Desiderius Price

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It’s also about quality, and since I already have one story written, I’ve got less impetus to finish a second one in time.

For example, I needed a new (minor) character for my HP fanfic, a handful of scenes. “Ash”, muggleborn with black hair, blue eyes. He’s got a fear of termites, vegetables, and toads, but loves frogs (even has one named “Kermit”). He’s generally pessimistic and shy (but longs to be otherwise), merciful. He’s got two older brothers named “Colbert” and “Ian”, also being raised by a single mother that’s a law firm secretary. He thought he saw his father at King’s Cross on his way to Hogwarts; the father’s a solicitor/lawyer but also a dead beat who doesn’t even pay the child support that’s due to the mother. While it’s unlikely I’ll explore each one of these traits in depth, they can produce some unusual reactions/behaviors.

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Now that we’re almost a week away, I don’t think the Colt-45 will be done in time, maybe it’ll be my holiday story? Altar boys, just need to do a pass or two to proofread/revise..

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Sorry to see you go, I’ll miss you in the ChatBox.

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When I create a character, I’ll use a bit of software to randomly select things from a list (in a file). So, I start by creating random lists of traits, hobbies, phobias, and allergies; then sort, sift the lists until I settle on something reasonable. Give ‘em a birthday, unless there’s a compelling story reason, I’ll roll the dice. Then work out from there; for instance are they married? Cheating? Single? With kids? Without? Have living family? Occupation? Favorite color? etc.... A story or two is good too. More details, the better, for a main character. (Obviously, for a side character, or just a place holder, you don’t need as much). An indicator of a good workup means you should be able to answer … “For their birthday, their best friend (name) gave them ______.” I do lean a bit on the random pickers simply because I’ve had to create so many in my works, and this helps me make sure they each have something distinctively different. I also try to write this stuff down, because even if I don’t need to know the character has a shellfish allergy today, it could come in useful later (in my particular case, I changed it to an oyster allergy, letting me get that specific character sick w/o getting everybody else sick). At a certain point, each character does have a bit of me in it, implicitly. However, the goal I’ve got is so that a reader can take any (mildy-complex) quotation from the story, and be able to attribute it to the proper character. Is this perfect? Nope. I just hope it makes for a more interesting story. (btw, missing limbs can also add some flavor...where’s my machete? ).

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