The Skellingcorner

[legit-writing-tips]

Legit’s Character Development Worksheet

There are lots of character development worksheets out there, but in my opinion nothing that really examines a character’s growth and development, which is what I’m aiming to do with mine. You can use this to better understand your character, spot “holes” in their development, or to build a character from scratch! 

_____________________

Ancestry

1. What is this character’s lineage? 
   
2. Are there any genetic factors that may affect them? (Mental illness/disabilities that run in the family, magical lineage, etc.?)
   
3. What is/was their parents’ social class? 
   
4. What are their parents/caregivers like prior to their being born?
   
5. If not raised by their parents, then by whom? Are their caretakers of a different social class than the character? How are they treated as a result?
   
6. In the case of non-human characters, what is the status of their “kind” prior to their birth/construction/etc.? (E.g., are they the first generation of a new AI? Are they the first generation of vampires to live in the light?) 
   
7. Are there changing social values between prior generations and their own that may affect them?
   

_____________________

Circumstances at Birth

1. What is their parental status at birth? (Single mother, both parents, etc.)
2. What social class is your character born into?
   
3. What is expected of your character based on the social class that they are born into? By their parents/caregivers? By the society they live in?
   
4. How are they advantaged/disadvantaged at birth? Disability? Poverty? Etc.
5. Are there any circumstances surrounding their birth that may affect their early childhood? (For example, they were unwanted by their parents/caregivers, they were the long-awaited heir to a kingdom, or they were born (assigned as) a girl when the parents were hoping for a boy?)

_____________________

Childhood 

1. If they lose a parent/are orphaned/adopted/parents divorce, etc., at what age does this happen? a.) How does the age at which this happened affect them? Do they remember this change? Are they affected by the change?
2. Does their social status/class change at any point during childhood? Why?
3. What is their relationship with their parents/caregivers like? How do these interactions affect them in later life? (For example, a perfectionist character may have only received approval from their parents for big achievements.)
4. Do they have siblings or other close relationships with family members of a similar age? (Do bear in mind that early relationships with siblings can play a strong role in the way that people approach friendships in later years.)
5. If they have siblings, what is their birth order, and how does this affect them?
6. What are some of the most impactful moments from their childhood? How do these moments affect them? What do they learn from these experiences? (E.g., “authority figures aren’t to be trusted).
7. Was their childhood a happy one? If not, how do they see their childhood as an adult? Does this make them angry, do they try to ignore it, or have they moved on?
8. What are their typical social interactions like as children? Do they have a lot of friends, are they shy, etc.?
9. Do they exhibit expected behaviors or have difficulty conforming? (Conforming to gender roles or not, for example.)
10. What are their primary interests as a child?

_____________________

Adolescence

1. Is there a turning point that moves your characters from childhood and into a more “mature” perspective? (For example, the death of a loved one.) 
   
2. Does their social status/class change at any point during adolescence? Why?
   
3. How does their relationship with their parents develop from childhood to adolescence?
4. Do any major changes occur in their life during adolescence? How do these changes affect them?
5. In the case of MOGAI characters, at what point does your character realize they are “different” than the expected social norm? What are the circumstances surrounding that?
   
6. What is your character’s attitude toward sex and sexuality? How does their interaction with their parents/caregivers affect them?
7. How much independence is your character granted as an adolescent?
8. Does your character have more/less responsibility than the typical adolescent? In what ways? (For example, having to take care of a younger sibling.
9. How does their social life change (or not change) from childhood to adolescence?
10. How are they prepared for adulthood as an adolescent?
11. When in their society are they expected to become an “adult”?
12. How do their interests evolve from childhood to adolescence?
13. Is there a defining moment that transitions them from adolescence into adulthood? (Joining the military, moving out, etc.) 

_____________________

Adulthood

1. What is their primary attitude towards life based on their experiences in childhood and adolescence?
   
2. What kinds of events would be necessary to change these attitudes? 
3. Does their social status/class change as they reach adulthood, or at any point after? Why?
   
