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I'm struggling to create good characters for my story...



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Sat May 30, 2015 8:23 pm
TheArchon says...



How is everyone's day going?

I apologize for the length of this post in advance.

I recently resumed writing the Pokemon fanfiction I started writing two years ago. I know that's it just fanfiction, but this story means a lot to me and, in my opinion, has an interesting, dark twist on the Pokemon world.

I have a problem with my two main characters Thomas and Neo. Long story short, Thomas had a vision of his father's death when he was nine years old. Since he couldn't recognize anyone in his "dream" he did not warn his father about anything. The next morning, Thomas' mother tells him that his father, who is the Pokemon League Champion btw, was murdered that morning. Thomas realizes that his dream from the night before was a vision of his father's death, feels great remorse for it, and vows to find and defeat The Archon (the man who murdered his father). Unfortunately, Thomas' mother becomes very strict and forbids Thomas to go on a Pokemon journey until he is fourteen-years-old.

In my first two chapters, Thomas acts very cliche and uninteresting. When he recounts his father's murder, the story simply says "My heart literally skipped a beat. My father was dead, and it was all my fault. Instead of crying that day, I took an oath that one day I would find The Archon and defeat him! That was my mission."

Fast forward five years and Thomas does the following things"

1. He has another vision but fails to act on it until Professor Oak calls him and tells him that his cousin is injured. Shouldn't Thomas know better than to wait for something bad to happen after his visions *again*?!

2. When Thomas receives a special Pokemon from Professor Oak, you get the typical "Oh my gosh. Was I really getting a special Pokemon?! I couldn't believe it!"

3. Thomas is "calm and collected"... He's supposed to be a character that usually keeps his cool and can keep everyone calm even in a dire situation. (He kind of has to be to look after his family). Doesn't this make him a Mary Sue, though? How can Thomas be serious about defeating the Archon and protecting his family and friends, while at the same time living a joyful life with Pokemon?

Now, I've done a bit of exploration already to help fix this. I've figured out some things that might help Thomas' character:

1. Instead of Thomas falling into an endless depression after his father's death, he realizes that crying about it all the time won't fix anything. Though Thomas still wants to exact revenge on the Archon, he does his best to enjoy life, enjoy Pokemon training, and take care of his family.

2. Since Thomas' visions tend to happen at night (at least his first one did), he may try to refrain from sleeping in fear of another vision. This could lead to other problems, as well.

3. I'm not sure how Thomas' trust is affected by his father's murder. On one hand, the danger of the Kanto region (the one region in which this story takes place) and the fact that the Archon is still alive could cause him to avoid associating with strangers. However, Thomas is also smart enough to know that he cannot defeat the Archon on his own. This could lead to him befriending new people along the way.

As for Neo, another main character who travels with Thomas:

1. Neo is the son of the Archon. The Archon sends Neo to steal a special Pokemon from Professor Oak. Neo discovers that a boy named Adam (Thomas' cousin) has the special Pokemon and pushes Adam down the stairs of Professor Oak's laboratory, which results in serious injury. Despite this, Neo is still unable to retrieve the special Pokemon. In fear of returning to the Archon empty handed, Neo hides near the laboratory in wait of someone else to be given the special Pokemon. When he discovers that Thomas has the special Pokemon, he persuades Thomas to let him join him on his journey. Neo plans to steal the special Pokemon when it evolves. However, throughout the journey, Neo grows close to Thomas, regrets injuring Adam, and questions whether he should go through with his mission after all or not.

2. The Archon murdered Neo's mother (yes, the Archon murders his own wife) when Neo was ten years old. Unlike Thomas, Neo takes an overall negative approach to dealing with this. Neo's mother was the only person to ever show him compassion, and now that she's deceased, Neo refrains from socializing with people outside of his job on Team Alpha (of which the Archon is the leader).

My last problem is that all of my main characters seem rather dark. Thomas is trying to avenge his father's death, even though he does his best to keep a positive outlook. Neo has social issues and is generally cold towards others. Janine, a girl they meet early in the story, is very disciplined in the training of her Pokemon and her own body and mind. Her main goal is to become stronger than her father, Koga, who is a gym leader. Janine is very serious about her training and very protective of her father, but perhaps outside of training she enjoys socializing with people?

If you read my entire post, I thank you. Every time I try to just continue on with my story (which shifts viewpoints from Thomas to Neo and vise versa in between chapters) the crappiness of my characters keeps from writing. I can't stand my characters being terrible in the first two chapters! Even if I develop them more outside of the story, they will still suck in the first two chapters. Any advice on this will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Wibbly wobbley time-wimey stuff
  





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Mon Jun 01, 2015 1:42 pm
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Aley says...



Okay, so I'm not the best at character development, but I've made a lot of them for a large variety of things. I'm going to attempt to tackle this together so that you can have a good reading/reward balance.

Characters need a balance of good and bad, no matter who they are. People feel a lot of things, so saying that a character is just going to be "cool and collected" is sort of like denying half of your character exists. Give Thomas a chance to really show his happy side so that you can feel the depth of the character. Also, writing with just a cool and collected character can be really boring. They don't say much, they don't explain much, and they don't question much. They just sort of are. In order to have this sort of character as a main character, you need the supplemental inquisitive, open, bright, comic relief character. In the anime of pokemon, this was pretty much Team Rocket and Meowth. Ash, Brock, and Misty were never completely stiff either though, they all were exploring and doing everything they could do learn and develop as people traveling.

That being said, I think the best way to deal with creating these characters with a better sense of depth is to give them flaws, and give them quirks. Give Thomas and Neo something that puts them together regardless of if they ran into each other because of Neo's mission. If Neo is scared of everyone, then make Thomas a social butterfly despite his father's unfortunate demise. What if they both really loved having unique teams so they struggled to always have different pokemon than each other but never shared what their team was at any given time so whenever one of them has to fight someone, they start complaining to one another about it. Give them those social oddities like limps and groans and odd noses.

Developing your characters like this, making them fun to describe, is going to help you engage in developing them farther. I think my favorite example of this is in Soul Eater. Death the Kid basically has obsessive compulsive disorder, he constantly has to have symmetry, the quirk? His hair is not symmetrical and he can't fix it. He has three lines on exactly only one side of his head. He has tried to fix it, but the lines refuse to be dyed, so he has to live with being imperfect himself while he makes the rest of the world perfect. He is a cool collected character who's very sharp and smart too, but because of his OCD, he is very fun and interesting. It comes up at the weirdest times and makes problems for the group while still being true to his character and giving him a chance to really break out of his shell and complain.

Study the characters you like, find their flaws and develop flaws that you think your characters could have, then put them together, see how they fit, and if they don't fit like you want, change them! Characters need to be versatile, and if a plot isn't getting off the ground, that needs to be versatile too. Consider changing things in your plot to help support these new characters.

In terms of plot, I think you're making the classic mistake of ignoring alternative characters. Anchor is a character too. Develop him past just being a "psychopath who rules a gang" and into something that explains why he can be charismatic enough to rule a gang, have had a wife, not kill his son too, and have killed his wife. Develop an understanding for your villains and make him deep so that as you think about the ways Thomas will attempt to corner him, you can think as Anchor and develop ways that he would counter that.

There are a bunch of resources on character development in Writing Tutorials. Have an index: Writing Tutorials Article Index
  








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