Building a character

whatagrump:

There’re a lot of guides for creating characters, and some of them are probably excellent, but I don’t usually see those. More often, I see questions that are either extremely trivial/detail oriented, or extremely broad. I came up with a few questions of my own that take more of a middle ground.  

Coming up with your character’s backstory/profession/appearance is the fun part—I find crafting unique personalities a little more challenging, especially when you’re working with a large cast.

Conceptualization

  • What’s their conception of themselves? What misconceptions do they shelter?
  • What are their “rules of behavior”? Things that in almost all scenarios remain consistent, like the way they react to stress or their way of expressing joy. For example, a character’s “rule of behavior” when confronted with an obstacle might be to ask for help, to give up quickly, to tackle it head on, to think their way around it, etc.
  • What aspect of themselves are they most proud of? What are they most ashamed of?
  • What thing (an object, a relationship, a way of life, etc.) do they value most? What thing are they most likely to give up?
  • What’s their worst case scenario?
  • How much or how little do they value the opinion of others, and why?
  • How do they feel about the place they live? The place they came from?
  • What separates you, the writer, from the character? What do you have in common?
  • How does the character relate to the central themes of the story? [In my opinion, this is an extremely important, often neglected aspect of character]

Execution 

  • How will you communicate the more complex aspects of their personality? How late in the story do you plan on introducing certain elements?
  • What do the other primary characters first think of them? How are their first impressions challenged?
  • What is their primary role in the plot? [Maybe an obvious question, but it’s very easy to let something like this slip by until suddenly you’re questioning why the character exists in the first place]

Small tip: personally, I find answering lists of questions in complete sentences/paragraphs rather than sentence fragments helps me keep my train of thought coherent and considerate.

Another small tip: if you want to come up with your own questions, try picking out a few of your favorite fictional characters and work your way backwards. What about them is so compelling? What questions would you need to ask to uncover those things? 

idontwikeit:

James Flint Appreciation Week: Tuesday – Most Memorable/Favourite Quote

You must know this. You’re too smart not to know this. They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn’t true. We can prove that it isn’t true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom.

Source: idontwikeit

shadow-magnet:

One gets used to a state of affairs for such a long time, it’s easy to forget that they’re all just transitions. Specks of dust suspended in the air until a strong enough gust comes along and rearranges everything. A strong gust has come to this place. The men can feel it. Know it will upset everything they thought they understood just a few days ago. They’ll need to lean on something solid. On the men who can reassure them that in times like these, there are some things that can be counted on. They’ll look to me for that. But they’ll also look to their new quartermaster. They voted?

Source: shadow-magnet

There’s a ghost, and it knows what I know.

ao3feed-silverflint:

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2GdS4G3

by

“Avevi ragione,” dice un giorno Silver, dopo essersi presentato davanti alla sua porta in una giornata di primavera.
Lo dice così, con un’alzata di spalle, appoggiato con le spalle al muro di una locanda.

Words: 934, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Italiano

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2GdS4G3

Hooray, the Black Sails fandom has a few stories (very well) written in Italian, and a wonderful post-series meta-story in German.

idontwikeit:

Black Sails 1.02 // 2.05 // 2.08 // 3.10 // 4.09 // 4.10 – Truths

And then what does it matter if it was true when it was born? It’s found truth in its maturity, which if a virtue in man ought to be no less so for the things men create…Long John Silver’s story is a hard one to know. The men who believed most deeply in it were ultimately destroyed by it. And those who stood to benefit most from it were the most eager to leave it all behind.
Until all that remains of any of it are stories bearing only a passing resemblance to the world the rest of us lived in. A world we survived.
A world that is no more.

I think this is (after Silverflint) the main appeal of this series for me: the reflections on stories/ storytelling/ fact and fiction/ memory and history. What is changed, how, why, by whom. What is passed on, why and by whom. Why even some fictions (Silver’s narratives) have a function. Truly great stuff.

Source: idontwikeit