Character Design 112
“Professor” Rj Waltz
Hello, class. Would it kill you to say hello to me, once in a while? I get it, though. You’ve been arranging the summoning circle with an unfinished manuscript, decaf instant coffee, a blue hoodie, some open-source writing software, and a cheap drawing tablet in order to summon me here to haphazardly ramble some form of writing advice. Why go through all of that effort to bring me into this plane of existence for an idle chinwag session? Class, the name of the game on this day is character design. Yay. I doubt that the vast majority of you adorable writers out there really need a whole lot of help with this for your main characters, mostly because you’ve undoubtedly been doodling their names into your notebooks with little hearts around them. Specifically during my lectures. What, you don’t think I have eyes? That’s a fair assumption, because I’m not entirely sure that I have them, either. However, as I’m sure you’re aware by this point, it gets a little trickier coming up with names and purposes for characters the further away you get from the main protagonist and antagonist. That’s why we’re going to be talking about a blanket-wide system of character details and design so that all you’ll need to do is plug in a little bit of data and that NPC will be all but ready to give your main guy some useless rat-kiling fetch quests. Sound like a tall order? Well, hopefully I can deliver.
Okay, so, the first thing on the agenda would be to really define what makes a character a character. Webster’s dictionary defines character as something that I’ll definitely look up by the time this goes live and explain in boring, excruciating detail. (Editor’s note: oops.) Point is, the info you need for your cabbage farmer is not as complicated as it may seem, but you’ll also need a little bit more than a name and an occupation. First things first, you’ll need a name. Personally, I have a lot of trouble coming up with last names most of the time when I’m making a one-shot nonsense character. In certain stories it doesn’t actually matter all that much for me, so I get around this by making all of my characters have unique first names with little to no overlap. If you have problems with last names, well, there ya go. If you have trouble with both first and last names, I would say that you have a few options to help with that. The primary thing I’d suggest is that you get yourself a hobby where you have to make up a lot of names for a lot of the time. Try flexing your gaming muscles with MMORPGs or table-top roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons (or any of its trillions of spin-offs.) Both of these options are fantastic if you’re writing in the fantasy, sci-fi, or similar genres. If you’re looking for some more modern options for contemporary names, might I suggest The Sims? It has a name generator built in, and it allows you to play around with your characters and their personalities in real time. Before you ask, yes, I partake in all three of those suggestions. They’re quite effective. And if nothing is working, look up a baby name generator or let random strangers violently hurl name suggestions at you on your favorite horrible social media platform.
The next part of this character mapping excursion is picking an occupation. This is mostly for adult characters, since pretty much all child characters are students, factory workers, slaves, corpses, or in-between jobs. For more minor characters, this detail will matter a bit more than the more main characters. Mostly because your protagonists will likely be contacting the side characters while they are doing their job. Also, you as the writer will be most likely designing characters around the job position in the scene that you’re workshopping. If your character is meeting this minor character under different circumstances, then you don’t have to make the job apparent, but it’s still a good idea to pick a secret career for them to have which could help you shape their personality quirks. For example, a power-hungry lawyer who punishes your female protagonist too far in a dark alley because he’s addicted to control. Or a warm and bubbly man who runs a chocolate shoppe who meets your guy on a pleasant first date. The NPCs career can affect other parts of their personality, too. Let’s say you’re writing a scene involving a violent hostage negotiation with a psycho killer. It’s the prologue and you’re setting up the antagonist of the story, so you know that the poor hostage negotiator will end up blown to human chunks. But that negotiator doesn’t know that. For all he knows, he’s the main character who’s about to save countless lives. That’s what he believes. Or, at least, that what he can believe until his ass gets blown through his skull.
Class! Wake up! I really should host this class at a time that isn’t 3 am after a raging kegger at a frat party. It’s the only time slot I could afford to steal. Oh, great. Now I don’t remember what I was about to say that would blow your minds apart with my epic knowledge nuclear bomb explosion. Sure, I could check my notes, but now that moment is lost to time. Let’s talk about personality quirks. Okay, so this part of the character creation screen is a lot less complicated than how it might sound, but it affects everything that you need the character to do in their little role in your story. As the God of this magical world of ponies and murder that you are, you’re allowed to give your characters as many personality quirks as you can. However, in order to keep your crappy little ducks in a row, you need to absolutely keep them consistent with an actual human being. Yes, you can make a buff burly man who collects unicorn figurines while running gund for the Chinese mafia, sure. However, it’s considered bad writing when you make a character who is universally liked by any character they meet, can summon ungodly powers at the snap of a finger, and is amazing in the sack. Why is that character bad writing? Easy. It’s boring.
Now I know that you have heard horror stories about successful authors with household plants talking about stealing the souls of literally everybody around them and stuffing them into a plastic toy chest to infuse their human stink into their story characters. This is connected with that smelly piece of advice called “Write what you know.” You can do this yourself. I really don’t have the time to tell you not to listen to other people. Which is unfortunate because I can only afford spam flavored spray cheese vodka for dinner. What I will say is that this particular advice isn’t gospel. If you don’t know any maniac pixelated dream sea-witches personally, then, by all means, make a character with those traits anyway. You live in a post My Little Pony world, after all. All sources of media can be used to make a viable character. If your blender is set on a high enough setting.
Any questions? No? Good. I have a week’s worth of hangovers to collect.
Class dismissed!
