

  • Reveal backstory in digestible lil bites
  • Reveal those bites when they come up naturally
  • Select which details are relevant to the story at hand, and which are irrelevant 
  • Try to ‘show not tell’ some parts of your character’s history

That’s it, hope it helps!
-Evvy


fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

image

An article, to accompany this prompt about character design. 

Why is it important that characters be distinctive?

Generally as an artist, you want your audience to sympathize with your characters, grow attached to them, and get to know them. Recognizing each character is step number one in that battle. If everyone looks the same, a piece such as a comic can get very dull very fast- readers won’t be emotionally invested if they can’t keep track of who’s who at all. (Even live action movies can make it hard to differentiate the character’s designs, which can be a recipe for apathetic viewers).  
When working in visual mediums, audiences will usually be remembering characters based on their faces, and learning names later. A distinctive face is a memorable face- and memorable is good. 

What makes a character distinctive looking?

When I say distinctive, I mean that if I, within the context of talking about a work, said ‘sideburns guy’, everyone would know exactly who I meant without elaboration. ‘Distinctive looking’ means that their character design does not (or would only intentionally) overlap with the other characters. Within the group they stand out, and if you made a ‘cast on bleachers’ picture, followers of your work could label them all off without too much trouble (if you’ve read or watched Fullmetal Alchemist, take a look at the picture up top, and see who you can name. FMA is a great example of a large, varied, and recognizable cast). 

What keeps characters from looking distinctive? 

Usually, when someone learns to draw, say, a nose, they learn to draw it one way, and that becomes ‘how to draw a nose’. Additionally, artists often end up drawing characters that look to some degree like themselves. It’s not usually out of vanity- it’s just that your own face is familiar, and easily available whenever a reference is needed, as long as there is a mirror/photobooth/side of a kettle on hand. Sometimes, this can result in all their drawings resembling themselves, which doesn’t make for a very distinctive cast. The best way to remedy this is to study different people’s looks, by looking at varied images, drawing from models, and to practice drawing the different looks. Make yourself some ‘features banks’ that you have down, to draw from when creating new characters. If you notice that two characters are a little similar, make a side-by-side comparison chart, highlighting their differences (and adding some, if you need to). 

Purposeful Resemblances:

There are times when you are going to want certain characters to resemble each other. For example, you might want a family to have similar facial structure, or maybe you want a new character to remind someone of a person that they used to know. This is much, much easier if the rest of the cast is varied. Two people with the same eyes are noticeable in real life and in works with varied casts. It will be ignored if one or two eye shapes are the norm throughout the cast. If the resemblance is clearly deliberate, it will be picked up on by the audience. 
It’s also possible that you have Important Artistic Motives behind why your cast lacks variation- again, as long as it’s very intentional, you’re fine.  

Challenges In Distinctive Features

You may want to pick your battles with varied features, based on your media. For example, if you are writing a comic, having leads that are 5’0” and 6’4”, respectively, could pose a problem- they won’t fit in frames together. Therefore, certain similarities are definitely allowable if practicality demands it. Likewise, if you have to draw a character repeatedly, intricate tattoos or very complicated patterns will result in you weeping rivers of tears after four pages. Decide what is best for how you’ll be working.

A few ways in which characters are typically differentiated:

