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Developing Your Character: A Character Creation Guideline

Libk

Spaceballs: The Mafia Player
Joined
Jul 12, 2011
Location
Spaceball 1
The basic application provided by the hosts of an rp are a great way to start on your character but are really just a summary of who your character is to give other players an idea of what they'll be writing with or what roles may need to be filled in the group. While a good overall look at the character, it doesn't let you, the writer, get into the nitty gritty parts of your character. I'm creating this guide as a resource to maybe help you give more development to your character outside of the basic application.

Family History

Every character has a family. Even if your character never sees their family anymore (which could be for various reasons we'll get into later) their family is an important part of who your character is. Who were your character's parents? Do they have any siblings? How wealthy is the family? These questions help you find your character's place in the world. Perhaps your characters parents both work for a company that makes car parts. As such, maybe your character would have some knowledge about making cars. If your character has siblings, are they the oldest? youngest? middle child? What do those siblings do? Do they still live with your character? Does the family have a lot of wealth? are they just barely scraping by? There are even more questions you can ask yourself when it comes to your character's family and the more you decide to ask, the more you know about your character. And sometimes this will inspire new characters for other rps.


As an example, one of my characters ever for an RP was a character named James Xylander. when I made him, I asked myself these questions and today there are now 4 member of the Xylander family, each with their own histories and statuses in the various worlds they're in. When I first made James, The rest of the family was known, He had a mother and sister, deceased, and a father, an evil man who killed all members in his family but was unable to kill James. Just this small bit of information gives a lot of things to your character. It gives him motivation, a goal, a past, it can give fears and determine strengths. It creates an antagonist for the character that you can bring up in the rp later. And all this information came from asking "Who are his parents?" "Are they alive?" "Does he have any siblings?"

Important Events


Each character goes through big events in their life. These events can have a positive impact on your character or even a negative impact on your character. These aren't so much questions to ask, but choices to make about your character before the RP starts. Graduating from a school could be a big event. The death of a family member could be a big event. Determining events that make an impact in your character's life can help you determine your character's personality and outlook on life. Does the death of James' family make him seclude himself from people in depression? Does he motivate himself to do better himself to one day kill the man who killed his mother and sister? there are many different ways your character can react to an event, and no one character has to react the same way as another. Perhaps high school was an awful experience for a character and when they graduated they decided to avoid further schooling. Similarly your character may have enjoyed school and went on to college after they graduated. The event is graduating high School. It's up to you to determine how they react. The following are good ideas for major events in a character's life.

  • Graduation
  • A death in the family
  • Making a new friend
  • Getting a pet
  • Moving
  • Getting a job
  • Losing a job
  • Acquiring a new skill
  • etc.

I'll be adding more to this thread as I write more posts for it.
 

Libk

Spaceballs: The Mafia Player
Joined
Jul 12, 2011
Location
Spaceball 1
Character Flaws

Flaws in your character are perhaps one of the most important things to take into consideration when creating a character. You could ignore everything else in this guide and just focus on flaws and end up with a great character. Flaws are what make a character believable. It makes them human. No one is perfect or great at everything and characters that are are boring to read about and honestly boring to write. Flaws are also a great way to give your character something to overcome and can develop your character further by doing so. A great example of a flaw that a character can strive to overcome is an addiction. A character with addiction problems who eventually gets over their addiction through the rp will probably have significant events happen during the rp to help them reach that point, expanding on who your character is, and may even have to struggle with the possibility of a relapse if they aren't careful.

Now don't take this to mean that every flaw has to be a weakness in your character. Not all flaws come in the form of a weakness, they can be disguised as a positive trait. A strong sense of justice could be a flaw for a character if it's something that's overwhelmingly strong for the character. I'll use my favorite example, James, to explain. As a result of his Father killing his mother and sister, James has a strong sense of justice. In his eyes, any person who has committed a crime must be held accountable for their actions. No matter the circumstances behind the crime, justice must be served. When it's later explained to James that his father was possessed by an evil spirit and the spirit forced him to kill his wife and Daughter, it was too late. James had already decided the man was guilty and needed to die for his crimes. Eventually, James did find and kill his father. And his father isn't the only person that James has wrongfully killed or imprisoned, but according to his sense of justice, they're getting what they deserve.

Some flaws, however, are very clearly meant to be a weakness. Flaws like this could be allergies, low strength, low intelligence, poor social skills, fears, curses, etc. It's up to you to determine how many flaws like this your character has. Perhaps you're creating a mage who is allergic to magic. You could have a big strong tough guy who isn't very intelligent. Maybe the character is afraid of their own abilities/talents. Flaws should be created on a case by case basis and aren't always easy to determine. By following other guidelines it may become easier to determine your character's flaws. I'll give examples of popular characters in fiction and go over their flaws.

Superman. He has nearly no flaws in his character and is considered one of the most over powered characters in fiction because of this. However, he still has flaws. His biggest is his weakness to kryptonite. It's unfortunate that this is his only clear weakness, as he could be a much better character if it wasn't for that. His other flaws are a little less apparent. Superman tries his hardest not to kill anyone when he takes out the villains in his comics, only killing when he absolutely has to, and it takes an emotional toll on him when he does so. Additionally, he tries to keep destruction of metropolis to a minimum while fighting his villains, as even the buildings of the city are too important to him. This will frequently force him to fight at a considerably lower strength as he tries to keep from plowing lex Luthor through buildings. While not a character I personally enjoy, Superman is a good example of even the most powerful of characters having flaws.

Clones. The clones in Star Wars are excellent in combat and strategy. Cloned from the bounty hunter, Jango Fett, they share a lot of similar qualities with him. They all, however, have unique personalities. As such, they have their own flaws. They do have common flaws among them, however. Cloned age twice as fast as a normal human, as clones have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast to be ready to go to war quicker. While clones are highly intelligent, they also have limited knowledge. Clones know nothing of the world outside of war. They were not raised to question why they fight, just raised to fight. Clones have almost no social status. Any clones who managed to leave military life struggle to find a place in the galaxy as most people view them as no better than droids. Clones also have an inhibitor chip implanted on their brain, repressing the aggressive behavior of their DNA donor as well as making them obedient to any command given to them by the military leaders. Unless this chip is dealt with, no matter how much they disagree with an order, a clone will always obey the order.
 

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