@BurningEmber Holy Moly! This is amazing!!!!!! ahhhhhhhh!!!!
That's marvelously helpful for development!
@HopieRemi
Basic Character Sketch or Profile
Name:
Birth Location:
Current Location:
Age/birthdate:
Hobbies:
Height:
Weight:
Hair Color:
Eye Color:
Profession:
Inspired by?
Fears?
Strength:
Weakness:
Extra Notes:
@Rebekahwriter13
this is really helpful =0 i'll be using this <3
Basic information
Name
Place of birth
Age
Hair colour
Eyee colour
Heeight.
This is an old one but always works for me for world building, as you will already have the base knowledge of most of these things, and you can apply them as guidelines to make you writing work easier.
MRSGREN
Movement. Respiration. Sensitivity. Growth. Excretion. Reproduction. Nutrition.
.
When I used to write, I would analyse each word and imagine a child from birth to the age of death or at least adulthood. When you grow and age naturally, you have to think about more things than normal and apply more scientific factors to things in order to understand and navigate the world.
I found this the easiest way to decide what, where and how my character would be, based on their surroundings first, their biological requirements and how they would react to their surroundings. Just like a plant - sensitivity.
You can write this list out as headings, hyphen and then put another heading next to your main heading, and underneath each one write a description of what each one will mean for your story, and how they will apply 'in the real world.' Which means that you can make them as simple or as detailed as you like.
.
For example:
Reproduction - Physical
Easy or difficult birth? Reproduction required or government controlled? Standard or special birth? Birth options available?
-All of these can set the feel for a world, a character's background, time era, current politics etc.
.
Reproduction - Religious / Political
Current dominating religions? Reproduction required or government controlled? Standard or specific religions? By choice or forced?
Decide on the politics you want to focus on, and ask similar questions. Who are we following? Serious politics like a biography but fiction? Or more like Harry Potter?
-All of these can set the feel for a world, a character's background, time era, current politics etc.
Reproduction - Business
-Think about how you want to execute this one. Imagine you are looking for a job for the first time, if you are not going to focus on a specific job you have specialist knowledge in.
Imagine the character has left home, has no knowledge of the world around them, is signing on for the first time, potentially homeless and may even have personal issues. This is the easiest way to introduce business reproduction into your story, as it is from a clueless character's perspective, which means discovery and analysis by the readers. This worked particularly well for Harry Potter.
You can decide on business reproduction as you go along, from the current financial situations, to business strategies, to what businesses may have boomed during this time era etc, whether there are workhouses, how employees are treated, what is required and whether it's government controlled - like during WW2 etc. What about security, privacy, equality? How would that affect reproduction?
If there are problems - how do you think society would react to this? If badly, how do you think the media would influence society and gain their fair share of profit? What colourful characters could you invest your time in (Rita Skeeter) making as quirky, troublesome or scandulous as possible? Or have the government controlled the media by making all news fair and honest? How do you think complete transparency in the world would make people feel? What about public security etc?
Growth - Education
Growth - Personal
Growth - Political
Movement - Physical
Movement - Political
Movement - Spiritual
.
Have a think about some of these. Write them down and see if you can't come up with your own ideas.
This is great, thanks!
Hi, everyone! Am I becoming lazy? Last year I have been getting a lot of useless essays to write at college. The teacher does not explain anything, just wants us to write as we can but all the marks were bad. I was nervous about it and my Mum was angry with me. My therapist recommended me to ask (Edited by Tazzie to eliminate offsite link) for help. I had more free time to spend with family and the highest marks. What is more valuable: studying or family and mental health?
@loaleo
i'd say that family and mental health, and studying should have equal emphasis. however in my personal opinion, in the long run family and mental health is more important.
studying for school and college is important - you have to give education a decent effort - because it's generally what helps you land a job, get a home, achieve your goals in life. and achieving your goals means you're more positive, which has a good effect on mental health.
but if studying hard is negatively affecting your mental health, change up your methods. no amount of textbook-reading and listening to lectures will make up for the really, really bad consequences of overworking yourself. not unless you want a first-hand experience of burnout.
@HopieRemi
i'm not sure if this has been posted before but those are my absolute favorite (if a bit cruel to the characters) character development questions. it's a set of six questions that WORK.
who is my character?
what do they want most?
how can i stop them from getting it?
what is my character's biggest secret?
why is it a secret?
how can i reveal it?