  • Hair style or color: While people will naturally categorize things by color, color of hair often isn’t quite enough to differentiate people if they have similar faces (especially if a viewer can’t see the full spectrum). Additionally, there are only a few basic hair colors that humans have without the aid of dye. And if you work grayscale… you have black, white, and tone. Style can help, but you should still have different faces for your characters. Basically, hair has a lot of options for variants- so use that for all it’s worth, but mix up other traits too. 
  • Eye color: Again, color only gets you so far. Eye shape on the other hand will alter the whole look of the face, and can be seen from a greater distance. 
  • Accessories: If something is worn perpetually, it can be a big help- glasses, for example. Piercings can set someone apart a bit. As a general rule, though: Don’t rely on it if it comes off.  
  • Clothing: If someone has a permacoat, or always wears a hat, it can really mark them out, particularly if you work in color. If they will only wear one outfit, go ahead and make those really distinctive. If the clothes will ever change, run the Shaved And Uniformed test. 
  • Body Type: Why is body type not used more? My guess is the artists haven’t seen enough naked people. Go check out different body types. There are more shapes out there than you might think. ‘Muscly’ does not mean only one look. ‘Curvy’ does not mean only one look. Have some height variation, have some weight variation. Having differing body types will help you so much. 
  • Facial Structure: I’m talking eye shapes, noses, mouths, the shape of the head and face. There are fourteen kinds of nose, there’s no excuse for everyone in your cast to wear exactly the same one unless it’s An Important Stylistic Decision.
  • Expression: Facial expressions can be a big part of character! Try putting a sappily cheerful grin on a habitually grim character- the effect is unsettling, isn’t it? In addition to the ‘resting’ face structure, your characters probably have a few default facial expressions- one is more prone to scowl, one is more prone to smile. People’s faces move differently, based on their structure- someone with a naturally downturned mouth won’t smile the same as someone with one that goes up, and expressions are often colored by the defaults. 
  • Ethnicity: If you have a large cast, and no reason why they need to be of the same ethnicity, I don’t know why you wouldn’t vary your cast’s ethnicity.
  • Body language: Similar to expression and posture- what sorts of gestures are typical of your characters? Maybe one moves their hands a lot when they speak? Maybe they nod a lot. Habitual gestures can be used as markers for particular characters. 
  • Posture/lines of action: Does your character slouch, or stand up military straight? Are they floppy or rigid in their movements? Are their lines of action angular or curved? Try reducing the character to a stick figure, and check out how they stand and move. 

Ways to test your cast’s distinctiveness:

  • Draw them with shaved heads and in similar outfits/naked. Can you still tell them apart?
  • Draw your cast as silhouettes- can you still tell them apart? Is each character recognizable from a silhouette alone? 
  • Get other people to review your character designs, and find out how easy it is for them to recognize characters. This will vary based on how good your subjects are with faces (some people aren’t good with them at all), but it will remove the familiarity that you have with your cast. 
  • If you work in color, put everything in black and white. 
  • If you work in color or grayscale, I hereby reduce you to outlines. Can you still tell them apart?

-This has been Evvy, at FYCD. 

Further reading:

TV Tropes: Cast of Snowflakes   

^ (Where I retrieved the image used as an illustration at the top).

TV Tropes: Only Six Faces

Character Design Tips

Different Body Types- Drawing Reference

Face Shapes

The Fourteen Nose Shapes 

A Bit of Eye Reference

A Posture Chart

Palmistry For Hand Shapes: Weirdly Drawn But You Get The Point 

Artist’s Guide to Human Features

Practicing Expressions/The Classic 25 Challenge (each character should have a somewhat different 25!)


Source: fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment

bookgeekconfessions:

I was asked to make a rebloggable version.

image
1. Be bold, vicious and detailed. 
There are different kinds of abuse and they are all damaging to a person. In our current social climate it seems to me that authors and readers have no idea what an abusive relationship is. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are in an abusive relationship. Travis Maddox and Abby from Beautiful Disaster are in an abusive relationship. Braden and Joss from “On Dublin Street” are not quite there, but they are straddling the line. Christian Grey from “Fifty Shades of Grey” is probably the most terrifyingly controlling man in any book I have ever read and it has nothing to do with the fact that he is into the BDSM lifestyle.

If you are going to write an abusive relationship you have to be aware that abuse has been glamorized and glossed over.  Extreme jealousy is now seen as romantic, because “he’s so afraid of losing me.”  If a guy isn’t insanely passionate, breaking down doors and watching the heroine sleep then “he doesn’t care enough.”  If the guy is trying to isolate the heroine, have control of the way she dresses or where she goes it’s because “he doesn’t want to share me.”

It is scary as hell out there  and if you are going to write this kind of relationship you have to go for it 100%. You can not dilute or gloss over how horrible it is. You have to make it very clear that this is not romantic, it is not sweet, it is abusive and this kind of guy may love you forever, but he will probably also destroy you in the mean time

2. Research.
Everyone is different. Every relationship is different, which means that every abusive relationship is also different.  Do research. When I was in film school I wrote a short film about a woman who runs from an abusive relationship. I did hours of research on the web. Do you know that survivors of domestic abuse run blogs and websites? These incredible women put all their emotions on the web in the hopes that women who are living through it will read it and be inspired to leave. It is amazing. These stories will break your heart, they will piss you off, frighten you and fill you with conviction. There were nights where I wanted to grab a baseball bat and just go after these husbands. The point is that I found two stories that touched me so deeply, I wrote for hours.

