It’s been way too long, and there’s an army of distractions to thank for that. I guess it’s good this is a personal thing, then. Today I want to try and tackle the idea of building and developing a character through roleplay; just calling it “Character Building” should suffice, though. While most characters don’t see nearly as much development as their authors would like (or any for that matter) I would argue that this is certainly one of the highest achievements a roleplayer can make a claim to fame with. There may be times where you feel great triumph in orchestrating a long, devious plot, but character development is something that spans every tense you’re going to write and plan in, and I would argue is the hardest thing to master. This takes everything I’ve gone over into account all at once to produce one glorified, ever-changing product. It’s pretty crazy, and when done well it can be pretty awesome. You really are “building” something, so it makes sense that everything would depend on the other components to make a fully comprehensive structure.
In a nutshell, character building is the changing of everything you’ve built thus far. You have your appearance, personality, and histories altogether and you’ve hopefully established that you can be consistent within your own parameters, so now you can take it a step further. While keeping all those things we’ve gone over consistent, you must now, slowly, change them. This should, naturally, seem counter-intuitive; we’re trying to change but stay the same all at once? Well, from the perspective of your character, the idea of change will count consistency as a given – he or she will act a specific way, because that’s who they are, and diverting from that should be either of note (if it’s a dramatic shift) or should be so subtle that the character doesn’t notice it or suppresses any thoughts about it. I would argue that the act of being subtle is not only much more convincing, but it’s also much more challenging and consequently seen much less. It makes sense that a subtle change over a long period of time would be more common, as it fills in the time much more frequently, and it should likely always be occurring to a certain extent in your roleplay if a character is surrounded by things that would cause it. A great example of this is keeping company that would be otherwise unusual for them or being forced to complete tasks that would not necessarily fit neatly into their character.
This brings me to a very obvious fundamental, but it should be addressed all the same: character building will occur when the character’s person is challenged in some way. A stoic warrior may find the bubbly priest’s good-nature wearing off on him ever so slowly as he keeps company with them; similarly, the priest may find herself appreciating the warrior’s pragmatic reserve as it influences her as well. Now, there’s a difference between a character making a sacrifice and a genuine change in their person, and this should be noted too. If these characters despise each other at first, but they grow to “get along” or “live with one another” then that’s not really character building. In the case of the warrior, he may sacrifice a bit by putting his feelings aside and learn to deal with the priest. However! Should another extroverted character full of emotion come wandering in, the warrior will likely find himself disliking them just as much, because he’s only accustomed himself to deal with the first. Tolerance, while it can certainly lead to development, is not development in and of itself. If, after long enough, the priest has worn off on the warrior enough to encourage toleration toward all people of the type, then it can be said that he has grown personally, and finds himself more appreciative of things in general than he was before. With that out of the way, I’ll return to my original point: there must be an influence on a character in order to change them. Whether it’s long-suffering with a person they don’t agree with or one dramatic event that completely reshapes their perspectives on a number of different things, it’s important that it’s not completely spontaneous (even if you’re roleplaying a completely crazy character, though I would caution against that in general).
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll refocus on those two types of character building and attempt to cover them as best I can. Thanks to my disordered rambling, I’ve already started talking about long-term development, so I guess I’ll keep up with that and cover short-term toward the end. Firstly, it should be understood that long-term building will result in the vast majority of all building that your character sees within roleplay. If you feel the need to drop major traumatic events every other thread, then something with your own creativity is probably wrong or you’re not getting nearly enough roleplay and you therefore feel pressured to have SOMETHING happen. This is a dangerous place to be in, and I would say that even if you can’t get a lot of roleplay, better to do what you have well than to rush it and make waste.
However, I did mention that your character will likely always be in the process of building subtly. Character building isn’t strictly about destroying what your character already is, it’s about changing the character in general. If your stoic warrior is always hanging out with other people very similar to himself, then his character will be building as well. In this case, though, unlike the example with the priest, the warrior will find his character fortified instead of worn away. While the priest might push him to be softer over time, if he were to spend all his travels with a group of other stoic warriors just like himself, then he would find it increasingly difficult to depart from the mentality. Fortification is something every character needs in order to have a personality trait actually be a trait; a great example of this that is used frequently is emotional pain with a character. This can take the form of anxiety, suspicion, doubt, cruelty, or any other number of things, but if you take a moment to reasonably ask how it was formed, you can see that even this “negative trait” came to the strength you call upon through a long period of fortification. People usually just summarize this through the history, mostly because actually roleplaying this out is usually more time than people are willing to commit and it can be very depressing, but regardless it’s assumed to be fortified one way or another. I’ve used this example to death, but I’ll return to it once more – growing up in an abusive environment for years will result in a very intense culmination of emotional pain that the character will find very hard to overcome.
