The Do's, Dont's, and the Get-a-Ways of Character Development

[Rezanta 373]

Heya folks, after playing games, watching movies, seeing animations, and reading stories, I've noticed there seems to be a fine line between what's acceptable for developing characters, and what isn't allowed. before continuing these points, I do want to mention that developing takes time, work, perseverance, and even error. In addition, character development is like an art, there are multiple ways to go about one method, much like the styles of shading. I've dealt with my fair share of delevoping characters, the list stretching to 177, and while I may start from a random part of my imagination, I will repeat that that this is not the only way, but could be one way that may help you in the processes.

 

Let's start off with a name. For the purpose of examples, I'll be using my character Rilumia. Your character's name should have a reflection to the style of names your world has, whether it be Japanese, English, Scottish, some self-created language, and so on. You will also want to avoid repeating certain name aspects, as this can get the reader/player confused on name pronunciation. For example, I have two dragons by the name of Rea and Rei. The only major difference in the last letter. Rea is pronounced "Re-uh", while Rei is, well, "Re." This alone can be confusing as you try to remember what character has what name. In some cases, however, you're able to get away with this. Twins, siblings, family names, and how the family's language works are a few of possibly many exceptions. Names should also have a reason to them. Rilumia used to be a demon, thus she has a multi-syllable name that is akin to the race of demons of Scalvose.

 

Your next step is possibly going to be determining what the character likes and dislikes, along with the personality. Rilumia absolutely adores animals, so you can feel a soft spot in the character's overall context as she grows throughout the story of the book, piece, or game. You will want to avoid basing likes off of other characters until you finish everything that the character likes on their own terms. Let's set up a small sheet below, so keep a bit of formatting while determining the character's development.

 

Name: Rilumia

Likes: Animals, the ocean breeze, flowers, food, and long walks through the forests.

Dislikes: Blood, sickness, fighting, sour candies, silence.

 

(Note: You don't have to place these in a sentence-like format. This is my style of setting these up.)

 

When it comes to what a character likes and dislikes, or love and avidly hate, and so on, they do not have to be polar opposites. You can have a soft-hearted man who lacks a backbone love heavy metal just as much as a kid loves candy. If the character loves sour things, they don't have to hate sweet things. For every like, it adds to the character if you can provide a reason behind why they like something. Rilumia loves flowers because she can utilize them as a defensive measure when she's attacked, and the ocean breeze makes her feel unbound from other mundane tasks. She's a cook, so food is something she would enjoy. Walks through the forest allow her to see animals and plants, which increase her enjoyment down to the earth. The same goes for dislikes. Rilumia is a bit of a germaphobe, so she will definitely dislike getting sick or seeing blood, and while she isn't against injuring somebody to protect herself, if a fight is avoidable in any possible way, Rilumia will try to take that path. Disliking silence comes from her personality, which is our next subject.

 

Personality: Sultry, gentle, adventurous, cunning, partially germaphobic, and slightly seductive.

 

The character's personality has all rights to reflect their likes and dislikes, and don't let others say otherwise. You know your character more than the next guy down the street, so you ned to convey the reasons behind their personality. In addition, personalities can't be abstract, as they must be reflected in each word of the character in some way. However, you don't need to reflect every personality aspect in one line or word all the time. Sometimes the character can have enough mentality to know when to be mature and push their own feelings aside for a while. Or, like my character Darkness, can be complete morons and not understand much of what goes on around him, other than when he's hit for being perverted or making crude jokes. Their personality needs to exsist. Rilumia loves poking her nose towards the winds of a journey, and while she may be bothered by germs and the like, she's gentle and rarely shows her disgust. Though she doesn't mean to be, she has a seductive tone to her words sometimes, which irks others. Otherwise, being sultry, she has a passionate heart and to some, she does rather attract them.

 

Blessings: Quick to protect those in need, Green thumb.

Banes: Body scales are soft and fragile, very energetic.

 

(Note: These can be called pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, and so on.)

 

Lastly, I want to talk about blessings and banes. These are things that the character excells and fully fails at, regardless of how strange they may be. Rilumia, once she fell in love with a dragon's scale, it eventually lead to her falling in love with the dragon, himself. Demon blood is severly malleable in terms of race, and thus her body started to slowly corrupt, or change into that of a dragon. She doesn't know if she still has enough demon blood in her to continue being changed, but she doesn't really care too much as it opened many new paths of life for her, whether in the form of strength, endurance, smell, and the list goes on. However, her true self is still present in her mind, which gives her a constant questioning on what has happened to her as time has gone. In term of the change, her scales are as soft as velvet, and can easily be removed like a bird feather. However, this doesn't stop her from being quick to shield blows aimed at innocent people. On the downside, the amount of energy in her body tends to keep her up at night a lot, forcing her to try and find ways to calm herself to sleep, like reading, seditives, and the old attempts of drinking warm milk.

 

 

This is a basic outline to get started on fleshing out your characters, which I hope helps you all in need of it. If you have any questions, comments, or feel as if I misstated a part, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Rezanta

[lonequeso 1,921]

Nice lil' tutorial you got going.  Now you have to add dialogue. It's what real'y brings out the characters' personalities.

 

I develop my characters a little differently. I create their personality before likes and dislikes. For playable characters, I usually start with their class to make sure the party will be balanced. Then I create their personalities based on those. Typically the characters' personality is going to be reflected in their combat style both in their armor and weapons of choice and their skills. A warrior who loves throwing themselves in battles will likely have a lot of high damage skills and self buffs, while a more defensive minded character will likely have counter and cover abilities and have more skills that aid/buff allies. I usually start with archetypes for class and personality and develop from there to make them unique. Like and dislikes I kinda just make up as I go along. I never know quite how a scene will unfold until I'm actually writing it so rather create likes and dislikes when an opportunity arises as opposed to creating them beforehand and trying to write them in scenes.

[Rezanta 373]

Nice lil' tutorial you got going.  Now you have to add dialogue. It's what real'y brings out the characters' personalities.

 

I develop my characters a little differently. I create their personality before likes and dislikes. For playable characters, I usually start with their class to make sure the party will be balanced. Then I create their personalities based on those. Typically the characters' personality is going to be reflected in their combat style both in their armor and weapons of choice and their skills. A warrior who loves throwing themselves in battles will likely have a lot of high damage skills and self buffs, while a more defensive minded character will likely have counter and cover abilities and have more skills that aid/buff allies. I usually start with archetypes for class and personality and develop from there to make them unique. Like and dislikes I kinda just make up as I go along. I never know quite how a scene will unfold until I'm actually writing it so rather create likes and dislikes when an opportunity arises as opposed to creating them beforehand and trying to write them in scenes.

Fair enough. It's a good thing I did state that there's multiple ways to create/develop them. I'm getting ready to continue this, so don't worry, dialogue is coming up next.

[Chadzter01 183]

This is a big help for my project! Thank you Rez!

[Rezanta 373]

This is a big help for my project! Thank you Rez!

Anytime, my dear friend. (Rereading through this, I found a spelling error on my behalf that didn't really affect the overall meaning.)

[Kupotepo 11]

Thank you @Rezanta for sharing your tutorial.