4. Are they generally independent as an adult? Why/why not?
5. Do they retain their relationship with their family on reaching adulthood?
6. Do they retain their social group from adolescence?
7. How/where do they meet new friends/love interests?
8. What is their attitude toward romance/love/family? What are their main goals regarding this as they enter adulthood?
9. What is their main goal as an adult? (A high-paying career, romance, family, to have fun, to survive, etc.) 
10. How do their goals change over time? As they meet old goals and set new ones?
11. How do their interests mature from adolescence to adulthood? (For example, an interest in writing as a teen may lead them to a career in publishing.)

_____________________

Older Age

1. Do they accomplish their goals as set out in earlier adulthood? How do they feel if these goals are not met?
   
2. As they approach older age, what is their social class?
3. Do they build a family in their adulthood? What is this family like?
   
4. If they become a parent, how is their relationship with their children affected by the relationship they had with their own parents?
5. What do they want to “leave behind” in the world?
6. Do they become a mentor/teacher to others?
7. As they grow older, how do they feel about the concepts of aging? Weakening? Death?

Think outside the box as you answer these. Remember that if you bend and stretch them enough, these questions can fit into virtually any world. 

[everything4writers]

10 Deadly Poisons - A crime writer’s resource - Writers Write

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

I’ve done posts on names before, but this one is mostly about readability for speculative fiction.

This is mostly for people who are writing in English, but the general ideas (i.e., consider the abilities of your audience) can be applied to other languages too.

1. Using Apostrophes
2. I Don’t Know Welsh
3. Correct Pronunciation?

[fantasy-writing]

How to Keep a Reader Interested During Slower Parts of the Story

[thewritingrealm]

A writing guide requested by galaxys–end

While the main plot is building, as a writer you still must keep the reader interested.

• Expand your subplots.
  

• Consider character relationships. Is your MC fighting with their best friend? Are the siblings having a break through?
  

• Consider romantic relationships.
  

• When achieving their goal becomes slow, does your character lose faith? Focus? Hope? What is their mental state like?
  

Does your character have a good support system? Are they lonely? Can your character motivate themselves, even when times get tough?

• How is your character dealing with what’s going on in their life emotionally?

Are they happy? Grieving? Depressed? How are they coping? Do they have support from those in their life?

• Is your character physically well?
  

Stress can have detrimental affects on health. Is your character run down? How is the character’s health in relation to their goal?

• Consider reworking the plot. If the other aspects of your story can’t uphold a reader’s attention, maybe you should change how the plot works.
  

[studyblrbunny]

Here’s a guide to how I have highlighted my notes and textbooks for the past couple of years. I really hope you find it useful! ♥

[fantasy-writing]

Writing Tip ( Medieval Fighting )

One thing a writer should always research when writing an action novel is how to actually fight with the weapons used in the novel. You see, the best fight scenes are the ones that feel real…

This is mostly about sword fighting, but I’ll add some variety, don’t worry.

I’ll compile a few explanations of fighting techniques here.

(disclaimer: always write what you want to write, even if it’s not ‘realistic’.  fantasy is not realistic in the first place, who cares.)

STANCE

(Picture from Flower of Battle)

    Stance and footwork are key to any sort of martial art.  While it’s not technically a technique, it’s a crucial part of fighting.  Above, you can see that their footwork is somewhat similar to all of the pictures below.  The most common stance is one foot facing straight forward a step or two in front of the other foot, which is facing off at an angle.

(Source: Pretty much every martial arts manual, book, or teacher ever)

HALF SWORDING

(Picture from the Codex Wallerstein)

    One very interesting sword fighting technique where the swordsman would grab his sword’s blade and use the pommel, guard, and handle as a club or mace.  Yes, they grabbed the sword, some times with bare hands, and no, their gauntlets were not the reason they could do this, certain different grips they developed allowed them to grip the blade without it sliding in their hands. (The only way for it to cut their hands is if the blade slid across it.)  Gauntlets are usually made of leather gloves with steel plating on the back of the hand, but not inside, so yes, they used special grips to safely grip the sword blade.

