Before I started writing stories, I vented my need for creativity in the form of roleplay. If you’re not familiar with roleplaying, it is where you make up a character, and pretend to be that character on a forum. The first post on the thread of the forum would tell you the situation your character was in, and each person playing would take turns telling the story from their character’s perspective.
The result being I got really good at developing characters. You can give a character a name and a history, but there is nothing like roleplaying to give your character depth. I thought I’d share this with you in a three part series, starting with a “rough draft” so to speak, and culminating with us doing a small roleplay with our characters. Here’s how we begin.
Fill out the following form, with a character. It doesn’t matter who, but I suggest a new one so you aren’t clogged with old history:
Name:
Age:
Ethnicity:
Eye color:
Hair color:
Lives in what country:
Lives in what state/province:
Lives in what sort of house/apartment/etc:
Job:
Education:
Special skills:
Greatest strength:
Greatest weakness:
I’ll post mine in the comments, so we can all keep track of the characters. 🙂
Sep 20, 2010 @ 15:55:55
Name: Maurice
Age: 17
Ethnicity: French
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Black
Lives in what country: France
Lives in what state/province: Normandy (adminstrative province)
Lives in what sort of house/apartment/etc: château, of course.
Job: …job? For Maurice? You must be joking.
Education: What do teachers know. >_> Nothing he wants to know.
Special skills: Able to make paintings come alive.
Greatest strength: Painting
Greatest weakness: Lofty arrogance
Sep 20, 2010 @ 16:37:14
Great way of getting into a character whose actions and thoughts you plan to write. I like your humorous descriptions of Maurice. Your sense of humor always delights me. Thank you for sharing.
Sep 21, 2010 @ 09:05:42
I’m going to have to try this. I’m working on expanding my character development in my poetry and this could really help. 🙂
Oct 18, 2010 @ 04:08:08
I am so intrigued. Character development in poetry? Never seen a poem featuring a character besides the author. If you have one please share.
Sep 25, 2010 @ 13:43:44
I like what you’ve come up with here for Maurice. I’m all for whatever works for anyone as long as it gets them writing. Having said that, detailed character questionaires don’t work well for me. I’ve happily filled out the forms and then get bored with the character. Maybe it’s the minutia, but it kills it for me. I like starting out with certain things in mind: strengths and weaknesses and what a character wants more than anything else. Then I find out other stuff as I’m writing. It’s just the way that seems to work for me (at least at the moment).