Saturday World Building - Character Sheets

I know, I know. Everyone and their aunt has character sheets they use. But I'm one of those who never used to use them. I made things up as I went along and thought that was the best way to go. Then I discovered I was doing something that I find to be very annoying when some of my favorite writers do it - I was screwing up my own timeline and my characters.

I would have characters talk about things that they did that I never planned for them to do, and when I'd go back and read I'd find that I came up with a reason early on in the book why they couldn't have done it. I'd forget what they looked like. I'd give them character traits that went against what I'd initially had in mind for them. In short, I was messing up my own characters and with nothing to help me keep them straight it was a royal pain.

So I've devised my own version of a character sheet and I thought I'd share that with you. It's just some basic information about the characters. You can, of course, make them as detailed as you want. But I found this is what works best for me.

The first section is vital statistics. How tall are they? How much do they weigh? What color are their hair and eyes? What's their skin tone? These are basic things you need to know how your character looks. If they have tattoos or scars, this would be the best place to put those notes.

The second section is family. Where did they come from? Do they have any siblings? What about aunts and uncles? Grandparents? You don't have to go that far back in their timeline, especially if you don't expect to bring any of those family members in or the family members don't play an important part in the character's life. Even if their only purpose is to die to give your character drive to move forward with the adventure, put them on the character sketch. You don't have to give them names. I do, but I'm weird like that.

The third section is special characteristics. What makes your character so special? Are they hyper intelligent? Faster than everyone? Stronger than the strongest people in their village? Can they fly? Even if discovering this special characteristic is part of the story arc, make sure you write it down so you remember to put in the appropriate cues leading up to it. Another good thing to put here is their flaws. What makes them less than perfect? What are they afraid of? What is their attitude towards people?

The fourth section is the biography. This is where you get more detailed about where they came from. What is their history? What made them who they are now? Who were they before they became part of the story?

The fifth section is optional, and even I don't use it all the time. If you want, you can add some notes to the character sketch about how your character is going to evolve and change along the story arc. If you're like me and still don't know exactly how they're going to change, then obviously you wouldn't want to put in this section.

If any of this is useful to you, please feel free to adapt it to your own needs. I've adapted my method from reviewing several different character sketch outlines.

Characters on Couches

I sit nervously on the edge of the desk. The beings I've invited to this little escapade are not among my nicer characters. But I need them to talk to me so I can get them past some of the crap that's derailed the story. So I called them here so we could work things out so when I do get back to their story I can move it forward.

There's a knock on the door. Before I can utter the words "Come in!", the door is pushed open and they come in - Azarea, Mik, and Gabby. Thankfully they're all in human form. I don't feel liek dodging wings today and Azarea is a little intimidating in her natural form. Mik and Gabby are just fluffy and shed feathers like nobody's business.

"We're here. Can we get this over with?" Azarea asks.

"Please sit down." I gesture to the three leather chairs in front of my desk. I take out a digital recorder and turn it on. "Now, we'll get through this faster if you three cooperate. Let's start with an easy question. Azarea, why do you hate Mik?"

"I don't hate him," Azarea says, but she won't meet my eyes.

"Uh huh. Tell that to someone other than your author who's stalled out because you two can't seem to get along. I don't mind conflict, but I need to know what's causing it," I say.

"You shouldn't like like that, Red,"  Mik says with a smirk. "Please, I'd love to hear your problems with me, too."

"Don't call me Red," Azarea says, but her voice lacks conviction.

I frown. "Red" has been her nickname all through the story. "Well, if you won't answer my first question, can you tell me why you hate the nickname Red?" I ask.

"I'd rather not," Azarea says.

Now I'm frustrated. I slam my hands down on the desk. "Well then, tell me what you want me to do. Shall I scrap your story and condemn you all to an eternity in my 'not able to be finished because the characters didn't work together' file?"

"Please don't," Gabby says. She gives Mik a sidelong look. "Azarea hates her nickname becasue Mik gave it to her so she'd never forget."

"Forget what?" I ask.

"What she was, and what she could become again," Gabby says.

"And that is?" I ask.

"A monster," Mik says. "A murderous, violent monster. Something she has yet to get past."

"He'll never let me forget," Azarea says, bitterness dripping from every word. "Never. No matter how hard I try, how many lives I live where I do nothing wrong, he never lets me forget. If I mess up even once, no matter how slight, he drags me back to the House. In this life I got into MMA to take care of my violent streak in a more controlled environment. Mik threatened to put me back in the House if I competed. Gabby forced him to back off on that one."

