I'm just starting to create my world and characters. Anyway I'd really like to avoid stereotypes and make them have depth, but I still want my characters to make sense, you know? Like I don't want print-out characters, but I also don't want a too diverse character with too many different traits that don't mix well together. So I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions or ideas of how to avoid such things. Thanks.
In my opinion, its extremely hard to avoid all stereotypes. Sometimes you just gotta let one little one or a bit of some cliche-ness slip in.
I like to first think of my characters goals and what role they play in the story. This will help you to dodge certain stereotypes and will help you give your characters a bit more depth y'know? Once i've figured that out, I think of their personality. I found a pinterest post that gives a lot of personality traits with ones that contradict each other on the opposite side. — https://www.pinterest.com/pin/351421577151395968/ and another one — https://www.pinterest.com/pin/289074869811354836/. I also think one of the best ways to make characters is to look at people you know. Find someone who's personality is similar to your characters and think about the things they do and how they act. I do this a lot with some of my characters!
Ehh, I didn't give you much info, but hope I helped!
I'm having troubles too! Could anybody help?
This is my current main character, if anyone has anything that I should change, please tell me.
I have a few different ways I have made characters over the years.
One way for me is to start with the type of character I want them to be. (AKA, What role do you need to fill) Do you want someone adventurous? Curious? Cynical? Sometimes the story you want to write will call for a role to be filled. If you have a story that has one character going across the land to find some magical artifact, you will need a character that is either predispositioned to do so or would be interesting to make have to do so and so on. It's okay to have stereotypes in your story (some are unavoidable) as long as your character isn't a cut-out of the trope. If you are super worried about stereotyping, give a character a trait that counters the stereotype you are avoiding (A cowardly hero, or something like that)
If you are afraid of being overly complicated or diverse, consider that you may not need to develop every facet of the character, just the parts that pertain to the story. If the story has nothing to do with what music they like, you don't need to flesh that out. Like out of all the traits you give a character, general likes and dislikes are often the least important to the story progression and are more like interesting decorations to make them appear human, but it's important that these aren't the basis of who the character is.
One way I find to help develop convincing personalities is to bring them right out of the character's past. While a notable portion of who we are is genetic (like intro/extroversion) a lot of it is how we grow up. Consider what parts of your character's past are key, and how they would affect how that character sees the world/treats people/thinks of themselves. For example:
If you have Character A and they go through an ordeal in high school where their few friends betrayed them, this could give them a general issue with trust. Did they breeze through school? this could give them a feeling that they are naturally smart and this could come back to bite them when the bar is raised too high. Or if they had a lot of pressure and expectations on them growing up this could build a rebellious nature in them so that they want to go against what is desired of them and be their own person.
I feel like I'm babbling at this point but I hope that this helps you in some way!! Good luck!!!
Celina Qu, You need to make the character public (in sharing settings) or else no one can see the page, as a heads up
Oh, thanks for telling me. How do you do that?
(I'm new to Notebook.ai)
Oh wait I found it. Now it should work.
This was really helpful thank you!