Character Development Lessons: 03 Inheritance · 8:21am Nov 26th, 2013
Character Development
03 Inheritance
Greetings students. I'm a little gloomy today so pardon me if this is a little bland.
Today we are following up on the previous lesson on traits with inheritance. Normally inheritance would be refereed to genetically with genes and alleles, but with writing characters it takes on a whole other meaning. As your story progresses, events are sure to unfold that involve your character and help to develop them. As to how you get your character to change through these experiences is by inheritance.
Each event will put aspects of the character on trail. The character then must overcome these challenges that go against their aspects. Most times, it is too much for how the character currently is, and it is now that inheritance comes in.
Each event will highlight a flaw in a character, so the character must right that flaw. When they realise that the challenge cannot be done by their normal standards of approach, they must inherit a new trait that will allow them to overcome it. These traits come from the lesson the challenge will teach.
If a character were to wrong someone and they cannot find it within themselves to apologize then to continue forward with the story and their development they must inherit the trait of righting their wrongs.
This kind of situation can branch out in many ways, sometimes the trait they inherit is not the wanted one and the character can end up making further mistakes, but in the end the character and developed and changed towards being different.
One could compare this whole lot to evolution. Through a series of challenges, the undesired traits of a character die out and the stronger, more suited traits survive or are introduced. I've been getting way too into biology...
Sorry for such a short entry, but next time we're going into something big and on a specific subject to this site, cliches within human characters.
Class is dismissed!