"Now we're getting somewhere," I say. "Mik, why would it matter if she's participating in the MMA female division? It's a safe way for her to vent and in her human form she's not exactly invulnerable."

"It's what it signifies. It shows she's going back to her violent tendencies, something I can't allow," Mik said. "Gabby says it's good for her but I don't believe it."

"Well, I can definitely see why you don't like him," I say to Azarea.

Her eyes glow red. "You know what? I hate him," she hisses. "He and Gabby attached themselves to me three thousand years ago and I can't get rid of them. They aren't friends. They're jailers. Mik especially. I can't have a bad day without him threatening me with the House. And Gabby just sits back and lets him do all this shit. She rarely ever stands up for me."

"So Mik's a control freak with a god complex and Gabby's disassociated herself from the lot of you," I say. "That explains a lot, actually."

"A control freak with a god complex?" Mik demands, outraged. "Do you realize what she's done?"

"Hello. Author. I created her, Mik. Yes, I know what Azarea's done in the past. I also know her last two lives - this one and the one prior to it - you've tried to imprison her for things that were utterly ridiculous because she's made great strides in changing her personality to be able to thrive in this world," I say. "The problem is, I know your story too and you've gotten really insufferable lately. Why are you so hard on her?"

"I am sick and tired of cleaning up her shit," Mik snaps. "How many times have Gabby and I had to step in to stop her?"

"How many times has she managed to stop herself before she got too far into kill mode?" I counter. "You haven't had to step as often as you think, Mik. You're usually coming in just to punish her for her actions. She's a Skanti, Mik. It's not like she can help her nature. She's doing her best. You need to cut her some slack." I shrug. "Besides, if it's such a burden to you, drop her. Go find someone else to babysit."

"I can't," Mik says angrily. "What you don't seem to understand is I'm blood bound to that monster. Both Gabby and I are bound to Azarea for time and all eternity until we die. Since Azarea can only be killed in human form, and Gabby and I rarely ever show our faces, we will never be free of this burden."

"Ouch," I say. I sigh. "Well, now I know what's going on between the three of you. That actually helps me understand where you three are coming from. That solves all my issues with the story, for now. I'll work on solving your problems while I'm at it. Why don't you three get out of here? Oh, and Mik? No grounding her for being honest," I say. Mik and Gabby vanish. Azarea walks out the door, a totally broken look on her face.

I lean over and switch off the recorder.

Family conflict as it applies to your characters

This post by Angela Kulig  made me think about something that actually plays a major role in the lives of most of my characters - family conflict.  Angela's post touches on birth order and how that affects the way a character behaves (someone in the comments brought up the good examples of Katniss/Prim from Hunger Games and the Weasley kids from Harry Potter).  But let's look at the larger picture here - how can family affect/influence/conflict your characters?

In one of my stories, a son who has been declared a bastard by his biological father because he's not "male" enough (he's fairly androgynous due to his mixed race courtesy of his mother's bloodlines) watches as his mother is beaten to death by the father who disowned him.  In another, one of my characters is adopted by someone completely out of her race/nationality and brought up in a manner unlike her own society after wandering away from her home and getting lost.  A third example would be a son born to a mother who is one race and raised to be accepted by a race so alien to his mother's own upbringing that there's conflict between her and the society she's chosen to live in about how he should be raised.

In each of these examples, we can see how a family situation can shape a character's beliefs.  Raghnall hates his biological father for his mother's murder, but he also hates his mother for staying with her abusive killer when she was told she could return home by her family.  He's later rescued by the group of assassins sent to kill his father & his half siblings (Raghnall's mother was his father's 3rd wife) and finds a father figure in one of the masters of the Order.  Anila comes from a primitive race with little true affection from her parents but quickly acclimatizes to living with a far more civilized group and actually comes to love the ways/customs of her foster father's people.  She also develops those attachments to home, family, and community that aren't as strong in her native race.  Reidar must reconcile his racial tendencies (which are rather prominent) with the societal demands of the land his mother lives as a refugee in.  Reidar's mannerisms are heavily influenced by the man his mother brings in to help raise him as well as her holding to certain customs from her homeland.  How each of these characters views the world is heavily influenced by the people who raised them.

What about characters that have no family ties?  The best example of that would be Scat from my Only A Name story.  She's a very young child when her world is turned upside down and she's torn from her parents by a war she knows nothing about and is sold as a slave.  She grows up in that slave environment before escaping a death sentence for her peculiar heritage that she inherited from her birth parents.  She encounters others like her in the sense that they're all running from their own deaths at the hands of those who would kill the fledgling race that she's a part of, but none of them are exactly like her - though they have several escaped slaves among them.  She feels isolated and alone because she doesn't remember/understand the concept of "family" and "community" that binds the group together.

