Like for me, I never know what personality I want to build my characters on and/or which experiences to give them.
I struggle with that so much that my characters are never consistent or feel a little similar.
I know other people based characters on other people’s personality and experiences or sometimes themselves. I know it is not too wild.
I am just wondering how far can you go till make the character not like yourself even though that character is based on some of your or someone else’s personality traits and/flaws along with life experiences. Is there a point where you stray too close to yourself or someone else?
I ask this because I want to do this for my characters. Nothing is wrong with that, only different because I never thought about it…EVER.
I always wanted to make my story based on my experience in life. Whether it happened to me or is happening to the world around me and place it in Alagossia. Likewise with my characters. I know I have flaws and that requires me to think about what makes me flawed as a person, from me taking notice or someone else.
There was some famous author a while back who was asked if any of his characters were based on himself, and he said, “They’re all me,” but I can’t remember now just who said that.
In my opinion, for what that’s worth, their experiences should somehow relate to the story. Like maybe if you have a character who’s trying to become a courageous knight, then maybe she was a coward in the past and her cowardice got someone killed, so she’s trying to compensate for that now…? Just as an example.
Have you tried making a character sheet? You could make one for each character, with your own questions or listed attributes that you can refer to whenever you forget a detail about someone. A lot of writers do this, so it might help. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
That could be really interesting! You should definitely do this. (*＾-‘) 乃
I’m so much a panster that when I tried such things in the past that it never stuck with me for very long or at all. A few moments of that and I got very bored and exhausted with doing that.
I wonder who as well. LOL!
Thanks. I really think that I should give this a shot!
Honestly, hard to say. It’s hard to literally borrow plot elements from the real world in high fantasy, but it’s certainly not out of the question. Plus, a character as a framework inspired by an existing person is perhaps more realistic than an uninspired character.
Recently, with the state of the union in the United States, that has fueled the plot and development of Meiste, but it isn’t a one-to-one correspondence. Rather, I take some elements of what’s going on and mold them to the world I’m building.
Each of my characters, though varying wildly in personality, all have some want that either I want, or is inspired by someone else’s want. That, in turn, fuels their flaws.
Idk, food for thought, and this is a good question, too. I just want to have plot and characters that I engage with, so there’s an incentive to make them interesting to me.
Interesting thought. Normally, I don’t base my characters on anyone or anything. Just going directionless and seeing where it takes me.
I only want to do that sometimes, not all the time. The same is for plot elements since most of them are just “cool ideas and nothing else”. I want to use my experience both internally and externally to write my plot ideas.
A writer friend once said, if you can relate to the characters in some way, then so can other people.
I don’t make sure I can relate to everything my characters do, but I do put one thing, even just a small thing, which I can relate to and see where it takes the character
As for the plot, my editor said my story is kind of like a commentary on our current society. I thought that was interesting because I didn’t set out to write that Now I’m setting out to write that
Most of the time these characters are just cool and something I always wanted to write but can’t understand why.
It’s very rare that I can relate to my own characters. I don’t know why write my characters like that other than believing that nobody is going to read these stories so my characters can be cringey and terribly written, until I reach a point where that needs to change–meaning I want to publish something one day.
i was always taught that theme should chase story ie themes will always come out organically out of a well crafted story. but if you come with the themes first then the story has to conform to that.
what you may be thinking of is thesis(es) or inherent arguments- and sometimes people choose to write stories to support or discuss these things - which is often misunderstood / conflated with/ misexplained as theme.
in terms of your own experience there are two ways it can be incorperated
have it influence; so as you write or outline or whatever its there floating in your head
seeing how you can convert it into an inherent argument/s