(Picture from the Codex Wallerstein)

    Not only did they grip their blade with both hands to club their enemies to death, they also used it as a way to control and bring more power to their thrusts, and to block blows much easier.

(Picture from the Gladiatoria)

Source: Codex Wallerstein and Gladiatoria

SWORD THROWING

(Picture from Gladiatoria)

    Widely known to be a myth, sword throwing was actually used in some trial by combat situations where you had multiple weapons, and could not effectively use them all.  Here, you see that each fighter has a spear, sword, dagger and shield.  Remember, he is only throwing his sword because he still has two weapons and a shield (which could, itself, be considered another weapon).  In no situation is it a good idea to throw your sword if you don’t have a back up, unless you are not in immediate danger and someone else is.  Note how he actually is throwing it though, it’s much more of a throwing spear technique, rather than the overhead axe-throwing sort of deal most people use. 

Source: Gladiatoria and The Flower of Battle

DAGGER vs SWORD

(Picture from The Flower of Battle )

    Now, let me start this by saying that swords will almost always beat a dagger in a fight.  This is obvious.   Daggers can only be used to parry and block attacks, making them difficult to use against a sword, which has much longer reach than a dagger.  Only the most skilled warriors could hope to effectively use a dagger against a swordsman and win.  Daggers can defend, and then counterattack, but it would be suicidal to attack with a dagger against a sword, only defending and countering would be viable.

Source: The Flower of Battle

WOOD vs SWORD (or other bladed weapon)

    Using a quarterstaff or other long wooden stick, fixed to an axe head or not, would not do very well if hit by a sword.  That is to say, it would damage it, but it would block the strike at least the first or second time.  Cutting the wood in half on the first strike is very difficult to do, you would need a very heavy, sharp axe with a very strong bearer…  Oh, and you would need the handle to stay completely put.  Sound good?  No?  Well, that’s why you do not or should not see any staves or halberds or polearms being cut in half in the first strike.

    On the other hand, do not expect it to just perfectly deflect the attack.  After a few strikes, the handle is weakened greatly, and any part of the handle that was struck could snap if the wood was cut thin.

POINT BLANK ARCHERY

    This one is a bit tricky.  You see, shooting an enemy with your bow at close range is a VERY bad idea for many different reasons…

    Here, let me list a few

• Easy to counter.
  
• Can be too close
• A sword or other weapon can also hurt/break the bow.
• Very slow, unless using a lower poundage bow.

    Lets go over each of these points, eh?

1. Easy to counter.

    You can counter a point blank shot by uhh, well, raising your shield, and bashing?  Maybe simply move to the left a bit, follow up by charging?

2. Can be too close

    Your arrow needs to actually leave the string for it to fly correctly.  This is the archer’s paradox, where the arrow actually curves around the bow’s stave to shoot straight.  If you shoot too close, it will either shoot off in a different direction, snap your bow string (which could damage the stave), or snap the arrow itself, which would result in a pseudo-dryfiring of the bow, which also could damage the stave.

3. A sword or other weapon can also hurt/break the bow.

    Yep.  I mentioned wood not being very good against a blade, and this does apply to bows.  Actually, even more so to bows.  When wood is cut away from the stave it will weaken the bow to the point that if you shoot with it, if there is a significant cut in the wood, it will snap.

4. Very slow, unless using a lower poundage bow.

    Drawing a high poundage warbow (sometimes upwards of 200 pound draw weight) is not something you can do in under a second, or maybe two.  Actually, doing so can, damage your bow.  Also, taking an arrow out and nocking it so fast can cause a fumble.  It requires a lot of training, practice, and confidence.

    We all know it’s cool when Legolas is shooting everything at lightning fast speeds, but it’s not really viable… Unless he’s using some sort of special material for his bow, that allows faster drawing without damage.  Remember, you can use things such as better material, wood, metal, etc to make unrealistic things in your world realistic. 