Now, I do have characters that come from "normal" backgrounds.  Jerryth's mother and stepfather (Jerryth thinks he's his biological father until his real bio dad shows up when Jerryth's eighteen) have two children that are younger than Jerryth.  He's the oldest, so he's responsible for them.  A lot of his life revolves around the lives of his two younger sisters.  Meg cherishes the memories of her life with her older sister and her younger brother.  Pha Lin is her younger brother's staunch defender and main protector.  Algethra's bond to her twin brother Jes is what helps her survive some of the worst times of her life.  In each of these situations, it's the bonds of family that provide the anchor and in some cases the main backbone for the characters.

How about your characters?  What is it about their family life (or lack thereof) that motivates them?

Writing Wednesday: Character creation continued and a glimpse into a new world

When last we left our intrepid authoress...

We were discussing my latest pain in the rear guest Ashe Rae Steinburg.  Ashe slipped in one day during revisions on ONLY A NAME and refused to leave.  We know her general age, appearance, and a little bit of her background.  Over the last week, I have devoted some time to figuring out more about her.  This is what I've put together for my freakish little Domme.

Ashe comes from a world where all forms of sexual pleasure are forbidden.  It is, in fact, a world where breeding is controlled by the politicians in power.  The only time you have sex is for the continued procreation of the race.  You are implanted with a tag when you're sixteen years old if you're male, and as soon as you start menstruating when you're female.  You enter the breeding pool as soon as you get a tag, although typically unless your family is branded as heretic or you're so poor you go begging for the credits you can get for being part of the breeding pool you don't actually get sent to a breeding center until you're closer to 18 or 19.  You're kept in the breeding pool until you're too old to bear children if you're female - typically around 50 years old - and until you're 55 if you're male.

The tag also alerts authorities to unauthorized attempts at breeding - aka sex for pleasure, rape, etc.  Anyone who is caught doing this more than once is sterilized.  Now, this might not seem like such a bad thing considering the forced breeding programs.  But it marks you as a social outcast and most who are sterilized commit suicide, thus removing their "flawed" genes from the gene pool.  There are those who are sterilized, however, that continue to pursue their lives in spite of everything that they've been through.  The sterilization only takes away their ability to bear children.  It doesn't completely eradicate the desire for sexual gratification.

Those who are sterilized and don't kill themselves often become known as Deviants.  Deviants are those who pursue that kind of relationship without the benefits of government sanctioned breeding programs.  The benefit is people who come to the Deviants aren't considered as openly violating the laws since the Deviants can't produce children, so those who feel a desire for sex and aren't up for breeding can get their jollies off without punishment.  (It apparently takes two active tags to alert the authorities and the Deviants' tags are no longer active.)

Now, with this information, we can safely assume that Ashe - with her side job as a dominatrix - is a Deviant.  She broke the law and was sterilized.  So not only is she a sexual deviant in the broadest sense of the terms (BDSM fanatic), she is a Deviant according to her society.  So the religious beliefs of her parents probably came from a State religion exemplifying a pure life of complete devotion to the State until you are released from your obligations.  Did I neglect to mention most humans don't live beyond 65-70 in this world?  It's a rumor that the government uses the tags to release a poison but no one can confirm it.  I'm sure it's true, though...it'd fit in with the world that Ashe inhabits perfectly.  Though why they don't just poison the Deviants is beyond me, unless they truly do deactivate the tag and it's the active tags that can release the poison.  I still have that problem to work out.

Ashe's "college" days were probably the State's attempt at further brainwashing and propaganda by continued education of their most promising citizens.  Ashe was a brilliant computer programmer and was drawn into the upper echelons of the society by her quick mind and vibrant personality.  There were already some bids on who she was going to breed with.

I have a feeling Ashe probably did end up in one of the breeding centers.  For her it was nothing less than rape because she wasn't willing.  I don't know if they use drugs or not but I'm thinking they'd have to.  You  honestly can't tell me that a short session in a sterile chamber is going to make ANYONE all hot and bothered.  Well, there are those fetishists out there who might find it appealing but the majority of the population won't.

Right now, I'm going to assume they use drugs and got her pregnant.  I still don't know what happened to the child.  I do know she doesn't have it.  Was it taken away because she was considered "unfit"?  If so, were Ashe's parents really her parents?  Do they send the children of breeding pairs to other, non-breeders (i.e. older people they aren't using for breeding at this moment but are still in the pool)?  Do they put them in an orphanage style setting and let people come in and 'purchase' children to raise to be proper breeders?  I don't know that part of the story yet, but it's an important part of Ashe's character to know where her child went and what kind of environment she spent her early years in.

