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Wasserbienchen β How to Build Characters
Published: 2012-05-21 13:40:59 +0000 UTC; Views: 25309; Favourites: 1214; Downloads: 388
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This tutorial is considered OUTDATED. It remains up for those who liked it, but I consider it incomplete and inaccurate. Use at own risk.Nother Tutorial. Yeaaah, I do a lot of different stuff atm D:
Now, Where do I get scientific research from?
If there's any kind of specific thing I'm looking for, I google. Learn to distinguish your reliable and unreliable sources and you already have a shitton of good material online. If you have a connection to a University, then the better, you have access to a ton of good articles online! USE IT! Or go to a public library.
A blog I can recommend to ANYONE: You Are Not So Smart
What I personally use to get articles is an iPad app called "Zite", which basically creates a personalised magazine out of online articles. It tracks the kind of articles you like and gives you more based on your preferences. After using it a while, I get a lot of articles about recent studies, a lot of them referring back to the source material, which is always nice.
How to start Comics
Current main comic
If you just happen to stumble upon this tut, I'd appreciate it if you took a look at my whole gallery.
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Comments: 73
Um, I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.Β
How do you make 'interview sessions' with your characters? I've read somewhere that you just put yourself and the character in a place with no one else(for example, a broken elevator) and just start a conversation. Problem is, I'm not really an outgoing person so I don't know how to start one with a complete stranger(I'd probably just ignore him at best XP), much less think how would a character with a sunny personality would actually strike a conversation. In other words, I just can't make a character talk without being awkward or rigid.Β
Β In your tutorial, you said that full rounded characters are "a jumbled mess of different aspects of their personality". If that's true, then how do you make characters inconsistent and human like without going out of character?
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I probably would be okay with this tutorial overall if it weren't for the examples you posted for each tipΒ (it also doesn't help that as a medical student, the mistakes are horribly obvious). Here are some of the most egregious errors I am finding are here:
(1) Genetics:Β Even in the scientific community, there is so much debate about WHAT even determines behavior. You make it sound like genetics (or nature) is what completely determines your personality but there IS a nurture component (which you write off as a "genetics" component when you say "learning effect"). You need to word that nature and nurture BOTH have equal influences.
(2) Past influences - "Things related to trauma have proven to be less of an influence": This is a HUGE nono. Emotional/physical trauma CAN strongly influence a character. There are DISORDERS based on trauma that you have to consider (i.e. PTSD).Β
(3) Diseases - "Pancreas dysfunction causes coldness and moodiness": PLEASE LOOK UP SYMPTOMS OF ACTUAL DISEASES BEFORE YOU JUST WRITE RANDOM THINGS. Pancreas-related diseases cause little to no neurological effect. You can't just say a character is *this* because of a completely unrelated disease. People CAN get depressed because they have LIVED with a certain disease for a long time but it is not PART of the disease pathology.
And some of the mistakes listed COULD have been avoided if you had just googled half of it; so I cannot even allow the excuse of you not being aware of these issues. You even put in the description to use resources yet you did not do a simple internet search to proofread the tutorial.Β
I know this is like a year late, but PLEASE fix this because the inaccuracies will propagate if you don't and misinformation, even if it is not directly related to the tutorial itself, is upsetting :/
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Urgh, this is actually something that has bothered me quite a bit because I realised that I had mistranslated it - I've just been too lazy, though I've been thinking about redoing it sometime.Β
Even though it is a year late - thanks for giving me the incentive. I appreciate it.
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Thank you so much for making these tutorials, they've really helped me create characters for my Nuzlocke! And also thank you for the link to the blog as well, the articles are really interesting and insightful!
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These are all very useful tips! Thanks for sharing your process!
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Very cool and helpful tutorial, Wass! I think I shall put this information and advice to good use quite soon.
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Pretty nice! Although you might want to stress that all of this is variable depending on your intended audience and chosen style. A children's book would feature characters that are far more "cookie cutter" than a pensive literary novel that would focus more on character/role deconstruction.
Now there's one thing missing from this tutorial that I learned about once but have since forgot....
how do you get your written text to have those borders? lol
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It really is important and productive to imagine your characters in different situations, being asked different questions and so on. The details does the story. Without them, everything is vauge, and that is boring.
Another important factor, I think, is that humans actually do change their mind. So it would only be logical if our characters also would do that more or less.
