Writing advice: Creating characters · 12:03am Sep 4th, 2013
I wrote about this a while ago, but I didn't post it to my blog, so for the benefit of those of you who didn't see it (most of you,) here's my talk regarding OCs and the development/usage thereof.
The Care and Feeding of Original Characters
A lot of people spend a lot of time pondering the fine details of OCs. I argue that details actually don't even matter half the time. I'll get to that.
The obvious way to create a character is to create a "profile" for them, the way you would when you were doing forum RPs in the old days. For those of you who used to do the whole RP thing back in your "old days" (Gaia Online perhaps? Or other forums? Perhaps even as recently as doing it on pony forums?) this is going to look very familiar:
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Species:
Rough appearance:
Weapons:
Special powers:
Backstory:
Sexual orientation:
Cock size:
That's fine, but in practice it gives you very little direction in how to write your character and how to make your character good. I don't mean to be patronizing here; It's just that I want to emphasize how very, very wrong it is to model OC building after the conventions of your old RPing days if you had them. If you tend not to build detailed OC profiles like this, go ahead and skip this couple of paragraphs.
See, This is all just basic information and is meant to be a supplement to help people understand who's talking. Half of it doesn't even matter, and this is true no matter how much thought and detail you do here.
I actually hate backstories and think that they should be invented in bits and pieces as required by the actual-story--I'll get to that. And establishing your character's limits and power level probably never matters, ever, even a little bit, ever, ever.
Understand that building an OC isn't just describing the character that's in your heart; it's a process of building. You are not telling people information about your character; nobody wants to read your character sheet and nobody gives a shit even if they feign interest. You are fitting a character into your story, and as such you need to move beyond a detailed backstory and an emotional understanding of the character's personality if you are to present the character to readers instead of just to RP partners.
As such, when I asked people to make character sheets, they always looked like this:
Name:
Detailed appearance:
Brief biography:
Special powers/qualities:
Sexual orientation:
Cock size:
But even that's not good enough. If I were to write a version of a "character sheet" that gives the vital information for fanfiction or character-oriented stories, it would probably look like this:
Name:
One-sentence, stylized description: Who cares about the details? This only needs to click into the "impression" element below.
Role in the story: "understandable antagonist," "comic relief," "introduces/develops plot twist x"
Impression on the reader: "Snotty douchebag," "well-meaning moron," "sees himself as a knight in shining armor," or my personal favorite, "Ethical Slut"
Feelings about other characters and events: This should help to guide quite a few things, and putting it on display often shows cool attention to detail.
For minor characters and non-character-driven stories, you are now finished with the character. That's all you need. He needs to have a flavor and make a significant impression, and he needs to play a role in a clean and defined way, and he needs to have some kind of reason for his actions. He will be much more enjoyable if he has a strong and distinct "voice" to how he speaks and how he is described. You can get away with not even thinking about his eye color, as long as your description is appropriately cool and impactful.
But perhaps you want your character to be a little deeper. Use some caution here, because it's not always necessary, not even when you think it might be--again, if your story is meant to be a clean, straightforward thing, you probably shouldn't go through this kind of trouble even for protagonists. This part matters if you think your story would be greatly enhanced by nuanced interactions and a psychological/emotional understanding of the character for the READER. Again, your own emotional understanding is not important.
This is one time when backstory might actually matter, because a backstory can help you build a psychological profile. But the character's life story and how it led them to where they are currently? Pfft. What matters about the backstory is answering the non-obvious questions to build ethical, emotional, and psychological details.
Some examples of non-obvious questions:
What is the character's relationship with their currently living family?
What were your character's schoolyard days like?
What was your character's last romantic relationship like? How did it start? How did it end?
If they are currently in a relationship, how did it start and how is it going for them?
Is there something that makes your character irrationally angry?
Is there something that your character just irrationally dislikes in general?
What are your character's hobbies?
How did your character learn their trade/skills? What was it like for them to learn?
You mostly will not use these things, but exploring them will likely bring up new ideas for how your character might be more than an RP profile–hopefully in large ways. I once used this technique to turn a soft-spoken Yuna type into a terrorist-sympathizing, man-hating, religious radical (of a nice religion, mind you) who always does her best to be honest (even though she's not very good at being nice and is regularly rude to anyone who's white and male) simply because she wants to be better than her rough origins.
That's pretty cool. And it's gonna drive some cool interactions.
But as always, the most important advice is not to listen to dickheads why try to give you advice.
So, in summary, I need to know, before I start writing an OC:
How they react to different things
Their role in the story
Cock size
I think Orson Scott Card said it, that "You should know your characters much better than your readers ever will."
I've never managed to plan out a character that thoroughly, but it's definitely something I could see improving my writing.
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Some of my advice up there is the opposite. Really, the most important thing is thinking about just how your readers will know, and making that your first, last, and only priority.
Regardless, yes, I've written two, maybe three, maybe four things that made a lot of use of my own advice here, and it was an interesting experience.
What did your character have for breakfast?
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It comes up more often than you would think.
Actually, I think the best way to know if you've gotten the character down is: do you write them with a particular voice in mind? If you do, they'll seem consistent to the reader even if they really aren't.