What was that about seeing your doppelganger meaning?
We’ve found our acronym doppelganger.
O_O
Also it’s a website about character design, which looks pretty awesome. Go check it out.
-Evvy
Welcome to FYCD
-
We’ve found our acronym doppelganger.
O_O
Also it’s a website about character design, which looks pretty awesome. Go check it out.
-Evvy
What is conservation of detail?:
COD is expressing the most information in the most compressed manner that you can. It’s about finding the minimum of details that you need to use to convey your point.
Why?:
You have a limited amount of space to convey your ideas. Even if you don’t, why take ten pages to do what you can do in one sentence/draw something that’s nonessential 10,000,000 times over?
Examples:
Those windows that people draw that are a square with a + though it. -> Oh. A window.
“TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” -The Tell Tale Heart -> Crazy.
“Then when this crazy lynx started following me around the woods looking for handouts, it became his official nickname for me. I finally had to kill the lynx because he scared off game. I almost regretted it because he wasn’t bad company. But I got a decent price for his pelt.” - The Hunger Games -> Okay, we’ve got a pragmatist over here.
“What chair?” -Classic response to writing prompt ‘Convince me that this chair does not exist’. -> Am I crazy?
Practice:
Think of one event that really typifies your character’s personality. Then write about it in 40 words or less.
Have fun!
-Evvy
What would be considered bad character flaws? Like I know being clumsy is generally considered to not actually be a flaw, but are there other flaws like it that I should avoid?
-Anonymous
Well, we were once asked if being autistic counted, and Pen wrote them a nice response telling them to GTFO.
Clumsiness is a damn pain in the butt, (just ask some of my friends- they live their entire lives like a trust falls session), but it’s not a character flaw because it’s not a fault in their character. That would be like saying that being ugly is a character flaw (I can actually find you some stories like that, though- where someone complains that they’re plain-looking to the point where you want to call them and say that yes, they should wear a paper bag in public out of sheer annoyance). Clumsiness is one of those traits that have gotten a rap as ‘Sue-ish’ cause some famously annoying ladies (coughBella) bore it, and also because it’s one of those things that’s supposed to be endearing but often isn’t- we should feel that this childish and weak, non-threatening creature needs our protection, but most people are gonna get pissed when they need Lady or Lord Clumsy to do ONE JOB to save everyone and they fall on their face for the thousandth time and fail.
Let me try to put this in a way that makes more sense- flaws should be a product of someone’s choices, not their birth. Therefore, while being dyslexic, clumsy, or etc., would present challenges in someone’s life, and possibly add to the story, it’s not something that can be changed over time with character development. They’re traits, they’re not really changeable, only manageable.
A character flaw is a result of the character’s behavior, something that they, theoretically could stop if they wished. It also should cause problems in the story- if you say that my bossiness is a flaw, but then I’m always right with my bossiness, then you’re doing it wrong. I count one of my characters tendencies to take conflicts too far a flaw, because it gets him into trouble when he escalates fights.
Then, there’s this big blobby gray area of flaw vs. trait. Let’s say you’ve got a character who’s a drunk- it’s derailing his life, he’s mean to his friends, etc. Flaw. However, if you reveal in the narrative that he’s got a family history of alcoholism (it’s shown that this is genetic), and was raised in an environment that predisposed him to be that way- well, you’ve got behavior that is clearly bad, but probably sympathetic to the audience because our drunk has less control over his actions.
-Evvy
FURTHER POSTS (Answered Asks on the topic):
How Do I Pick Flaws For My Character?
The Sliding Scale of Traits : From Good to Bad
What About Stubbornness/Other Iffy Flaws?
How Many Flaws Is Too Many Flaws?
My Character’s Flawed, But Not A Villain- How Do I Do That?
Can Big Flaws Keep My Character From Being A Protagonist?
I Wanna Roll With My Character Being A Villain, But Want I Them To Be Sympathetic…?
