DekuKurohi
What would a combination of ZUN and Nasu be like?
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2019
- Messages
- 212
- Points
- 103
More writings stuff for you to talk about. This time let's talk characters.
Specifically on how you like to create and introduce characters and how do you divide your attention for each.
More specifically is how many characters do you like to put in a story, and how many you want to focus on.
There are a lot of dilemma when it comes to writing a story in terms of establishing characters and their usage.
Any story is gonna have more and more characters as they keep going in word counts. Some writers don't make a lot of characters, some do, for many different reasons.
You're gonna want more characters to shake up the status quo if you feel like there isn't enough reasons for your main characters and friends to do anything interesting, or maybe to show the scale of the current conflict they're in if it warrant more named characters, or because it's a long-running story and not showing new characters is gonna be impossible not to do since longer series means escalation in scope, or many other different reasons.
Some story setting like a school, tournament, war, etc. also needs a lot of characters too, and if you don't at least included a few names outside of the core cast it's gonna feel jarring that there's only a single small group the story is focused on.
When it comes to focus. Obviously you'll make your main character the one who got the most screen(text?)time, but with more characters you need to divert that attention. Either perspective flip, makes your pov character interact with them, etc.
Without focusing on other characters you're gonna risk either making the story rather dull with just one perspective to rely on, or make the stakes/tension next to non-existant if you don't give the newly introduced characters that are obviously gonna be important to the story feel, well, important.
There is also a problem of introducing too many characters too quickly. Probably the most transparent writings hiccup readers are gonna notice. Gonna have a hard time knowing who will be important if you crammed everyone's introduction into the same chapter, and chances are gonna make the readers lose the plot, like a story being way too fast to follow. Think most people know not to do this already, at least after writing/reading a few stories out. Hopefully. Maybe not.
There's also how to establish your characters but that's gonna make this topic already overly complicated/broad and wordy, and that's also something that many should already heard about thousand of times over already.
I'm keen on having very few or even just one perspective going on in a story, very protagonist-centered story. The kind that doesn't rely on too many characters since the mcs are the one driving the plot usually. In terms of focus it's basically mostly them and the side characters for a particular arc getting a few words in and getting pretty personal with the mc so they can show their dirty laundry without having to shift perspective, which doing too much can be confusing for a few people I would've imagined. In terms of introducing characters I keep them pretty low unless it's a very specific setting I'm going for. Drip feeding characters over many chapters.
Specifically on how you like to create and introduce characters and how do you divide your attention for each.
More specifically is how many characters do you like to put in a story, and how many you want to focus on.
There are a lot of dilemma when it comes to writing a story in terms of establishing characters and their usage.
Any story is gonna have more and more characters as they keep going in word counts. Some writers don't make a lot of characters, some do, for many different reasons.
You're gonna want more characters to shake up the status quo if you feel like there isn't enough reasons for your main characters and friends to do anything interesting, or maybe to show the scale of the current conflict they're in if it warrant more named characters, or because it's a long-running story and not showing new characters is gonna be impossible not to do since longer series means escalation in scope, or many other different reasons.
Some story setting like a school, tournament, war, etc. also needs a lot of characters too, and if you don't at least included a few names outside of the core cast it's gonna feel jarring that there's only a single small group the story is focused on.
When it comes to focus. Obviously you'll make your main character the one who got the most screen(text?)time, but with more characters you need to divert that attention. Either perspective flip, makes your pov character interact with them, etc.
Without focusing on other characters you're gonna risk either making the story rather dull with just one perspective to rely on, or make the stakes/tension next to non-existant if you don't give the newly introduced characters that are obviously gonna be important to the story feel, well, important.
There is also a problem of introducing too many characters too quickly. Probably the most transparent writings hiccup readers are gonna notice. Gonna have a hard time knowing who will be important if you crammed everyone's introduction into the same chapter, and chances are gonna make the readers lose the plot, like a story being way too fast to follow. Think most people know not to do this already, at least after writing/reading a few stories out. Hopefully. Maybe not.
There's also how to establish your characters but that's gonna make this topic already overly complicated/broad and wordy, and that's also something that many should already heard about thousand of times over already.
I'm keen on having very few or even just one perspective going on in a story, very protagonist-centered story. The kind that doesn't rely on too many characters since the mcs are the one driving the plot usually. In terms of focus it's basically mostly them and the side characters for a particular arc getting a few words in and getting pretty personal with the mc so they can show their dirty laundry without having to shift perspective, which doing too much can be confusing for a few people I would've imagined. In terms of introducing characters I keep them pretty low unless it's a very specific setting I'm going for. Drip feeding characters over many chapters.