I'm here to share a couple of character tips for when you're starting out on a new adventure or stuck in a rut that you need to dig your way out of. Hope this is helpful or at least the tiniest bit amusing. I'm just enjoying myself around the Camp FFT bonfire roasting marshmallows. 


TWO QUESTIONS

When I sit down to create a character I’m usually starting with two questions: 
1. What do they want?
2. Why can’t they get it?

These questions are going to be what I come back to again and again as the plot works itself out (notice I’m posting about characters and not plotting - it’s cause I don’t know how to fucking plot, I just follow my characters lmao). 

My favorite characters don’t just have physical obstacles in their way of achieving their goals, they have personal/emotional gates in their way. It can sound like a contradiction - but it’s so stinking human. Someone who wants to be safe and protected, but constantly puts themselves in danger. Someone who wants attachment, but doesn’t let anyone close to them. 

So often, our experiences have us believing that we can’t or won’t ever get what we want so we self-destruct opportunities to get it rather than let someone else disappoint us. Or maybe we are so comfortable in our lack - we’ve lived it so long - that we’re actually afraid to have what we want. Like success can actually be scarier than failure sometimes, finding someone you trust can be scarier than just expecting them to skive off. 

Sure, there can be other people causing conflict or environmental things that fuck shit up, but nothing is more human than having to realize you’re in your own way. 

SHORTCUTS

There’s a communication theory on this - but I’ve been out of grad school for a few years now so the term is escaping me - but the point of it is using something people know to describe or explain something they don’t. Words that instantly emote, recall, or resonate with a reader/listener. Create the biggest impact with the fewest words. 

It’s sort of like how these days people say things are [blank]-coded. I think someone on this forum once described a guy as having ‘boat shoes energy’ and like - you can just picture that brosef in your head, can’t you? The association between a person and the short description like, “I’m in my folklore era,” says SO MUCH without having to explain it out in paragraphs of text. Of course, this theory requires that you understand the colloquialisms to be effective. 

The two questions are important, but shortcuts are my biggest tip. USE THEM. It could be a song, a music style, a weather, a place, a time-period, a food - actually a challenge where we randomize the shortcut and have to write a one-shot introducing the character it inspires would be so hella fun. Someone write that down. 

My character, Mina, in A Madness Most Discreet, was very raven-coded. I’d describe her nails as talons and dresses billowing behind her. Now, her animagus form was a raven so it was really easy to see how I’d get there, but this informed so many other things about her. Her look, her style, but also the way she carried herself. She was always flying high above the rest of them, adaptable like riding the wind, things like that. 

They don’t have to be literal either. You can have a character say someone is ‘giving only child’ even if they’re in a family of three - we all know the kind of person they’re talking about. 

And you don’t have to ever directly call a character out on it - maybe the shortcut is for you. Keep it in your head and refer back to it as often as you need to. 

For example my character Lena in my OF Everything Might Have Been. This story is set in a made-up fantasy world I’m (trying) to build, and she’s a freaking princess, but I’m telling you guys - Lena is midwestern. If she turned a corner and saw someone pop out from an aisle six feet away he’d say ‘oop!’ She wants to talk to everyone she walks by. She says she’s leaving then talks to someone at the door for another twenty minutes.

Your reader doesn’t know this person - you want them to connect with them as quickly as possible so they’ll jump into this story and journey you’re creating. The idea of ‘showing, not telling’ is great when you want to cultivate rich emotional resonance - but you’ve got to get to know a character for that to matter.