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mbarker.livejournal.comWriting Excuses 9.13: Three-Pronged Character Development
From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/03/30/writing-excuses-9-13-three-prong-character-development/
Key Points: Three prongs: sympathy, competence, and proactivity. With change over time. Be careful about Mary Sue. With great powers come great challenges. Maybe not for building characters, but for troubleshooting. Think about how the character interfaces with the plot, too.
( Sympathy, ability, and get-up-and-go? )
[Brandon] Howard actually has a writing prompt.
[Howard] I do. Come up with... It can be an alien race, it can be some sort of human sub race or a cybernetic race or some sort of race in which there is a sum that you are not allowed to push past, and you have sliders that dictate personality attributes. That is your magic system, if you will.
[Brandon] Excellent. I would also suggest that you... Not as a writing prompt, but as an exercise, go pick a bunch of your favorite characters from media and try and determine where they are on these sliders. See if you can find people who have one of them all the way up and the other two all the way down. Or vice versa, two up and one down. See if you can create... If you can find people who can fulfill all of these different roles. Because I've found it very easy to do, once I was paying attention to this. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/03/30/writing-excuses-9-13-three-prong-character-development/
Key Points: Three prongs: sympathy, competence, and proactivity. With change over time. Be careful about Mary Sue. With great powers come great challenges. Maybe not for building characters, but for troubleshooting. Think about how the character interfaces with the plot, too.
( Sympathy, ability, and get-up-and-go? )
[Brandon] Howard actually has a writing prompt.
[Howard] I do. Come up with... It can be an alien race, it can be some sort of human sub race or a cybernetic race or some sort of race in which there is a sum that you are not allowed to push past, and you have sliders that dictate personality attributes. That is your magic system, if you will.
[Brandon] Excellent. I would also suggest that you... Not as a writing prompt, but as an exercise, go pick a bunch of your favorite characters from media and try and determine where they are on these sliders. See if you can find people who have one of them all the way up and the other two all the way down. Or vice versa, two up and one down. See if you can create... If you can find people who can fulfill all of these different roles. Because I've found it very easy to do, once I was paying attention to this. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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