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My other characters have very little personality.



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Thu Feb 09, 2012 4:35 am
Gringoamericano says...



Well, I enjoy writing dialogue for my characters, especially the characters that fill the smart-alec or jerk archetypes. But once those archetypes are filled, all the other characters either have little personality, or are just copies of those guys.
I can think up small things about them (like a major hate for corporations, or feeling sympathy for a surprisingly comedic death), but it has no effect over their overall personality and dialogue choices. It is all literally interchangeable between these characters
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Thu Feb 09, 2012 1:44 pm
Rosendorn says...



Then start developing them.

I find the best way to develop characters is to figure out why they behave the way they do. Once you figure out the "why" they behave that way, you can get some idea of backstory, their reactions, and a whole host of other things. I'd suggest to do that even for your jerks and smart-alecs, because that might not be the most ideal personality for how they grew up. You could get variations in there based on things that happened in their pasts and their current life situations, which would get deep variations within their personality.

You can also start from their backstory for the personality-less characters. By figuring out what they lived through and how they reacted (including social expectations. This is a big one, because social expectations taints perception no matter what. However, it can taint it in a million different ways. Social expectation is simply a framework) you can create a solid personality

Hopefully this helps.
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