I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.
me writing my fic as I go along with no planning: wow what a plot twist, did not see that coming at all. I hope my readers are just as surprised as I am.
Citizen is simpler and more beautiful~ but just in case anyone needs this.
DUDE BUT THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE
in medieval times you ONLY addressed a king/queen with “Your Majesty”, NEVER “Your Highness”. To address a king/queen with “Your Highness” was considered an insult.
Petition to change “he looked at her like she was the sun” to “he looked at her like she was the moon” and any other variation bc I look at the moon in wonder and love and amazement while I’ve only ever just squinted angrily at the sun
He looked at her like she was the sun, in that he never looked at her except in frustration. He basked in her warmth, he complained when she was gone, but he never looked. On days she was muted, he complained. On days she was stronger, he hid from her. He never looked at her until she was leaving, and in the beauty of the sunset he wondered how he’d never seen her before.
Have a chart I developed for visualizing the disposition of your character! This is partly inspired by a chart I saw of Aristotle’s Golden Mean, which is a system he had for developing good character, but of course, this is more about gauging a character’s traits than bringing them into any kind of balance.
For a printable PDF version of the chart please follow this link.
@probablybadrpgideas Replace the alignment chart with this in all games. Be strict about players sticking to it.
Nothing weird to say this time, just throwing in my 2 cents that this might be more useful if the scale was 1-20 instead of 1-25. Nothing major, just lets you roll for them if you want to.
Imagine My Immortal but written in the style of Shakespeare.
SCENE 1. A MAGIC SCHOOL CALLED HOGWARTS IN ENGLAND
Enter ENOBY
ENOBY
For truth, that which the gods have christened me Has many parts, like these locks, flow’n from my crown. That hellish sound, which forms mine name, sprung from The dusky shades of these roots, so like the stone But broken, rent, mottled; for, like the flames That hie from Hades, the dusk is split with peals Of cold violet, the shade of icy fangs Met with military scarlet; coils not But hangs; not ragged, but lustrous, set off Like a precious jewel made more pure by the Barren winds of silent winter deserts, So are not these jewels of mine own self-crown Brought forth in splendour so close to these eyes Frozen, as glaciers, forged by an artist Who, bereft of artisan tools, gives himself And sculpts his godly business with that Which the muses draw blindly from his vision. Thus sorrow, reflected twice in these mirrors, Casting mine eyes as icy limpid tears.
Imagine Shakespeare but written in the style of My Immortal
Hi my name is Hamlet and I have long blond hair that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like the sun god Apollo (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to him but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. My mother married my uncle after my father died. I have pale white skin. I’m also a student, and I went to a school called Wittenberg in Germany but I just graduated. I’m a prince (in case you couldn’t tell) but I wear mostly black bc I’m in mourning. I For example today I was wearing a black doublet with matching lace around it and a black tights, white undershirt and black boots. I was with my mother and Horatio. We were standing inside Elsinore. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. My uncle Claudius stared at me. I put up my middle finger at him.
My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.
this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).
So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.
For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)
Ranty-Ramblestein's Tumblr Import 