Ashe realizes she doesn't want the cold, unfeeling breeding.  She meets someone, gets it on with them, and gets into trouble.  I'm figuring once is overlooked as experimentation and typical youth rebellion.  When she does it a second and/or third time, that's when they sterilize her.  Instead of doing what they expect and suiciding, Ashe drops out of college (or maybe she's expelled once she gets sterilized...that might make more sense) and takes up as a bartender in a bad district in the city.  She turns to the darker sides of human nature and explores the world of BDSM and becomes a dominatrix on the side.

I have a feeling Ashe's story is going to be one of how a group of people who are considered outcasts and Deviants either change the world they live in - or learn how to live in the world they can't change.  I'm not sure how this is going to go just yet, but we'll see as the story creation progresses.  The Deviants aren't the only outcasts.  What makes someone outcast in this society - aside from being sterilized and removed from the breeding pool - I have yet to discover.

One thing I do know is the city she's living in is a dark and gritty place.  I'm thinking Blade Runner here for the type of city she lives in.  Ashe, who was once at the upper half of the middle class to the low end of the upper class citizens, is now the lowest of the low class citizens.  How's she going to take it?  Not very well, as evidenced by  her open rebellion against the "system", I'm thinking.

Okay, so now we know where Ashe came from.  We also have a view of her world.  A dark, gritty totalitarian society with a strictly enforced breeding program in a dystopian future.  The world is made up of massive city-states under the crushing authoritarian rule of a single entity.  I have no name for this world government, so right now it is just "The Government".  Most people don't bat an eye at the way things are run because it's been this way for generations.  The people in this world are, for the most part, complacent about their lives.  Some strive for something better only in terms of material wealth.  Getting out of this stagnant, rigidly controlled society is not a priority for them.

Ashe is an outcast in this society, as are her closest friends and her business partners.  I'm betting most of her clients are also outcasts in one way or another.  They either are in the same position she's in - sterilized but non-suicidal - or they're outcasts in some other way.

When I go to imagine the city, I think first and foremost of Blade Runner.  That movie was awesome, and the way the city looked makes me think of the city I see when I envision Ashe's world.  Her home is dark.  There is no sunlight.  The city-state she lives in is under perpetual cloud cover.  Why is this?  Did we do something like in "The Matrix" where we scorched the sky?  Or has the world become so polluted that it's not clouds but smoke/smog that conceals the sun?  I don't know yet.  That's a very important key factor I have to figure out.  If it's clouds, there's going to be rain.  If it's smoke/smog/pollution, there's the chance people will be wearing respirators or some other kind of apparatus that helps them filter the air.

It's a huge city.  That's pretty obvious.  Public transit is the general way to go.  Very few people have private vehicles.  In fact, you can't get to most places unless you take the public transit.  Most of the "normal" places are above the Alley.  The Alley is what they call street level living.  This is where the lowest of the low live.  It's where the black market thrives.  This is where the bar is and this is where you'll find most Deviants.

Clothing is usually very sober, dark, and not too revealing.  In the Upper City.  In the Alley?  Anything goes.  Which is why I saw Ashe wearing "weird clothing".  She chooses to wear clothing that helps her embrace her new life rather than hiding from it in the "government sanctioned" clothing.  It's not cheap but some of her clothing comes from her clients.  Other stuff she buys from the black market.  Much of what she wears is based on 20th and 21st century clothing styles.  It'd be like us buying and wearing stuff from the 40's or 50's, I'm guessing based on what I can see in my imagination.

So, now we have a character - Ashe.  We have an enemy - The Government.  We have a world - a dark, dangerous city.  We have a general idea of the plot - Ashe has to find her way in the world.  So...where do we go from here?  Well, we actually start fleshing out the plot, the side characters, and the setting.  More details are needed to bring Ashe completely to life.

Now, while all of this is interesting there is a tiny problem.  I don't write dystopian fiction.  I also don't write erotica or even really graphic sex scenes.  It's not something I'm generally comfortable or even overly familiar with.  I only recently started reading books dealing with dystopian futures (that I'm aware of at least).  But it's still a story begging to be told so I am going to tell it.  We'll see where it leads as we go down the path.

At the very least, the journey will be interesting.  Expanding my horizons is a great way to grow as a writer...if I don't crash and burn first.

Writing Wednesday: Character creation

(All right, I know that's a ripoff of the hash tag on Twitter, but it works for what I want to use it for.)