Just think about all the things that you yourself actually have an opinion about. That's a LOT. So of course our chars need that too, even more so for the really important ones.
Good tutorial. I think this will help many in their storywriting ^^
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Saving for reference, since my characters tend to be kinda bland anyway. Thanks for sharing, this looks really helpful!
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YEESS YOU INCLUDED DISEASES CB I LOVE DISEASES 8D
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I've always found that if you just write the characters develop all by themselves and you have to be careful not to be too rigid with the characters, because no matter how much psychology you know people are still unexpected.
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There are a lot of different way to approach characters, and what works best varies from person to person. ^^" This is mostly just my approach. I'm not very rigid with characters, as you see, I really just go from my basic ideas.
I've mostly seen characters that don't get enough depth, thogh. Even if they have a lot of detail, it doesn't, you know, seam together well. My method mostly avoids that because you don't randomly come up with stuff but try and tie it in neatly by going from a few small points.
Buuut, like I said, it's neither the correct nor the best way to do it - feel free to just take what you think is helpful and ignore the rest. xD
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Sure, no problem. Thanks for being so civil.
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Hm I do believe the personality should stand on number 1.. Personality makes the looks. Like I'm a pretty hyper person, so I like to wear colors! (Not a very original example but you get what I mean)
I think one of the most common "mistakes" would be that people make a randomdesign and first and then they give it a personality..
But that's just my opinion after all.
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Opinions vary, and so does what works for each person ^^" I only put looks at the top because most of my watchers are interested in doing comics, and I didn't want to lose many words on it so getting it outta the way was more primarily my goal.
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This is a cool tutorial. I personally don't have much trouble with coming up with characters, but this has showed me all sorts of things I'm missing! Especially the bit about psychology. I study psychology at school, but now I realise I can use it in my strories too ^^
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I do this is a completly differeffent way, but thanks for the addvise.
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This is a really nice tutorial! Gave some idea's on how to go about character design that I haven't considered before.
A system I personally use is a method I call drag and drop (not sure if there is a real name for it or not), but I basically take the rough character and put them in pre-constructed universes. For instance, I have a character in a sci-fi story of mine that was VERY bland, and so on a whim I put them in the Star Trek universe, then the Stargate universe, etc... By putting them with certain groups (like say the Federation) it has proven to be a great guiding tool for their development!
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This is a great tutorial. I think I shall use some of the suggestions that you've given and I can see some of my characters in situations so backtracking should be really interesting.
Thanks much for putting this up
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Definately eppic Wass. Keep up the great comic and great tutorials!
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Interviews with my own characters! Why didn't I think of that?! Thanks very much for putting this out there. Seeing how another writer works things out is extremely helpful when one is wrestling with one's own story.
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Haha, I love interviews C: Glad I could help.
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Wow, you and I have a similar flow to character creation/design it seems, and that makes me VERY happy!
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This is a fabulous guide. Would it be alright if I showed this to my creative writing class? They're having trouble understanding proper character drafting, and I think this would help. You would receive full credit, of course.
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Oh, wow - of course! D: Go ahead.
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This was pretty interesting. I'll have to take some of these tips into consideration. ^_^
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Wow, awesome Wass!
This seems reallllyyyyyyyy useful. C:
Thank you~
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WASS. YOU'RE EVEN MORE FAMOUS. NOW ABUSE THIS NEWFOUND POWER AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
/Wassernautcrowdgoeswildwithcheering
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Let me just say that I totally agree with the fact that no one fits into any one particular role. I'm writing a book right now which has a character that's intentionally supposed to make readers go "wait, but I thought this about him!" and another character who readers are supposed to sympathize with when she struggles with her roles.
I also nodded along when I was reading the different things to consider. Like others have said, you don't have to have all of those, but if your character has, say, cancer, or an extreme diet, you really should think about how that would affect them and how they react to their world.
Overall, I'd say this is a pretty helpful tutorial for someone struggling with how to create a well rounded character.
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WASS! I SAW THIS ON THE FRONT PAGE! CONGRATS!
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This is a really good strategy, and if I ever make more OCs for any future obsessions I'll take a look and use your guidelines to think of some nice ones!
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Heh nobody ever wants to Role Play with me because my characters have a character sheet with a mountain of detail in them.
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