If you have never been in this kind of relationship you have NO IDEA what it’s like. You have no idea, so don’t for a second think that you can come up with these emotions from scratch. If you want to delve deep into the brain of the victim, of the person who sleeps beside their abuser every night, then you have to find their thoughts. You still wont really know what it’s like, but this will give you a better starting point then your preconceived notions of what it means to be abused.

Read More


Source: bookgeekconfessions

thatfrenchhelper:

image

When creating a character, there’s a lot of questions you ask yourself. Whether it’s an original character or one you’ve been playing for a long time, using a character sheet to get to know your character better can always be a nice idea. With it’s help, you’ll be able to think about things you didn’t necesarily thought about, and ask some important questions to yourself that might activate your character’s voice, or help you to get your muse back with them. Everyone has their favorite character sheets, some people prefer to have a lot of questions, some others like it a bit more vague, so here’s a masterlist of the character sheets I found on various websites and found quite interesting, plus some other things that could be used to help you see, for example, how other character view yours. 

With these sheets, you could also try to find your character’s Jung and Enneagram Type or use the Moral Alignment tool. All of these things can be really useful to get a better grip on a character.

Then, if you’re trying to create a character, and do not have many ideas, or get stuck, I’d suggest for you to roam around TVTropes, which gives you a lot of tropes used for character creation. Maybe you could try to mix a few of these and create an original character?

Or, if you’re a skillful writer and know how to make your character different from another, make a list of characters in fiction you happen to find interesting and why. Try to keep it short. Then, maybe, try to mix and match things from two or three characters, take a character and change their backstory, to see what would change. Play with them to inspire yourself and create something new, original and truly yours.

Oh, and here’s a little guide to Mary-Sues and OCs, just in case you want to make sure your character isn’t going to become a Mary-Sue or a Gary-Stu

And last but not least, this article about building fictional character definitely seemed interesting to me, and is full of many other links that could guide you during the creating of your character and help you file one of these sheets.


Source: thatfrenchhelper

referenceforwriters:

Recently I got a message about a person struggling on how to develop their characters, as they normally wrote about already created characters—also about how to make them interesting and make the people reading your story actually want to continue reading it.

I’d say this is one of the main differences between fanfiction and original work. Writing fanfiction you already rely on the fact people know the characters—how they look (or are supposed to look), personalities, and backgrounds… unless you’re writing an AU.  There’s people that already like the characters and would (probably) be willing to read your story. Now, you focus on a good plot to interest them.

But then we are back on our original stories, our novels, anything we write. We have to create our characters from scratch—interesting characters that can fit and make our story flow. Because good characters can handle a poor plot, yet a good plot can’t handle poor characters. I guess this is all we do here, right? this is the bane of our existence as writers. 

Truth is, there’s no right way to write a story. And there’s no right way to develop a character! I tested this by asking you guys how you do to create and flesh out your characters. Every response was personal and different.

Sometimes it starts with the spark of an word, an archetype, a color, a trait, a flaw, a song lyric, a painting, someone you know in real life—then you go from there.

Here are some basic steps on developing a character, yet, you can do it as you see fit:

  1. You start with the personality. Once that’s done it’s relatively easier to know how they look like. You sculpt and pick virtues and vices, flaws and qualities—perfect characters are not interesting. When it comes to protagonists and antagonists, they’re neither 100% good nor 100% bad, because there is not fully good or bad people. Get what I’m saying? Round characters are the thing we’re going for. Take details from people in real life, if you want: funny habits, mannerisms, what makes people human. 
  2. Work on the appearance of your character. What’s their body type, their eye color, skin color, hair color, shape of their face/nose, if they have birthmarks or scars somewhere… 
  3. Pick a name as you see fit. This can be the first step depending on how you work. Is there a meaning behind it? does it show somehow their character’s personality? remember sometimes they are relevant to the setting/genre. 
  4. Flesh. ‘Em. Out. Think of hobbies and background. How’s the relationship with their family and friends, how they act around authority, what kinds of clothes they like to wear…
  5. Always remember: character development is an ongoing thing. You never “finish” developing your character, just like we, as people, don’t stay the same. 

That being said, be creative with it! Don’t imitate the way your favorite authors develop their characters- create your own way! your characters are all yours! Make playlists about songs that remind you of your characters, keep a journal for them- sky’s the limit.

Good links for you:

-Alex

WriteWorld’s resources on character can be found in our Toolbox. we also tag all of our posts related to character.

-C


leviathan-rpc:


Source: leviathan-rpc