Character Development Lessons: 06 A Lot Of Things · 5:31am Dec 30th, 2013
Character Development
A Lot Of Things
Hello people. Happy holidays! I hope you're all enjoying yourselves during this merry time. I know I have.
This isn't my return from hiatus, simply a catch up on the things I have observed and learnt during my time away. While I've been off site, completely, I've been spending a lot of time in the outside world. I've observed many people and many things, even looking at people I know in new lights. I've searched through animes, books, TV, video games, pornos, through the ins and outs of the shadowed world we live in today.
These are my theories and ideas.
Through The Eyes Of A Rainbow
When one person talks to another, they share the knowledge and ideals they started up in their heads. However, they don't do it very well. When sharing an idea, the talker already fully understands the ideal to a point where it's as simple and singing the alphabet. Getting caught up in their own mind, they quickly forget that when explaining it, they must explain everything about the idea including the circumstances and sight needed to show it through their desired understanding. This leaves the other person misunderstanding what is said for something completely different.
This happens every day in everyday things, the lazy examples being giving directions and the better example being telling someone your true feelings about them without outright saying it because of embarrassment. The wrong meaning is passed, and both parties leave not quite on the same page.
This is a very important point when writing for characters. When you are writing from the perspective of one character and another character is talking to them, we'll make your character A and the other B, it is important you don't write exactly what B means. Whether in third perspective or first, it is impossible to tell what someone really means, so don't write it. You may understand completely as the author but A doesn't.
One way you can do this wrong is like this: "Blah blah blah blah blah" said B. He said this as he thought...
That was a terrible example. I swear I'm going somewhere with this.
A person and their ideas and in three groups, how what they say is taken by everyone else, what they think they are saying to their ideal, and what they desire to be understood.
It's kind of like a rainbow. On one side, we have blue, the outside of the person that everyone sees and hears. On the far other side is red, the persons desires and true colours locked deep within their own heart. In the middle somewhere, green yellow whatever, is the mind. The mind tries to pass the idea from red to blue, but the mind is like a paint mixer, always turning and swirling so the idea gets jumbled in the mix. Another effect of the presentation of the final product of blue is where the mind is set in the colours. If the mind is set closer to blue, they know what the people understand and can translate better, but because they are so far from red they can only get a hazy idea of what they want to say. The opposite is being close to red. Being closer to red, they can see clearly what it is they want to pass along very clearly, the problem is that they are so far away from blue and from people that they can't translate it through the distance.
These two examples can resemble the popular kid, knowing what everyone likes but not how they themselves desire, and the shut-in, complete and satisfactory with themselves and their perfect understanding of what they are and want, but can't say it as their are no words they know or people that can understand. Two completely different types of people and characters, the exact same problem they share.
Sometimes, none of three get along. The mind is running back and forth between the two. The mind disagrees with the deep red desires and tries to make their own ideals in the bit swirly mess. Blue cannot function without red, so it ignores the minds ideals and runs out of control, free of the tug that red pulled while in control of the mind. This can be taken ad denial, insanity, shyness, or anything where a character tries to cut away from their cut colours to make a second base, and fails miserably.
When intact, the mind can be placed all along the rainbow depending how they interact with society. Some people have shorter spectrum's of colour and can translate their desire a lot more easily, while others have spectrum's the size of the light spectrum, making is seemingly impossible to show their true selves. People with longer spectrum's are generally in the two extremes I talked about before, while the shorter ones seem to have a hold of things in their life.
But remember, the shorter the spectrum, the more in control they are of their lives and themselves and the less human and more bad OC they become.
Knowledge
Knowledge is what makes a character. It's what they know, and that includes everything. From the moment they open their tiny new word described eyes and glance into the void you have yet to fill with a world, they have knowledge. It is this knowledge they gain through and story, and generally start with, that they can use to tell right from wrong. They use this knowledge to survive in the world they grew up in as the knowledge they have is only about that single world. Even our imagination, the things we make up and create, are all based on what we already know. Nothing is new, only Frankensteined.
This is what some people forget when placing one character in a world world. The gap between the newcomers knowledge and the knowledge of the natives is hazy and unclear. Like in most pony war stories you see the ponies oddly more calm then they should be and prepare tactics and weapons they come up with themselves that is beyond what they know. They are peaceful, living in a world full of love and evil is drowned with fuzzy rainbow cannons. Yet in the stories, when war runs along, you suddenly have a cast of character from the royal guard that plan out tactics and weapons that could trump human military.
This is bullshit. they have no clue what war is, and the royal guard is more flashy lights than actual tactical might. With no experience of war, they can't simply turn around to own everything in their path.
This is just an example. Back to what I was getting at. In most stories, the ponies have knowledge that is far beyond the limitations of what they can learn, Pinkie Pie being the exception, and their culture is mixed up and hazy with no clear indication of what it is. Sure, when you write a story about just ponies, you don't point that out but just glance at it sideways as you hint at it through the ponies adventures, but when you do HiE and they make no statement about the differences in cultures, as if they're already used to such things, and thus make the line of difference between humans and ponies all the more unsure.
Blank Canvas
Blank Canvas is a type of character. They are characters that are generic as fuck but build as the world around them builds. They start off as usually young and only have a handful of knowledge about the world they live in. They do what the majority do, get terrified like the majority by stuff, act like the majority, and think like the majority. They are boring, and basically a background character.
This is only at first, but as the world builds up around them, they learn things and experience things that make them accustomed to the new scenario they find themselves in and adapt from nothing to becoming a super bad-ass with knowledge of ONLY the area around them, what they learn IN the story, and have not a care in the world for anything else. They are usually used to ease the reader into the new world as with a blank canvas, they can paint themselves into the character to fill the empty personality.
My point? STOP USING THESE HORRIBLE EXCUSES OF CHARACTERS AS HUMANS IN HIES!!! THEY SUCK!
Well I hope you enjoyed this extra long Character Development lesson, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!
Class Dismissed!
Also, I've got a 3DS with Pokemon Y and I need some friends. No one uses the damn things in NZ.
If you care, my friend code is 0920 1291 0243