CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

By outlaw torn

Heya! I'm going to help teach you about character development, in 
other words, how to make a character.

An important thing you need to think about when building a character 
is their personality, for example: how do they act? What kind of 
people are they? Are they smart, dumb, sad, happy, pretty, ugly? 
How are they on the inside? Are they wound up or like a slug? 

You are going to have to worry about these things if you want to write 
something believable. 

Now for some examples: Rika Makino from digimon tamers (season 
3) is cold and cruel at the start, as time goes on she softens up 
to the other kids. Can you tell me why that is? Is it because she's 
had some bad things happen to her? Is it because she feels all-alone 
in the world? And then why she becomes a happy, cheerful girl? It 
is because she learns what it is to have peoples her who cares, 
and then her personality softens up.

Example: Henry Wong (as he's known in the American version) is a 
cheerful laid back character from the start. He's sort of like a 
hippy from the 70's; the guy who wears funky clothes and drives 
around in a van. Except he's sort of a new-age hippy from being 
born in the present, which shows in the way, he dresses. The way 
he hangs out with Terriermon, totally open with his problems and 
emotions and truthful, even though they're both males is a fine 
example of his laid back personality. 

Example: Takato Matsuda (goggle head) is an example of a "Mr. Mom" 
type person with how he cares for Guilmon. How he teaches Guilmon 
everything, from how to eat, to not hang around shady people is 
a good example of his mother/father instincts. And not because he's 
laid back like Henry, its simply because he's well, like a mom to 
Guilmon. And he freaks out whenever Guilmon gets into trouble; this 
shows his high-strung, wound-up nature. Showing that he's energetic 
and looking positive, well, in most situations. And that he's wound-up 
because he's always worrying about things, like a mom.

Example: Jeri Katoh is sort of like the blonde girl who hangs out 
at the corner store, looking for a guy, but since she's so full 
of energy and happy, she winds up scaring the boy off, leaving her 
alone and wondering why he got spooked. 

Another thing about some ones personality is how they dress. 

Example: Rika Makino dresses in jeans and a T-shirt all the time 
because she doesn't like the way girls are "supposes" to dress. 
So she's kind of like a biker, a Rebel, plus she's wearing steel-toed 
boots, which is almost just like a biker.

Example: Henry Wong dresses in plain clothes, but not just "street 
clothes" like Rika, because Henry has his own style and likes his 
vest. Which is bright orange and is the most "Swishy" thing I have 
ever seen. His black pants show that he is very plain and bland. 
But he wears his vest because that's what makes him stand out.

These are two largest style examples that there are, if you really 
want to go into exact stuff you can look at how Takato dresses, 
in a hooded sweat-shirt and a pair of slacks, this shows his energetic 
as well as his wound up style.

Remember, you have to make a character stand out from the rest in 
some way to make them real and like able. What kind personality 
they have and the clothes they wear are only a few, other things 
include thing like the color of their eyes and how they talk are 
other, even a deep-voiced person can be nice and cheerful. 

I hope that this lesson has been helpful to all of you, good luck!