Let's talk world building.  I know, I know.  It's been done to death.  But I've been building on a world for around 20 years.  I think I've figured a few things out over the last two decades.

For me, I don't start with the world itself.  I start with the people inhabiting the world.  I don't mean the general population.  I mean the characters whose story I'll be telling.  Sometimes character creation is very simple.  I've got a vague idea of the story I want to tell, so I select the character TYPE I want.

Do I want a goody-two-shoes hero?  Do I want a Damsel in Distress?  Do I want a barbarian type with huge muscles and no brains?  Do I want a teenager with an attitude problem?  Do I want the perpetually doomed hero or someone who fights destiny tooth and nail?  Whose story am I telling?  This is always my first decision.

Then I go for physical characteristics.  What does this person look like?  What do they smell like?  What do they dress like?  How skinny/fat are they?  Are they muscular?  Tall?  Short?  Yellow with fuchsia polka dots?  Are they even human?  If they're not human, what are they?

Then it's on to the personality traits.  Are they scaredy cats or stupidly brave?  Are they shy?  Do they have a problem thinking they're the center of the universe?  Are they cruel?  Do they like kids?  Do they have a problem with either gender?  Are they ashamed of their own gender?  Do they even accept the fact that they have a gender?  (Yes, I've had gender neutral characters who really weren't hermaphrodites or asexual...they just refused to accept the limitations of either gender.  That person was weird.)  What is their sexual preference?

After that, it's on to the bigger picture.  Do they have a family?  What's their background?  Did they have to fight for survival in a world that was out to get them?  Did they come from a loving family?  Was their past tragic?  Are they just ordinary people who are shortly going to find themselves in an extraordinary situation?

Once I know WHO I can figure out WHERE.  But today we're just dealing with the WHO.  Sometimes, I don't have a story in mind.  Sometimes, as I'm working on other projects or something completely unrelated to writing, I'll have a character wander into the landscape of my dreams or my imagination and demand I tell their story.  If I ignore them they get more and more insistent until I finally pay attention to them.  There are two distinct types of characters who approach me like this: reasonable and unreasonable.

Reasonable characters are ones who have names, faces, and backstories.  I just have to sit and have a chat with them to learn about them.  Cel and Gabe from one of my UF stories showed up like that.  Their story is fascinating and I'm loving it when I can catch snippets of their world.

Then you have the unreasonable ones.  The ones like Ashe Rae Steinburg.  Up until today, I didn't even know that was her name.  All I knew was there was a character named Ash/Ashe (same pronunciation, just a slight variation in the spelling) who wanted me to tell her story.  That was it.  She showed up and demanded my attention but didn't give me anything to work with.

Today, as I was running revisions on ONLY A NAME, Ashe returned and gave me her name.  She's been plaguing me since Sunday and she FINALLY gave me her full name.  Ashe - DON'T call her Ms. Steinburg or she'll go postal on you - is in her early 20's, has hair down to her shoulder blades that's dark coppery red with about three inches of black at the tips, has dark brown eyes and wears a lot of make up, is all types of curvaceous but has a body that's hard as a rock (muscles, not actually made of stone), and is unashamedly opinionated and loud.  She dresses in odd clothing for her area, and she's bisexual.  She prefers women over men, but she'll take what she can get.

Ashe loves tattoos and piercings, and has several of each.  She's a college drop out who works as a part time bartender and does dominatrix work on the side when she can get it.  Ashe is a sex addict and a major control freak who goes in for the whole BDSM lifestyle where she's a Domme.  She came from a normal, semi-religious background but when she left home to go to college she found a darker world that fascinated her.  She started doing more research and dug a little deeper and eventually abandoned her religious roots for a freer (in her mind, at least) lifestyle.  She has violent tendencies and a wicked temper, but she won't hurt children, kittens, or any other young and helpless creature.

So far, so good, right?  I've got some idea of who this woman is.  Now the question is...WHO is she?  I know her looks, a little about her past, but what's her story?  Is it a literary fiction type piece about finding your way after losing your path?  Is it urban fantasy with some kind of magic or supernatural stuff?  Is it a very strange blend of degenerate behaviors that could fit into Aleran?  These are things I MUST know before I can continue working with her.

She's shut up again.  Which means that now I have to figure out what world she fits into.  She doesn't fit into any of my current projects, that's for sure.  So that means she's someone new.  A new story to play with.  Potentially a new world to build.  A new land to populate with creations - either new ones or those characters relegated to my "phone book file", a list of characters and their vital statistics that haven't found their way into a story yet.

Next Wednesday: We'll explore something of Ashe's world...assuming I've figured out enough about it to move on to the next step in my method of world building: the global scene.