    And on to the lower poundage bow, no one could ever use a low poundage bow in battle effectively.  The minimum recommended to hunt deer in real life is 75~ pounds.  That target is wearing no armor.

MINOR POINTS ABOUT ARCHERY

    Never use ‘FIRE’ in your book as a signal for your archers to fire their bows.  ‘FIRE’ came from the age of gun powder, to tell people to fire their rifles, because they use gun powder combustion to fire a lead ball out of their gun.  A bow uses a string, pulled back by the user, so they used ‘LOOSE’ to signal bowmen to shoot.

    THE BOW IS NOT A GUN.  Never.  NEVER have any character hold a bow at full draw at someone so they can threaten them.  They will tire out and end up shaking terribly due to the 100-200 pounds they are holding back.  If anything, have them nock an arrow and point it at the person they want to threaten, NOT pulling it back.  This way, if the person moves or tries anything, he can simply pull it back and shoot.

(warning: please dont try and use these tactics in real life unless you are a trained professional)

(also if anyone has anything to add / change to this post i’ll happily do so)

[its-a-writer-thing]

[thatfrenchhelper-blog]

Character Sheets and character creation →

When creating a character, there’s a lot of questions you ask yourself. Whether it’s an original character or one you’ve been playing for a long time, using a character sheet to get to know your character better can always be a nice idea. With its help, you’ll be able to think about things you didn’t necesarily thought about, and ask some important questions to yourself that might activate your character’s voice, or help you to get your muse back with them. Everyone has their favorite character sheets, some people prefer to have a lot of questions, some others like it a bit more vague, so here’s a masterlist of the character sheets I found on various websites and found quite interesting, plus some other things that could be used to help you see, for example, how other character view yours. 

• Blank Character Sheet (+370 Questions)
• Abridged Character Sheet (100 Questions)
• Big-Ass Character Sheet
• Character Creation Form
• Character Sheet by Jody Hedlund
• Creating a character Bio Sheet
• Character Analysis Worksheet
• 100 Character Development questions for writers
• Create a Character Profile
• Character Development Worksheet
• Original Character Bio-Sheet
• Character Chart for Fiction Writers
• A Character Chart By Charlotte Dillon
• Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
• Detailed Character Sheet
• Character Sheet Template
• Character Twenty-Question Worksheet
• In-Depth Character Sheet
• Character Worksheet
• Character Interview Sheet (First Person)
• Background Questionnaire (First Person)
• Characters Perceptions (How do other people perceive your character?)
• A lot of questions to develop your character here
• (23/05 Edit) Character Traits Meme

With these sheets, you could also try to find your character’s Jung and Enneagram Type or use the Moral Alignment tool. All of these things can be really useful to get a better grip on a character.

Then, if you’re trying to create a character, and do not have many ideas, or get stuck, I’d suggest for you to roam around TVTropes, which gives you a lot of tropes used for character creation. Maybe you could try to mix a few of these and create an original character?

Or, if you’re a skillful writer and know how to make your character different from another, make a list of characters in fiction you happen to find interesting and why. Try to keep it short. Then, maybe, try to mix and match things from two or three characters, take a character and change their backstory, to see what would change. Play with them to inspire yourself and create something new, original and truly yours.

Oh, and here’s a little guide to Mary-Sues and OCs, just in case you want to make sure your character isn’t going to become a Mary-Sue or a Gary-Stu

And last but not least, this article about building fictional character definitely seemed interesting to me, and is full of many other links that could guide you during the creating of your character and help you file one of these sheets.

