DOTF - Charectorization...

Well We're back with a new DOTF ~ Discussion of the Forum... Charecterization

Well as it is very well known, every story needs charectors (no tomatoes and eggs! I'm just starting off!!!) Well we all know that charectors are the most important part of the story, there is no doubt about that... Without charectors we really don't have anything in a sotry...

Keeping this in mind, we can say that one of the toughest jobs of a writer is charector building... unless we have the charector depth intact we will not be able to write about them efficiently... so the questions of topic this time will be... people say that the more difficult thing about building a charector is making them as less as you as possible... and that is indeed a challenge

What is the most difficult thing about charector building? what is the toughest? What kind of a charector comes easy to write for you? Why? Of all the books/stories you have read whose charector do you think shows indepth building and maturity? (not a mature charector but the mature way it has been built!)

Edited by ~Sirius*Ysh~ - 16 years ago

Nice discussion topic!

For me that hardest thing is creating a character who is very different from myself. Sometimes when a character is faced with a situation and has to react to it, I am tempted to have the character react that way that I would. It can be difficult to examine the situation from the POV of the character.

I am a very logical person, who thinks of most things as either right or wrong and usually considers the consequences before taking an action. So it's easy for me to write about a character who has a similar mindset. In my story, Manzil, Samira would be one of those characters. It's much harder for me to write from the POV of more emotional characters.

I'll have to give a little more thought to the last question. I have read many stories in which I felt that the character development was superb...I'm not sure which one was the best. I'll edit this post when I can narrow it down. Edited by .:.Suhana.:. - 16 years ago

I find character building very difficult. All my characters turn out to be Mary
Sues or copys of me. That is not good writing. So I work hard to make the
cahracterss more realistic.

I think the way a character develops and changes is more important in a story then a making a character.. Its really the growth of the character dat helps moving the story further..

I think the most difficult thing in building a character is to define a character by its actions..Writing a character in words is far more easy then describing a character through its actions and revealing the mystery around his/her actions.. I think out of all the books i have read, the character which i thought shows indepth is defintly the character of snape from Harry Potter..

Very interesting topic!

What is the most difficult thing about charector building?

I think the most difficult thing about character building is keeping consistent with the character.  Once I have all the characters of my story in my mind, I have to 'think' like that character in all the situations.  So if a bunch of characters are involved in a certain situation, I'd have to think about each individually and see how they would react.  Inconsistency with the characters is really harmful for the overall impact of the story - something that happens in soaps everyday! 😳

what is the toughest?

The toughest character to write for me is a character that is very different from me.  Almost always when I write a story, there is a character that has a lot of my traits as a person.  But then there has to be other characters as well who would be totally opposite from me and so it gets harder for me think like they would.

What kind of a charector comes easy to write for you? Why?

The characters that are quite similar to me are easiest for me to write about.  I can just put myself in their place and see how I would react.  So, that makes things easier for me.

Of all the books/stories you have read whose charector do you think shows indepth building and maturity?

Hmm.... that's a tough one... I would Grendel in the book Grendel is one of the characters that is very well built.  We clearly get to see his responses, thoughts, and feelings in every situation... From his questions about the meaning of life to his reflections on mankind, we really 'get' the kind of character or monster he is.

Well....I read somewhere that the 3 basics of character building was good things, flaws and change...

the first two things..we hv both waxed lyrical about thm...but the third one is also important since people change as time goes on...change slowly and subtly and they themselves don't realise they have changed until the end.

I think its a bit difficult to bring about the subtle changes in your character...giving all the clues...but not making them clear cut! 😉

well i agree with u... ur outlook on these thigns is jst amazing!!!!
And ur right... charecterization is all about making out your charector to be real... and well we can make it real only if we arent blinded by wanting to hav perfect people... and we ourselves have undergone so much change in our life when we look back and i think our charectors whould do too...

Just like the trio in HP7 gre up... they changed all right but changed within charector... just simply amazing...