Posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 by Malin
This week and last week I’ve been on some narrative meetings. What I’ve come to realize more and more during this time, is that when creating a character, have a stereotype in mind, or at least a character that already exists in mind.
Sometimes keywords for the character you’re creating won’t come or are hard for other members to understand, but if you, as we in our group finally realized: “Hey, this girl sounds like Claudia from Interview with the Vampire!”– you can easily describe her: This girl is small and cute, but very very frustrated that she’s unable to change, jealous even. In our case she might not be jealous of the female curves that she can never posess, but maybe she’s jealous of another sibling, or even the world that she is not a part of anymore.
So. My advice for creating a character: Take a character or a stereotype that you think fit (it can even be an actor!) and tweak it.
What do they have in common, what sets them apart? What makes your character your own creation? It’s not supposed to be stealing, it’s just supposed to give you a rolemodel!
A better example is something that I noticed awhile ago.
Take Fenris from Dragon Age II. He’s described as a wolf, and walks around like a caged animal. He is angry and frustrated, he wants his enemy to suffer for all that he has caused him. He doesn’t trust anyone.
Now, if you have a Rivalmance with him, there is a scene that made me think of something…
In this scene, he spits out “You will be the death of me!” AH THE BITTERNESS AND THE LOVE. YES. It must be! He is Heathcliff!!!!
For you who don’t know what I’m talking about: Heathcliff is the main villain in the book Wuthering Heights. He is the best example of an anti-hero. He is a foundling, and a badly treated one. He is also often described as a caged animal, like Fenris. But Heathcliff finds love in a girl that starts caring for him, and this is where his true tragedy starts. (“You will be the death of me!”, anyone?)
After I drew this connection I realized why I didn’t like Fenris, but why I wanted to like him. His lines are sometimes sugarcoated (but not has horrible as some of Anders’. GAAHHH.) and sometimes not deep enough, probably because of the lack of time the writer had to develop him.
…But his rolemodel is pretty kickass!
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