Character Building.

Hmm...

Hmm...

New Member
Hello all, what methods do you use to keep your characters fresh? Do the ticklings of the muses in your mind simply give new life to each new person, or do you painstakingly trace out the person using various charts to ensure precision of detail? I'm curious.
 
Pokc said:
I usually develop them with the first method, often with an archetype in mind.
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Ah! That's always a fun one. Where do you generally find your archetypes, if you don't mind my asking? I've seen several different ones and I've always been curious what they are pulled from.
 
I pull them from pretty much anything that can take my inspiration. I've made serious villains out of characters from comedy films, I've made heroes out of myths, etc.

Examples being: Langtra is one of my mains. She is a blend of 'gentle giant' and 'beautiful amazon' and maybe even a little bit of 'viking warrior' thanks to her heritage. Another being Hinata and Shiori who I call the "sisterly brother and the brotherly sister" both have androgynous names and both look like the opposite gender at many times, Hinata is a boy but he looks like a cute small girl, and Shiori is fairly masculine because she often wears armor. I have others but going into detail might end up in TL;DR territory.
 
Pokc said:
I pull them from pretty much anything that can take my inspiration. I've made serious villains out of characters from comedy films, I've made heroes out of myths, etc.

Examples being: Langtra is one of my mains. She is a blend of 'gentle giant' and 'beautiful amazon' and maybe even a little bit of 'viking warrior' thanks to her heritage. Another being Hinata and Shiori who I call the "sisterly brother and the brotherly sister" both have androgynous names and both look like the opposite gender at many times, Hinata is a boy but he looks like a cute small girl, and Shiori is fairly masculine because she often wears armor. I have others but going into detail might end up in TL;DR territory.
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Well, this does certainly help. I've had quite a few character concepts catch my eye as well. So, how do you keep from plagiarizing the characters you find these tropes from? Is it from the mixing of them, the various changes to backstory, or another zesty addition? On another note, please feel free to enter TL;DR turf as much as you want. I quite like a good read.
 
Well I'd say my 'laziest' way of making them less like plagiarism is to give them some kind of quirk, a la Shyamalan, but another thing I do is to tweak them until they're unrecognizable from their original through some method or another.

My main form of creativity has always been to take something unoriginal or something I just like, and blend it with other stuff I find cool until it eventually becomes unique. My main man Kuroshika is a Japanese man with the 'stoic giant' base who has developed into a unique character by way of prosthetic limbs, heterochromatic eyes, use of exotic weaponry (which is kinda silly given with his size he could focus on strength and probably win most fights through sheer curshing force) intellect, strategy, and a few other things - though he's my most worrying character, I often feel like he's too generic and simple so in almost every iteration of him I make him very different. He's been treeman, roboman, richman, poorman, swordsman, family man, but I still haven't found something I'm completely happy with.
 
I love how many ways there are to make characters. This is the reason why I love roleolaying so much, is because with everyone focusing on a relatively small amount of characters, when a story is made there's just so much development going on.
 
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