While it may sound like I’m stating the obvious here, your character needs to have something they want to accomplish. Maybe they want to be the best at something, see a place, fall in love, conquer the world, or something else. Whatever it is, they need to have something that they desire beyond all other things. Ideally, give them more than one goal. Make them have to sacrifice one to achieve the other, to add extra drama
Maybe they’re the best artist in their class or they’re great at juggling. Perhaps they slipped on the stairs in front of their whole village. Either way, give something for the locals to remember about them. That way it can give you a starting point for the interactions with other characters
Whether a friend, a coworker, a sibling, an army buddy, or someone they saved, have someone close to your character whom they’re close to and wish well. Yeah, angsty “I have no friends” characters can be fun, but in small doses; eventually the reader gets fed up with them. At the very least the character needs someone to talk to or bounce ideas off of
It may be a neighborhood they grew up in, their parents’ house, or a room they’ve been renting in a tavern. Hell, it could even be a person if you so choose. Everyone needs to feel secure at one time or another
Now, recognize that this may not work for EVERY character, but it’s up to you to decide what will fit and what won’t. In many cases, it can work. A signature item is something that is recognizably YOUR CHARACTER’S, be it a weapon, a scarf, a toy, or a piece of jewelry. It’s something that makes them feel like themself
This should be something other than the problem addressed in the main plot line. Maybe a member of their family is sick, they are broke, or they’re failing their classes. This helps make your character seem more realistic because NO ONE has one problem at a time
This can affect the plot or not; either way, it helps make your character more well rounded. Maybe your character can’t read, left their crewmates to die when a kracken attacked their ship, or made their long lost sister run away. If you choose to have it affect the plot in any way, this secret should embarrass your character, make it so that other characters don’t trust your character, or somehow endanger them and the people they’re close to if found out
Maybe it’s because your character wants to be like their hero, maybe it’s so they can repay a debt (like if someone saved their life previously), maybe it’s for their child, but your character needs to have a reason to occasionally face their fears
Have fun!!!
I understand that this is meant to be simple, but GOSH DANG, is it so helpful! This came at the perfect time for me, as I am in the process of creating characters both in the realm of fictional writing and tabletop roleplaying. I’ve been seriously struggling with one of my characters for a long time now and always felt something was missing. Only now do I realize - I had all of these, except for a secret! Well, I gave him a secret to keep, but not one that would make him fearful, embarrassed, or ashamed! And what point is there in a secret without a price attached to it’s exposure? There was no cost, no blow to his own worth or self-esteem or ego, to keeping that secret from his friends and allies. Now I know I need to sit down with my DM and work out where to interweave a potential secret into the plot.
Thank you for this, OP! May it genuinely help all of my followers as it has helped me.
the most underrated line in TAZ is when Tom Bodette asks what happens when he gets hit by a train, Merle replying “it’s a once in a lifetime experience”
okay so HOT TAKE but i really do not register candy/meat routes as like, actual…canon i want to accept in my heart. it’s more like “oh, this is probable but i can’t register this as reality”, and also idk i’m not sure if vriska lalonde would be like That seeing as she’s yknow, free of the abuse and society that made vriska who she was.
however. that being said. in a universe, perhaps, where rose and kanaya became parents, PTA meetings would go something like this:
rose attends every meeting in silence. her suit is impeccably tailored and fits her like a glove, and she carries this goth af parasol and is like…just this dark entity in the background, chillin…eating way too many complimentary pastries….etc…but no one can kick her out bc she’s paying for all of the art programs (w/ like. ancient carapace deal money from when she was still a young god. yknow the drill)
kanaya is. the opposite. she’ll come to maybe half the meetings but is always so incredibly jazzed. like you know when owen wilson says wow. because that’s kanaya at literally EVERYTHING said in the meeting. “the budget is going to be increased” “Wow!” also she eats all of the pastries too and generally spends most of the time kind of wandering and socializing outside of just sitting around and discussing like, parent teacher conference stuff
both of them are horrible, terrible gossips. like it is really bad. there is so much that goes on. rumors that should’ve never left the grave emerge somehow, and it’s always their fault
the rest of the PTA has no idea that they’re married because like, it just…doesn’t click? everyone thinks they’re just rival moms and then realizes, oh. Oh.
(because kanaya steals the last danish and rose chides her before kissing her)
they usually resolve food disputes by eating the food at the same time and meeting in the middle with a kiss
This single image could not be more inaccurate about about Gen Z slang even if the selection process was getting a series of randomly chosen monkeys to tap on keyboards to generate phrases.
This is like… early 2000s millenial speak, and only the emo/weeb ones. Gen Zers were like 5 when people were talking like this.
not to totally derail a funny post but i think this is a prime example of people who cant code switch being pissed off by people who can.
I cant talk much, but what little i can comes in two flavors - at-home talk, and Proper Talk.
the first is basically an appalachian dialect and accent so thick as to be nearly indecipherable to people who speak Vanilla American English, and the second is the way my speech therapist taught me to talk “correctly” and usually what i write in. im obviously much better at the first (i stutter a little less, for example), and i have to actively try to do the second but i can do both.
i believe (correct me if i need to get back in my own lane) that people who speak AAVE have similar experiences.
heres the thing - people fucking hate code switching, especially if you do it in front of them. my father’s family, who are all City Folk, will get blindingly enraged if my sisters and i “talk like trashy hillbillies” in front of them.
it’s not “proper” its “uneducated” is “makes you sound stupid”
sounds a lot like how older people feel about slang, no?
but have you ever met a teenager who isn’t capable of turning off their slang for a presentation? a job interview? hell, just hanging out with grandma?
and the thing is, its not just that they think we’re stupid because they devalue our way of talking. it’s also that they know we’re excluding them. why else would we speak in a way that some people in the room don’t understand, unless the conversation was meant only for those of us who can?
it’s the same reason white people get pissed about spaces for people of color, cishet people furious about pride, able-bodied people who complain about disabled parking spaces.
they’re so used to being the default that the idea of a space, an event, a language that excludes them just. fucking enrages them. they can handle it. it just doesnt compute.
so they devalue it, they call you uneducated and stupid and trashy. they try to imitate the language (as above) to mock it, but all they do is show off just how little of it they understand.
all of this is to say that grasping language well enough that you can flip it like a switch, pick and choose the best words and phrases to make yourself understood in so many wildly different environments?
makes you a thousand times more fluent in a language than someone who just lucked out on being born “the default”
The common Gen-Z greetings is: H-hewwo?
The biggest red flag that boomers don’t know shit is that yeet isn’t on the list
