Using my own FR writing as an example, I noticed that in my first story I was more focused on plot, and really didn't put much thought into the character development. For the most part, all I did in the initial planning stage for the character design was attach a few traits to a character's name and write a sentence or two for their overall agenda.

In my second story, the outlining process was a little more extensive; this time I took the time to write a few pages on how each character views the world, themself, each other, and the importance of their different goals from their perspective. Granted, I'm not sure how much of this is actually coming out in my writing, but at least it's a start.

I'm interested to hear how other writers deal with character mentality.

Basically, what I think is that the plot and the characters' psychology are unseperable from one another. Meaning, it's the overall events (aka, the crude outline of what happens around the characters regardless of the characters' actions themselves) that dictate the charcters' responses and overall behaviour, which then, in turn, shapes back the aforementioned events. From that perspective, I'd say one can't really have a good "plot" without good character psychology laid out in advance and vice versa, can't really make that pshychology "show" without having a good basic plot as the groundwork.

Given the fact that I've been a Pen&Paper maniac for over ten years now, creating extensive character backgrounds, diferent traits and different personalities comes kinda... natural to me now. I can't start writing anything unless I have the characters fleshed out first, so I work on them real hard before tossing them into the story. But that is not to say that a character scetch won't do the trick either. Having just a "vague" outline of a personality at the beggining and then building up on it through the story itself is actually a good way to go about it. Besides, scetched characters, in my experiance at least, tend to develop themselves pretty fast... and often end up demanding the spotlight of their own, but that's my personal boggle, so never mind. ;)

As an example, I can mention my lead character from my main story (the one that, btw, passed your "Heroes and Villians Cliche Meters" iwith flying colors, Fox. *chuckle*). I worked on her for months prior to starting the story and as a result, I not only have no problems writing any of her parts of the story, but also, because of the detailed psychological (read: insane) background, everything else falls so nicely into place. Stuff like, I need to get the plot from point A to point B and there woud be no way to make that happen naturally, unless said psycho takes the reins into her own hands.

Ok, a pretty confused post on my part. Begging pardon - haven't really slept tonight.

Is this too vague an explanation? I'm doing my best here, but desperately trying not to write about the actual exemplary character... might be a bit easier to expalin on the exact example, but I don't want this to look like a simple advertisement. Heck, when I want to advertise, I come right out and blatantly pimp myself. ;)

I disagree. There are people who can't and don't use outlines -- nothing laid out in advance at all apart from a vague idea of beginning, middle and end (if that!), let alone individual characters' psyche. Detailed outlines are great and all that, but for some people it just doesn't work. The non-outlined approach is not inferior, merely different.

Mhmmmm.... Think I can see what you mean. Gave myself a day or two to think about this whole issue again and, in the end, I can't deny what you're saying here. And for the record, I never said that going with just a scetch, outline, callitwhatyouwill is in any way inferior to the fully detailed outline. For all my bragging, I, too, have a dozen or so characters who start out as barely more then a scratch in my little brain. ;)

But whatever approach you choose, both times the quality of the end product (aka, a well-rounded character) largely depends on the writer's capabilities of good characterization. In other words, those who are poor at it can write three pages long drafts and still come up with nothing more then another generic Sue; conversly, those who are good at characterization as such don't really need anything more then a basic idea to work with and still come up with interesting and deep personalities in their works.

Personally, I find it easier to do a detailed personality analysys for the lead characters because they are the ones who get most of the spotlight and if I have them all figured out in advance, I don't fret (too much) that I'll write them "off" in some crutial situations. On the other hand, though, I did notice that sometimes, those characters who didn't recieve so much attention from me at first tend to "write themselves" more smoothly and easily precicely because I don't have them written down in detail.

In the end, I guess it all depends on several factors combined: the writer's preference, the writer's skill in proper characterization and the very characters the writer's working with.

Laslty, what Deverien asked up there was, among other things, what exact techniques are people using for character creation, and I, too, would love to hear some concrete examples... if anyone could be bothered to offer some.

Things go in different directions after that. Sometimes I'll start spontaneously molding a character's thought processes as I write and develop them. Other times, I plan out a backstory that would logically lead them to their current beliefs and state of mind in the story (I also try to directly integrate this into the plot). For a few, I steal a certain psychological viewpoint or system of belief that I've read about in real life (social darwinism, for example) and see if I can apply it to a character or modify it to fit the world of the story.

*shrug*

Shortly, while they may still resemble the person in some way, the character created becomes very much an individual in my eyes.

-BoA.

1. Forums are not to be used to post stories.
2. All discussions including language and content must be suitable for teens.
3. The owner/moderator(s) of this forum is solely responsible for content posted within this area.
4. All forum abuse must be reported to the moderator(s).

1. Forum admin/moderator
2. Fanatic (on site for more than 2 years)
3. Fan (on site for more than a year)
4. Regular (on site for more than 6 months)
5. Camper (on site for more than a month)
6. Apprentice (on site for more than a week)
7. Newbie (on site for less than a week)