[walkingbomb]

a fantasy book where:

• the necromancer isn’t at all evil, keeps their reanimated cat as a companion
  
• the ‘dark lord’ is woman who wears a floor length floral cloak and pink kitten heels
• the orcs are highly intelligent and frequently engage in orc chess and deep philosophical debates
• the elvish archer is the clumsiest, most inaccurate little shit ever
• the bard writes deep emo poetry, constantly quoting sonnets by the most talented musicians of the era-  ‘fall out bard’ and ‘panic at the inn’
• the mage only knows 3 spells- and they all involve cutlery
• the intellectual character that finds the powerful relic/enchanted item/mysterious glowy thing is 120% done with all of it ‘for GODS sake, that is the SEVENTH DARK ORB THIS YEAR are yOU KIDDING’
• the healer character is also the most ripped, usually ends up treating their own wounds more than anyone elses
• the ‘deep broody’ character is actually mute the whole time but no one realises and thinks it’s just part of his moody persona until he has to fucking spell it out for them (literally), spends the whole story making exasperated faces and gestures
• the dragon that’s hunting them down for the whole story is actually just trying to give back the shoe that one of them lost while running away, and is actually very conversational ‘bro, you’ve got this all wrong– look, you dropped this bro, haha i’m always forgetting stuff too don’t worry’

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Cliches in YA Romance

gabrielarava said to fixyourwritinghabits: Hi! I’m in the process of outlining a young adult novel and am very adamant about avoiding cliches in the genre, especially romantic ones. What are some of the most common cliches in YA romances?

Truthfully, I’m a real sucker for a good romance my in YA novels. I’m also quite picky about what I read and ship. I feel like somewhere along the line, this answer turned into “all-the-things-I-hate-about-YA-romance,” but here we go!

The Love Not-Triangle. I don’t mind love triangles, as long as they actually are triangles, not something that looks vaguely like this from the start:

A “love triangle” that adds no suspense because we know by the end of chapter one that A is going to eventually end up with B, and B and C have no relationship other than their competition for A’s affections. It doesn’t matter how great C is, or how badly B treats A, A will end up with B. 

Write a love triangle that actually has the reader guessing who your protagonist will end up with. Write a love triangle with fleshed out characters that includes other complicated non-romantic relationships interfering. Write a love triangle that is memorable. 

Not-Plain Heroine. A heroine that is plain only to her eyes. Often with brown hair. Extremely pretty when she dresses up. Love Interest finds her beautiful all the time. 

The Eternally Smiling White Knight in Shining Armour and the Brooding Baddest Baddass also known as your typical male love interests. Please, give the White Knight some flaws and the Brooding Baddass some reasons for being brooding. Less cardboard cutouts, more rounded characters. 

Tragic Backstory. Everyone needs a backstory, but sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes, backgrounds with abuse and other very serious things are taken lightly and used for the sake of a flashy tragic backstory, to make a “broken” character that can be simply “fixed” by love. 

“I’m dangerous/I’m not good for you/Stay away from me.” Please no. If they really have that level of self awareness, and really are as good as the book later makes them out to be, then they should have made the effort to stay away. If someone said that to me, I’d give the creep a look and walk away. 

Unnecessary and easily solved conflict. If the problem can be solved through an easily do-able 2 minute conversation or a text, then it does not need to be dragged out into 5 chapters of angst. 

Romantic Stalking. I don’t know why this is a thing. Stalking is never romantic, it’s a creepy invasion of privacy. Overly “protective” and possessive guys are not romantic, they’re abusive. 

First Love at First Sight/Insta-Love. Well, we’ve all seen this one. People get crushes, people fall in lust, but two people do not fall in a deep, maddening, meaningful and heathy love within five minutes of meeting. 

The Jealous Third Party who exists for no reason other than to tear the main couple apart. Usually horrible, vapid and shallow. No character development other than to hate the protagonist more and more. 

Straight, cis and white. Not exactly a cliche, but you get the idea. You see a lot of YA out there with straight, cis and white people falling in love, and I’m getting a little tired of it. Of course, writing about other genders/sexualities/cultures takes a lot of work and research, but I highly encourage you to do so! 

The Magical Healing C***. Sex heals wounds. Falling in love cures you of depression. Your relationship means an end to any mental illness you’ve been struggling with. Please, stop right there. Just no. Stop. Don’t do it.