Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[schrocko88]

So, I'm writing a story, and I need more characters. Make one up for me? Give them some quirks, a unique personality that I can try to write a story for them. It's a fantasy story, set in a middle age land, inspired by Middle Earth, and Alagaesia. Thanks for any help you can give me. Peace out homies.

[Heron TSG]

Magic, no magic? Not sure what kind of fantasy.

[Capntastic]

Why did you close the chat thread?

[schrocko88]

I didn't close the chat thread.

[schrocko88]

Magic, no magic? Not sure what kind of fantasy.

There is some magic. But I haven't really worked out the system. I'm not going with the special language, like in The Inheritance Cycle. But there is magic.

[Capntastic]

I didn't close the chat thread.

Then was it Toady?  Mysterious!

[Biag]

You might find this useful. Also this.

Character: Alana Rhysi
Physical Description: Fifteen years old, medium height, red hair, green eyes. Usually smirking. Shows tooth when she smiles.
Background: Alana grew up a butcher's daughter in the backwater village of [VILLAGE]. As he had no son, the butcher spent much of his time and energy teaching Alana his craft, so that someone might carry on the shop after he retired. From puberty, Alana took an unusual and perhaps unhealthy interest in the inner workings of the creatures her father showed her how to cut apart. She began to spend much of her time secluded in the woods, killing and dissecting animals, not always in that order. It wasn't long before someone discovered her secret hideaway and convinced the village Alana was a witch. Her father managed to smuggle her out at night, and now she is on a cross-country trip to her uncle's with nothing but a pony, a knife, and thirty gold pieces.

...After having written that: feel free to use her, but I reserve the right to use my medieval teenage sociopath in any future works of my own.

[JoshuaFH]

I already want to learn more about Alana Rhysi.

[Capntastic]

Why is it so rare that someone has a happy backstory?

[Lordraymond]

I need practice writing characters anyway, so... LET'S DO THIS!

Name: Ganello Brawtketh
Backstory: An older-looking fellow, though he's only around thirty. His face bears a single, thin scar from eye to cheek, caused by his days as a mercenary. He grew up on the streets as an abandoned child - his parents were fugitives who fled without him during his early childhood. Once he was old enough to sign a contract, he joined up with the first band of mercenaries he came across, who gladly accepted a new grunt to do some of the lesser jobs. However, though he was eager he was unskilled. During one of his first real combats, he took an arrow to the knee received a blow to the leg which shattered the bone and crippled him. Though he only walks with a slight limp now and could probably fight if he had to, the experience turned him away from combat for life, and he holds a love-hate relationship with any fresh, young adventurers: he envies them for their eager attitude yet despises them for their ignorance. Though he doesn't care for combat, his adventurous spirit never left him and he's always up for a journey.

Happy backstory you say?

Name: Gabriel Endresiel
Backstory: Led an uneventful life as a blacksmith in a small village. He can't handle stress well, and though he does he craft well, he doesn't work all that quickly. Thus, he could possibly be met in a stressful situation, in which he has been commissioned by the military or a similar organization to create a large order that he couldn't possibly fill in time and he needs the group's help to do so? I dunno, whatever you wanna do. Anyways, not much is ever really revealed about his past, but that he grew up in the village as a normal peasant boy who worked on a farm. He knows the lay of the land quite well, and is eager to get out of the boring old town he's been cooped up in all those years.

[Max White]

Why is it so rare that someone has a happy backstory?

People hate other people who have lived better lives than themselves. Take the most luckiest, charismatic, good lucking, well read character you know, and chances are they fit into the 'Lovable rogue' arch type and are running from some sort of authority to make up for it. If you want people to like your character, then you need for their life to suck worse than ours.
You can of coarse have a normal character with a good life, but then you need to really fucking run them down into the mud. We often refer to this as 'horror', and it is a subset of comedy. Early attempts of this included paintings of sad clowns, but these days it has been refined to metric shittons of blood and a creepy puppet.

[Capntastic]

Just to clarify, I've never had to be on the run from authorities to make up for anything.  I don't consider myself particularly roguish either.  Alas, such is the pitfalls of stock fictions.

Anyways, one should consider that George MacDonald Fraser created Harry Paget Flashman who is terrible in all of the right ways and we cheer for him because his antics are amazingly well handled.  His backstory is not tragic at all, and in fact he was originally a character from an older book where he was a bully and the primary antagonist.  He's been handed fortune and luck and he'll never be happy enough.  He is awful and I love him.

Edit:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl3rlkDTDM0 In this film, based on the second book, he is played by Malcolm McDowell, who you may know as Alex from Clockwork Orange.

[Max White]

Dammit man, I was trying to make a long winded joke with a slightly obscure punchline! You can't argue jokes, so stop trying.

[G-Flex]

So, I'm writing a story, and I need more characters. Make one up for me? Give them some quirks, a unique personality that I can try to write a story for them. It's a fantasy story, set in a middle age land, inspired by Middle Earth, and Alagaesia. Thanks for any help you can give me. Peace out homies.

Characters should suit the purpose of your writing, not the other way around. Making up characters in a thematic vacuum is meaningless. We have no idea what you're trying to do with your story, therefore trying to make up characters for that undefined purpose is fruitless.

[Capntastic]

I've managed to tell the original Shaggy Dog Story over the course of an hour and a half.  You won't win this.

Anyways, just asking people to make characters up for you is perplexing.  If you're writing a story, and you 'need more characters', wouldn't the same void that causes you to 'need more characters' also be such that you can discern from it what sort of characters you need?  Or the plot should at least give you, the writer, an idea of what direction you want to take things.

Edit:  G-Flex beat me on this because I was entranced by Malcolm McDowell