Personalities in writing
Personalities are important to any character in any game, genre, book, magazine, written and/or acted material you find. The personality can either be the writer's as he/she posits a question or how they run the discourse of the material, such as I'm doing here. But to get down to specifics, so we can concentrate the thoughts better, I'm going to go to character's personality creation in City of Heroes, which for me, is a haphazard situation with no real set-in-stone rules.
Earlier I discussed the way I put characters together, and how I get the story from that process. The process isn't done completely by that process, but oft times it does create a rudimentary personality for th character, and I find that very intriguing. Just how does the personality come about? Part or all of it can be suggested by the background writeup, and how much of their life is linked to their goals. Other times, the personality may be absent completely, requiring a number of false starts in role-playing before the personality emerges. What I am saying here is there is no set-in-stone method I use to create a personality.
Let's take a look at some of the characters and I'll describe how their personalties came about.
LaFleur - Literally, LaFleur came out of the mists with her personality fully formed. It was like she had this strong, quiet, wry humor that just FIT. What solidified her was the first time I ever played her in a group, and died three times in quick succession. "I guess I am too popular today" was the line that she uttered, and the response from the others in /tell was "lol, so true!", and that sealed the personality.
Wirraway - She, like LaFleur staggered out of the mists of creation with some part of her personality already built. But unlike LaFleur, she needed polishing, which came from a series of old Foster's Lager commercials. The "more American than the Americans" line from somewhere was how she eventually developed her personality. Loud, proud, eccentric, gregarious. She talked the talk and walked the walk. Foster's gave me the accent style, the "american" line gave me the force of the personality.
StarWyng - Her personality I had to re-build four times I think before I had an epiphany (well, not so much an epiphany as serendipity.) Lloyd was watching "Alien Nation" and the visitors diffculties in fitting into society, and their penchant for taking every part of human life to it's extreme finally gave me someting that fit the winged alien. Hers is an unfinished personality and deliberately left unfinished. Her perspective is not human and that is the most difficult to portray for me, but it is a fun challenge. She is intensely passionate and is a heartbeat from emotional extremism continually, which is a fascinating and difficult place to be, as it wears on her teammates and causes friction and hard feelings at times. But I wouldn't trade her personality at all. It fits, and she has enough good points that I think the others let her slide over the rough spots.
When one learns to fit in a society, one tends to be either very hidden or on the edge due to not understanding the nuances of interaction. That is StarWyng. WIth all heroes, there is a pttern of similarity in me, and that is because of a personal view of heroes in spandex going around fighting crime. The personality is intense, always. Looking at it from a psychological view, what kind of personality does it take to do these things? One that is certainly beyond the norm, I couldn't do what the heroes in books do, I'm not willing to be out in the spotlight that way, not willing to confront, and brother is superheroeing all about confrontation! So to my understanding, heroes will be extreme in personality. Not bad, just out there.
Earlier I discussed the way I put characters together, and how I get the story from that process. The process isn't done completely by that process, but oft times it does create a rudimentary personality for th character, and I find that very intriguing. Just how does the personality come about? Part or all of it can be suggested by the background writeup, and how much of their life is linked to their goals. Other times, the personality may be absent completely, requiring a number of false starts in role-playing before the personality emerges. What I am saying here is there is no set-in-stone method I use to create a personality.
Let's take a look at some of the characters and I'll describe how their personalties came about.
LaFleur - Literally, LaFleur came out of the mists with her personality fully formed. It was like she had this strong, quiet, wry humor that just FIT. What solidified her was the first time I ever played her in a group, and died three times in quick succession. "I guess I am too popular today" was the line that she uttered, and the response from the others in /tell was "lol, so true!", and that sealed the personality.
Wirraway - She, like LaFleur staggered out of the mists of creation with some part of her personality already built. But unlike LaFleur, she needed polishing, which came from a series of old Foster's Lager commercials. The "more American than the Americans" line from somewhere was how she eventually developed her personality. Loud, proud, eccentric, gregarious. She talked the talk and walked the walk. Foster's gave me the accent style, the "american" line gave me the force of the personality.
StarWyng - Her personality I had to re-build four times I think before I had an epiphany (well, not so much an epiphany as serendipity.) Lloyd was watching "Alien Nation" and the visitors diffculties in fitting into society, and their penchant for taking every part of human life to it's extreme finally gave me someting that fit the winged alien. Hers is an unfinished personality and deliberately left unfinished. Her perspective is not human and that is the most difficult to portray for me, but it is a fun challenge. She is intensely passionate and is a heartbeat from emotional extremism continually, which is a fascinating and difficult place to be, as it wears on her teammates and causes friction and hard feelings at times. But I wouldn't trade her personality at all. It fits, and she has enough good points that I think the others let her slide over the rough spots.
When one learns to fit in a society, one tends to be either very hidden or on the edge due to not understanding the nuances of interaction. That is StarWyng. WIth all heroes, there is a pttern of similarity in me, and that is because of a personal view of heroes in spandex going around fighting crime. The personality is intense, always. Looking at it from a psychological view, what kind of personality does it take to do these things? One that is certainly beyond the norm, I couldn't do what the heroes in books do, I'm not willing to be out in the spotlight that way, not willing to confront, and brother is superheroeing all about confrontation! So to my understanding, heroes will be extreme in personality. Not bad, just out there.
posted by JD at
7:03:00 AM
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