Over my many years in different roleplaying communities I have learned many things, but most important has been that there is more to a story than the story, there is also world building and character development. In order to create a believable or even readable story you must first develop a world and its characters. While both are seriously important to your writing I will not tackle both at once. Right now, I will concentrate on character development. When creating a story, we have so many great ideas but most of us fail to put the effort into the most important pieces of the puzzle, the characters. Any good story is only as good as its characters therefore to be a successful role-player or writer character development is key. The most beloved authors live by it. Author J.K. Rowling kept track of her characters with hand-drawn spreadsheets mapping out each character's development, she developed them in advance and let them grow with the stories. Jane Austen, an 18th century author is still world renowned in the 21st century. The delightful complexity of her novels lay in her characters, she was a quiet observer of humanity, and found joy in people’s little idiosyncrasies. Even erotic novels and fan fiction require proper character development to be anything worth reading.

 

When developing your characters, it’s important to remember to make a character believable, a character needs both good and bad, light and dark, strength and weaknesses. The protagonist still needs to be vulnerable, the antagonist should have some good in him even if he’s inherently evil. You shouldn’t write a football star who’s good at everything has perfect hair an unbelievably huge penis, and abs of steel who’s not only sweet and kind but also a bad ass and has no faults at all. Faults make us human, they also make our characters come to life, therefore it’s important to give your character a personality, good and bad traits, give them faults, give them both strengths and weaknesses. I prefer to develop and write my characters first, that’s not to say they don’t evolve and change over the life of the story but that’s OK if you think about your life are you the same person you were ten years ago? How about two years ago?

 

When developing characters I like to study photos of people, I also use a list that’s easy to find on the internet 638 Primary Personality Traits it’s broken down into positive, negative and neutral traits, I’ve included the link below for anyone interested. When I’m developing a character, I consider the story I want to write, where I want it to go, and who I’m writing with. Even if I do not publish the entire character for my roleplay partner I have still developed one, I refer back to it, sometimes I change it as I work, but only by adding addendums it’s important to keep the original close by for reference. I often even include details about their history and family as these things create who we are they makeup multidimensional. Sometimes if it’s part of the story that will be revealed later so I hide some of the history but it’s still there in the background waiting for when it’s needed. Remember flexibility is good, when working with a partner if you each create a character and they seem incompatible work together to decide on changes in little details or discuss how those incompatibilities will enhance the story in advance. Sometimes role plays end badly before they are even going because of a simple miscommunication if the characters are fully understood in advance you won’t accidentally do something that would absolutely destroy the other character. Now if you do this on purpose as part of the role play that is completely different but again that development you did together in advance would prevent the misunderstanding.

 

If you’re like me you’ve probably read thousands of books, plays, manuscripts, stories, roleplays, and fanfictions in your lifetime. Think about those, which ones did you recommend to others? Which ones did you go back to and read again? You’ll probably find, if you pay attention, you return to the ones that had strong character development. Even making well-rounded supporting characters is important. Think about it, what would Harry Potter have been without supporting characters like Hagrid, Seamus Finnegan, Lavender Brown, Cho Chang, it would have been flat. Seriously can you imagine not knowing Luna Lovegood? Developing characters sometimes feels so boring, we just want to get on with the story and play already but trust me this is a vital step if you want more than a B-grade two-dimensional role play. Poor character development is the biggest reason role plays, fanfictions, or books fall flat. Humanity is an interesting and beautiful thing, lets celebrate it and create realistic characters we can truly appreciate.

 

Remember you don’t have to post a long drawn out character to have created a strong character but you need to put a great deal more thought into your characters than merely she has brown hair and large boobs, she’s a slutty cheerleader. You and your roleplay partner will lose interest, the story will go nowhere and eventually go to the archives to die. Don’t let your amazing story idea go to waste because of poor character development take the extra time. You’ll thank yourself and so will your roleplaying partners.

​Character Traits

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