How to write characters

Moon Guard
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I don’t intend to tell people they’re doing something wrong, but rather, what they could be doing better. I wish to share with everyone some techniques I’ve gathered over the years. These are all opinions, as art is in the eye of the beholder. Let me state that I’m not perfect, there’s always room for improvement.

To begin, I’d like to share some thoughts on characters. To me, roleplay is like writing a novel. I wish to encourage others to see it this way. Creating a believable character is far more than making a Rogue and joining an assassin guild with the intent of murdering other players.

= Character’s Backstory =

One of the things you should always be sure of is backstory, this will help mold the views and personality of your character, which ultimately, will allow for more realistic storytelling and interactions.

“You’re a character, not a caricature. You’re a person, not a skill-set.” - Unknown

Once you develop the general backstory of a character, you can begin to refine particular events in their life, some of that might be the basis for another significant aspect of their personality. This refinement will become easily done once you establish the general gist of the character.

= Writing Immersion =

Knowing your character is vital when trying to roleplay something believable, it’s essential to understand why your character behaves the way they do. One of the ways I get into the heads of my characters is by taking the Myers Briggs personality test as if I am them. It’s an unorthodox method, I know, but one that works for me.

It’ll take time, but once you know a character through and through, their decisions will come naturally to you. However, engaging yourself is one thing, immersing others is another. To some, the abundance of emotes can grow irritating, limiting your posts while keeping them vivid is far more intriguing.

"My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail." - Laurell K. Hamilton

Describing the tone of voice and body language of your character is just as powerful as what they have to say. Studies claim that only 7% of communication is verbal, whereas 93% is non-verbal. Describe your character as though you were writing a book, imagine the facial expressions, the twitch of their finger, the smallest of details can have a meaningful impact.

= Character Traits =

People are not linear, one’s opinions are never all connected and make sense, nor is their temperament ever a basic one. A character is a person, and people have many avenues to their personality that sometimes contradicts itself. When writing a disposition, give them various traits that make the character less predictable.

"You can never know enough about your characters" - W. Somerset Maugham

Spice up your character and give them nuance, keep players interested in your style. For example, a character might be grumpy in general and yet awkward in the presence of others. Those you roleplay with often will begin to see the different sides of your disposition.

= Character Development =

This is what roleplay is about, character development. You aren’t roleplaying a skillset, a race, or a class, you’re roleplaying a character. People change depending on their experiences, upon establishing a backstory and personality, the events that occur during roleplay will most definitely affect your character.

“You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.” - Truman Capote

Joining an active roleplay guild can be extremely helpful in developing your character, but I encourage you to create stories of your own. Perhaps your love for alcohol changed due to a disastrous night of vomiting, it’s moments like these

= Side Notes =

A comic-relief character is not funny all the time, the moment they’re always funny is the moment they cease from being a character and instead become a gag. Comic-relief characters are there to inject humor into roleplay, but it should never replace the depth of your personality.

Set realistic goals, if you want to play a war hero that’s seen it all, they’re likely on the older side, you’re not a war hero at seventeen. You may be a veteran, you may have seen and fought a war, you might even be a hero who has defeated a great evil, but it doesn’t make you a general.

Social mores and laws are two different things, a social more is a societal view of what’s okay and what isn’t, breaking a more will get you weird looks, but breaking the law will get you in trouble. At times, these two go hand in hand when an action is deemed both illegal and immoral.

If this guide does well, I’ll create more upon request. For those who have questions, feel free to ask, I adore writing characters and will help others flesh out their own.

Some works I highly recommend checking out is my all-time favorite show Made in Abyss, with Berserk coming in second place. To anyone who doesn’t watch these shows, you’re hugely missing out, they’ve both served as a tremendous influence in my writing and might for yours as well.

4 Likes
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I find your post intriguing. Would you share the title(s) of the novel(s) you’ve penned? I would love to see further examples of how to properly engage the reader! :slight_smile:

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They’re more like mangas adapted into animes. Nonetheless, I’d deem them works of writing, considering they… well, are! They’re shows I really encourage writers to watch and see how characters are developed and how plot is exposed through a manner indirect to words. Much like how it would occur in role play.

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Alternative viewpoint: emoting everything that happens can be a waste of your time as you end up stating the obvious, repeating yourself, or fixating too much on things that don’t matter.

I find that in books you don’t often get much description. Plenty of books end before you learn a protagonist’s height, hair colour, body type, and so on. The narrative, ideally, continues, only mentioning what’s relevant.

I view roleplay in a fundamentally different way from you, that much is clear, and I hardly mind that we disagree, but I would just like to mention that you can extract a lot of character from a roleplay mainly focused around back-and-forth dialogue where no one individual gets the spotlight for longer than they need.

Not to toss your hard work aside or anything, just a consideration for roleplay that is focused around what’s happening, where the question of who your character is gets answered by what they choose to do.

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I can agree with you, some novels are extremely minimal in detail. However, I was simply trying to make a comparison, one not terribly effective, I’ll admit that much. I think plenty of writing is well-done despite the minimal detail, but there’s also a large focus on detail-oriented RP, which is solely why I mentioned it. I appreciate having a civil disagreement instead of having someone screech like a baboon.

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Likewise. Thanks for writing your guide in a level-headed manner and suggesting readers toward more creative, modest types of characters. This one has useful tips for even the most experienced of us in need of a reminder.