rpanons | [D] Hold still

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Concerns?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Reading these threads makes me feel like I have a really odd OC creation technique. I don't make lots of OCs, to be fair (maybe because my way of doing it is very time-consuming), but when I do my approach is almost backwards from what people talk about here.

I start out with a question. Something like "What would the consequences and implications of X be?" where X is something different from our modern culture but standard in some other/past culture. (My OCs tend to be historical, though I think I'd take this approach even if I was making a character from a sci-fi or fantasy world.)

X is never some event or ability that's exceptional to the character, so it's never like "What would the consequences of being a vampire be?" or "What would the consequences of being locked in a dark room for the first 6 years of life be?" I find that kind of thing to be really boring and uninspired, personally.

So I start from my question about the consequences of a profoundly different cultural or historical set-up, and then I kind of stretch that in all directions and I do research to help myself make my answer to that question more sensitive and astute, and I let the character emerge from it as a possible example of how my question might be answered in the life and personality of one individual. And I have never once felt like I need to worry about whether the character is a "special snowflake" or "special for being super ordinary." I tend to get really good feedback and responses on my OCs too.

Guess I'm just wondering if there's anyone else out there who does something similar to this or if it's just the twisted path of my researcher-brain.

I have done this before! I'm big into world building and sometimes it's the idea of the world's culture that leads me into building it and creating the character, not my idea for a character that leads to creating the rest of the world. Not all of the time by far, though.

It sounds though that from what you're describing that the world is far more important/essential to your creative process than the character itself, which could be why you go about making them this way. Personally, I'm more of a character driven person. I love elaborate, detailed worlds and making them, but when it comes to RP and making OCs to play, I'm far more focused on the character because the world in many ways becomes a side note. It shapes the character, but isn't so important that I'll need to bring it up in every tag I make, so I'm more focused on my character and how they'll react being removed from their world and put into a jamjar-type situation.

When I'm writing a story on the other hand, I'm far more likely to have an idea for the world and build on that before really getting to the characters.

That's true enough, yes. If you put it like that I suppose I am very "world-driven," but I don't think I'd usually think of it in those terms.

I think that the only way any character (or any person for that matter) can make sense is from the point of view of their individual encounter with their environment. Certain elements of anyone's encounter with the environment are going to be things everyone has in common (everyone who's human feels hunger, for example), but the world that a person grew up in gives those elements shape and texture.

I suppose I'd say that I think that the surface of any character's (or any person's) body is shaped by the history of their encounters with the world (which necessarily preexists them). Because of that, I guess I don't really see a coherent way of putting the character first or bracketing the world to make it a side note.

I guess for me, it's just I never actually separate the two the way you seem to be doing. When building a character I'm already thinking of the world. If I want a character who is happy and focused on helping people, I'm already considering why the character is a happy person, what is it about the character's world and history that allows them (or would conflict against them) being the person that they are. I don't just see it as one or the other, it's a whole package to me.

The world is never a complete side-note of course, but majority of the world in relation to your character can be. I am working on a character now with a vast culture and society that they aren't party to. It's an entire world outside of their life experiences that they don't know anything about and only marginally influences them. My character is shaped by their world, but only by their world as they themselves experience it which really means that for any character no matter how expansive a world they live in, they exist because of the world as they see it and have experienced it, whether or not that is actually how their world truly is.

You can have a character who was raised wealthy and secluded to the point they believe that everyone else should obviously live that way and to be told that two-thirds of the people around them actually live in poverty would be a huge surprise. So what does the lives, experiences, and traditions of the poor have as bearing on this affluent and sheltered character? Nothing as far as that character knows. Sure, the relations between the wealthy and the poor might influence them very indirectly, but it's not as important. It becomes a side-note in that character's life and their experiences.

[D] Hold still

Re: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

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