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       #Post#: 237--------------------------------------------------
       Take your characters bowling.
       By: Crackhead Johny Date: January 8, 2016, 1:55 pm
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       One of the terrible things we see on TV is cardboard cut out
       characters. These are cliche one dimensional characters.
       In anime of the old days an example would be the dreaded Baddest
       Man Alive, You Have Fist of the North Star, MD Geist, Golgo 13,
       Violence Jack and many more. With this cardboard cut out the
       only trait was that the main character was they were the
       "Baddest Man Alive", that is not much to go by. With this one
       facet to the character, all the writers can do for "character
       development" is fight bigger and badder enemies, that you know
       they will beat. When you look at it this, it was a terrible
       character to have as a main in any story.
       So how do you avoid cardboard cut out cliches? The answer is to
       take your characters bowling! What I mean by that, is to put
       your characters in situations they will never encounter in your
       stories and see how they act. You can write it out or just play
       through it in your mind. The more scenarios you run your
       characters through the better you will know them. Once you are
       living in their skin you should have well developed characters
       that will develop for the audience just through the character's
       actions/words. The great thing about really knowing your
       characters is that it makes dialog much much easier and dialog
       is how readers/viewers really get to know a character. For quiet
       characters the road is rougher because in development words
       really speak louder than actions, luckily if you know the
       character well enough eventually their actions can show who they
       really are.
       Making real characters is far better than just trotting out the
       same old faux character development gimmicks "Oh noes, my
       Sensei/friend/family member died!", "Oh noes, does character X
       like/hate me?!", "Oh noes, I have been betrayed by character
       Y!",  "I will sacrifice myself to save everyone in this
       impossible battle!", "Oh noes, the character must make it
       through yet another piece of contrived drama!", etc.
       So while you may want to take a short cut and think "I will have
       them do X, like we have all seen a thousand times before! That
       will allow my audience to immediately know the character!" The
       problem is that they have already seen that a thousand times
       before.
       Also remember that the time spent in these scenarios is not
       necessarily throw away time, if one of the scenarios works out
       well enough you can possibly even shoe horn it into one of your
       real stories.
       #Post#: 242--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Take your characters bowling.
       By: Lumaria Date: January 8, 2016, 9:51 pm
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       So here's what would happen if my characters would play bowling.
       Its also hard to just pick and choose a scenario if they're good
       I think what many people don't think alot is when you see a lot
       of personalities in a single page, and its important to get that
       taken care of.
       I feel like an entire bowling scene with the characters i
       already introduced in my "Lunacy" story would be half a chapter.
       So i will work on that in the background.
       #Post#: 603--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Take your characters bowling.
       By: Crackhead Johny Date: May 10, 2016, 11:59 pm
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       The idea is that you have to live in all your character's skins.
       The rough point is when you have a ton of chars. At this point I
       recommend 4-10 that you live in and then run the rest as cutouts
       until they develop for you.
       Of course until any of them grow they will start out as
       frameworks at best.
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