Pen Tells Those Who Count Disabilities As Character Flaws To GTFO
Please note that all of this (other than the questions themselves and links that we put in for further reading) is original content from Fuck Yeah Character Development. You can use any of this, we’re just rather proud. Thanks for following.
We’ve gotten quite a few Asks regarding making a villain or antagonist a likable, sympathetic, or relatable character. So we’re making you a master post. Enjoy.
Sympathetic Characters:
What makes readers feel sympathetic towards a character?
The best, most genuine way to write a character that people will sympathize with is to take the time and create a round, realistic character with motivations and feelings that are understandable to the audience. Because humans are naturally inclined to feel empathy for each other, they will sympathize with almost anyone who they can see themselves in. If at any point the reader is thinking something like ‘I could see myself feeling or acting this way’, you’ve got them. There is a difference between disagreeing with a characters’ actions and judging them- you want your audience to only disagree (if at all).
Antagonist:
We’ve used ‘villain’ in the title, but it’s probably better to use the term ‘antagonist.’
Antagonist:
noun
1. a person who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent; adversary.
2. the adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama orother literary work: Iago is the antagonist of Othello.
(Dictionary.com)
Actually, an antagonist doesn’t have to be a person, depending on what kind of conflict you are writing. You can have a story without an antagonist, or a story that lacks an overarching antagonist as well. However, for the purposes of this post, when we say ‘antagonist’, we mean any person who engages in a major conflict with the protagonist of the story.
(Put it together for) Sympathetic Antagonists:
What makes readers feel sympathetic towards the antagonist of a story?
Real people are often hard to pin down as ‘evil’ or ‘good’, rather, they do good or evil things. Though your antagonist might do things that the audience does not agree with, if the reader can understand your character’s motivations, they will have a harder time condemning them altogether. When I say ‘sympathetic’, I don’t mean that the reader has to agree with that character’s actions, or even like them- rather, the sense that the character is not so different from the reader is what makes an antagonist ‘sympathetic’. As C put it, “The reader can SEE that the villain has good qualities, but their actions work against the hero.”
A few methods:
Backstory: The scary thing about nature vs. nurture thinking is that we still don’t know how much of our actions are influenced by genes, and how much by our environment. Therefore, most people, when presented with an account of how someone was shaped into who they are today by circumstances beyond their control, most readers will think, ‘that could have been me’.
Logic: While characters that are mentally unhealthy are popular for a villain role these days, I love a villain who has an excellent reason for what s/he’s doing. Take the antagonists behind the scenes in Ender’s Game, Graff and Anderson. They emotionally destroyed many children (including the protagonist), allowed one to die on their watch, and committed xenocide by proxy. But it was their plan to save the world.
Motivation: People can do things when they are angry, or insecure, or fearful, that they wouldn’t under other conditions. For example, fear makes people irrational. Nearly everyone has experienced this. If you have ever frantically crushed a spider under a book (poor book), then you can sympathize, even just a bit, with someone hurting other people because they are afraid.
This has been FYCD
C is a bamf.
Further Reading:
‘How To Create An Interesting Bad Guy’
‘50 greatest villains in literature’
‘Wikipedia Sympathetic Villain’
‘Writing Sympathetic Villains’
‘Creating Sympathetic Villains’
A few TV Tropes examples for inspiration:
That the next TinyChat be held when it can feature every admin of FYCD and WriteWorld.
Because that would be the most interesting TinyChat in the world.
-Evvy
Hey, everybody! I thought I’d build up some interest among you, because we’ve got an exciting new project starting soon at FYCD. It is submission based, which should be perfect for this blog as we’ve got a very friendly and submissiony following. We have the prototype ready, now all that we’re waiting on before the unveiling is for me to actually get my part of it done. It’s going to be good. Tell your friends. Be watching, followers.
- Evvy
We’re planning for it to launch on Saturday. Mark your calenders. ;)
- Pen
