Fantasist's Scroll

Building characters is as easy as writing their biography.
Okay, so maybe that’s not quite as easy as it sounds at first. The first step to knowing about what your character is going to do is knowing who they are and where they’ve been. What was their start in life? How has that shaped their desires, fears and goals? Get the answer to those questions and you should know your character pretty well. Of course, if you’ve never done this, it can be a challenge. Or, if you just want to flesh out a character in a game, but aren’t sure what questions to ask, it might be hard to get started.
Well, back in the day, when Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruled the fantasy role-playing game universe, there was a handy, little magazine called Dragon that was put out by TSR, which got bought by Wizards of the Coast, which is now a subsidiary of Hasbro. One particular issue included an article titled “Characterization Made Easy” by Scott Bennie. Below is a list of questions cribbed from that article that, when answered, will help you get to know your character.

1. Background
• Where was your character born?
• Who raised them?
• What was happening in the region when they was growing up?
• Do they have any relatives? If so, how did they get along with them? What are they doing now?
2. Motivation
• What are your character’s immediate goals (i.e., what would they like to do in the coming year)?
• What are their long-term goals (i.e., what would they like to be doing 20 years from now)?
• What type of person would be their ideal mate?
• Who is their patron deity? Are they a devout worshiper?
• Are they a devout member of any nonreligious cause (i.e., Are they a loyal servant of a king or baron)?
• Is there any race, creed, alignment, religion, or the like against which they are strongly prejudiced?
• What is their greatest fear?
• What is the one task they absolutely refuses to do?
3. Idiosyncrasies
• What is your character’s motto or favorite saying?
• What is their favorite color?
• Describe what they would wear if money were no object.
• What is their favorite food? Their favorite drink?
• What is their favorite animal?
• What habits of their friends annoy them most?
4. Traits

Rate these behaviors for your character on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 means they has no trace of the trait, behaving in a completely opposite manner; 10 means they have great amounts of the trait).

• Courtesy
• Valor
• Self-sacrifice
• Generosity
• Sobriety
• Calm temper
• Optimism
• Curiosity
• Forgiveness
• Cheerfulness
• Patience
• Honesty
• Helpfulness
• Loyalty

Name at least one other trait in which your character possesses a rating of 8 or better.

5. Miscellaneous
• What well-known media figure from sports, movies, or politics most closely resembles your character?
• What would be their theme song?
• If their friends were to write your character’s epitaph, what would it be?
• What would their job be in modern society?

And, here are some stereotypes to avoid:

1. All wizards are old men with long beards and robes.
2. All evil characters wear black.
3. All good characters wear white.
4. All giants are stupid.
5. All fighters are stupid jocks.
6. All thieves are small and cowardly.
7. Evil characters are irredeemably awful.
8. Elves are flighty and carefree.
9. Major bridges are guarded by trolls, who ask for a toll.

Obviously, this is geared toward a fantasy setting, but, with some small variation, it can apply to almost any character in almost any fictional setting.
If you’d like to read the whole article, you can still find it in the Dragon Magazine Archive on CD-ROM.

Today is Ernest “Papa” Hemingway’s birthday.
He was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899. Hemingway snuck off to fight in World War I when he was just 17. He had bad eyesight, so he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy. Just about a month after he got to Italy, he was hit by shrapnel from an exploding shell. He spent weeks in the hospital and then came back home to his parents in Oak Park.
After his parents got tired of him hanging around, he started writing stories for Chicago newspapers and magazines, and then got a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star and went off to Paris with his wife Hadley. He became friends with a lot of writers who were in Paris at the time, including Fitzgerald and Joyce and Pound and Gertrude Stein. And he wrote every day, sometimes in his apartment, sometimes in cafés, but he wrote every day.

His first collection of short stories, In Our Time, came out in 1925 and the following year, his first big success, Sun Also Rises. Three years later, Farewell To Arms came out. By the 1930s, he was one of the best-known writers alive. He developed cancer and, in true “Hemingway hero” fashion, killed himself with a shotgun in 1961. But, by then, he was one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Or, why I like comic books and cartoons.