With this in mind, it’s important to keep in mind what exactly you’re going to be changing over the long haul with your roleplay. In the most recent example, with that much fortification how difficult do you think it’s going to be for that character to break free from that when you finally set them on that path to do so? The answer should be that it would prove very difficult, because they’ve spent so much time building that up inside themselves. Breaking free should be a very long, difficult process over the culmination of months if not years. How do you roleplay that? Well, no one said this would be easy. However, there is a crutch that people use (perhaps too frequently) that causes the process to go a lot faster. Instead of a long-term contributor, you can introduce, as the writer, a much more emphatic, short-term device. These should certainly be used with extreme caution, but they definitely have a place in the writing process. It makes a story interesting and provides a peaking point, provided there’s enough quality rising action leading up to it.
A quick example though as to what I’m talking about is probably worthy of adding; an event like this takes place only over a few moments but will change your character dramatically in the long run, such as a death, a realization of betrayal, a gift, the birth of a child, and so on. While all of these things may take place over varying lengths, I think it’s fair to say that we’re speaking of something in the short run. They can be positive or negative, and they can have varying levels of shock value, but it is a certain element of surprise that ambushes a character and overpowers your character in a moment. On this note, I would say that you can have varying levels of awareness for the parties involved, and I’ll go through them real “quick”.
Firstly, neither the reader nor the character might see the event coming. These are the most spontaneous events because they have very little rising action, or what rising action is present is aimed at deceiving both reader and character alike. These can be very strong for immersion for the reader and will help them to understand the shock the character at hand may be going through from it. However, because they’re so spontaneous, these ought not to be used excessively. Above all, though, they cannot be spontaneous for the writer himself. If the writer is introducing these things out of boredom, that’s a good cue that the roleplay or the roleplayer is not very good – usually both.
Secondly, the reader may be expecting the event but the character is not. I would say this one has the most common footing in roleplay, and is naturally the most challenging to convey successfully. Usually in this case there is enough foreshadowing that the reader may be clued in to the event, or the reader may have access to information the character does not. In either case, this one is difficult because both writer and reader must have the same level of empathy for the character as in the first case, even if they can no longer easily make the connection themselves. These are easily recognizable in most forms of fiction, and are very important for the story telling aspect.
Thirdly, the reader may be expecting the event, and the character may be as well. These are trickier and I can’t say too much on them mostly out of lack of experience. However, it is obvious that this changes the game slightly. The event may have less of an impact because it is less of a surprise, but the potency of the event should not be missed. A good example of this might be a father expecting a child and finally holding it for the first time; such things radically change a person’s vantage point, and while they can anticipate the event itself, they cannot anticipate the effects of it.
Keep in mind I’m talking about all these events as ones that shape characters with some level of drama. It’s totally possible for events using the same template to happen without necessarily dramatically changing a single character’s life in the process; they’re all basic elements of story-telling. Now that all of these are established, though, I’ll return to my summation of these events as a whole.
The surprise value implicated in each event is important, but more importantly is certainly the event itself. Just because it’s a surprise that you don’t have any milk even after you pour the bowl of dry cereal, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to change your worldview. I’ll come back to “trivial” actions when I finish, though. Anyway, all of these things need to be interpreted by the author as to their affects on the character based on the character’s personality (and consequently their experiences). Events like these may change the character just as quickly as they happen, but often times the change occurs still gradually, as the character becomes used to the reality of what has happened and tries to deal with it internally; a good example of this might be the commonly known stages of grief, where a person comes to terms with what has happened. What’s important, though, is that by the end they’re different!
These events don’t have to be positive, and they don’t have to be just negative; they don’t have to fortify, they might degrade a personality – what’s important is that your character does grow in one direction or another, and you as the author make note of that. As this is taking place, you can usually go into some detail about the process your character is going through internally as this takes place, and both you and the reader can gain some greater insight into the character at hand. Now, in some places this may not be appropriate (roleplay with “character limits” on posts or in other settings), but for the most part I would consider this a very valid level of “meat” to your roleplaying posts. You don’t need to be longwinded about it, but it’s a worthy endeavor to try and showcase some of the internal clockwork that’s going on, especially if you’re roleplaying with someone regularly.
Jeez, I think these get longer each time I write them; go figure. Well, I’ll try and wrap up then. I’m assuming that some level of character building is going on at all times mostly because roleplay (like any story) usually has some significance regardless of the scene. It could be that your character walks away happy or just thinking a little harder on something, or it could be that they walked away shocked; regardless, there is usually a certain level of action. Obviously, not everything that happens will build a character in a noteworthy way. You can use pretty much any action to complement or contrast current elements of a character, though; in the case of the bowl of dry cereal and no milk, if the character is a pessimist he may roll his eyes and conclude that this is clearly something that would only happen to him, or maybe he carries a slightly comedic streak and finds it funny that he would consistently forget to check something like this in advance. It’s pretty trivial and certainly not the most telling incident, but it helps if you think about each event in terms of what effects they’ll have, whether you introduce them as the writer or your reader who is roleplaying with you does. You need to be able to see through the eyes of your own character and gauge how much something would or would not affect them, in both the short and long term. And with that, I will conclude this short novel that hardly scratches the surface on the subject! Hopefully next time will be a (shorter) conclusion entry that goes over some final thoughts and ties up all these aspects of building a character.