To put it quite simply, I like the way these two art-forms condense and compress plot. Think about it for a minute. A comic book, or graphic novel, has considerably less room to develop a deep, complex plot than, say, a literary work because a lot of space that could be used to develop plot via text is taken up with art. Also, there are generally fewer pages in a comic book than a novel, of any significant length, at any rate. The writer, therefore, has less space, or literary “time”, if you will, to develop a lengthy plot, so it usually is condensed down to its tightest form, its most simple aspect. It makes comics the perfect medium for examining plot to see how it works, really.

The same is true of cartoons. Now, I’ll admit that other regular shows can condense plot fairly well, too, but nothing seems to do it as well as kid’s cartoons. Take anything from Bugs Bunny to Sponge Bob Square Pants to G. I. Joe to Batman and you’ll find plot in its simplest form. Two, or more, characters in conflict struggling toward a resolution and, of course, finding one, all in 30 minutes or less. Now, one might argue that the sitcoms do the same thing, and they do, to an extent, but not with the same simplicity that cartoons manage. There’s rarely call for complicated subplots in a child’s mind. Oh, sure, the more adult “cartoons”, or animation, might have this, but how many Cowboy Bebops or Full Metal Alchemists or Ghost in the Shells are there running around out there? Right. (And, two of those three were manga, Japanese comic books, first.)

So, if you’re a writer who struggles with plot the way I do, check out a comic book. Find the plot. Identify the elements of it. Find the starting state, the conflict and trace it through to the resolution. Don’t be put off by the threads they leave open for the next book in the series. Just remember, each little plot is like a chapter in a larger book. Besides, there are worse ways to look at plotting a longer piece of work than to treat each chapter as a short story.

Oh, and I read them for the pictures, too. 😉

Ever wanted to write science-fiction and fantasy fiction but didn’t know where to start?

Well, there’s hope. While wasting time at work the other day, I found a free on-line course in writing science-fiction called, oddly enough, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. This website is an entire course on writing in the genre available for no charge via the web. They cover everything from the basics of fiction writing to world creation to… Well, just about everything that a begining writer might want to know about writing science fiction and fantasy literature. They even have some topics that go into more depth for those of us who’ve been banging away at it for a little bit.

It looks fairly good and comprehensive. Besides, the price is right: Free!

Thought I was going to forget my Friday Fun link, didn’t you?
Well, I haven’t. Today I bring you the Invisible Library. The Invisible Library is a virtual “library” of books that only appear in books. Did you catch that? They’re books that don’t actually exist but have been written about in other books that do actually exist. Oh, look, just click the link and you can see for yourself!

Specifically, fantasy writer’s reference articles.
So, the other day, while I’m looking for something totally different, I find Fantasy Fiction Factor – Fantasy Writing Articles for Fantasy Writers. WOW! This is an absolute treasure trove of ideas and suggestions and “gotchas” for fantasy writers. They hit everything here from fantasy animals to forms of government to making magic systems to an article on real horses. Some of this, of course, is pretty common stuff, because writers have to deal with it all the time, but some of it I haven’t seen anywhere else but here. So, it’s well worth a look. You never know what might inspire you!

For a change, this isn’t one of mine!
Though there are several generators here at Fantasist.net, including a title generator, today’s Friday Fun Link comes from off-site. This one arrives via a link on the excellent blog, Shaken & Stirred, and is called, simply, Fantasy Novel Title Generator.

Yeah, that’s it. What do you want from me? It’s Friday and I’m working, even if you aren’t, so just click the link and leave me alone!

I do not know what this is.
No, really, I’m not quite sure what this is supposed to be. A game? The start of a site? Do they expect us to submit books and reviews to it? If so, they don’t seem to provide an interface to submit “found” books. Perhaps it’s just a thought experiment?
Tell you what, it’s Friday, and if you’re wasting time reading this blog instead of working, you might as well go check out the Interstitial Library yourself. If you figure it out, come back and leave a comment to help the rest of us!