Posts belonging to Category Character image
Posted by Ravyn on August 2, 2011
Yesterday I talked about distinctive silhouettes and why they’re important in comics and other visual media. My question, thinking about this, then became “What’s the prose equivalent? How do we manage distinctive silhouettes when we’re limited to words?
The first thing we need to remember is that for the prose silhouette, most aspects of appearance aren’t [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Character image, Characterization, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Art in writing, concepts, Cross-discipline, roleplaying, silhouettes, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on August 1, 2011
One of the panels I attended at Comic-Con was Bryan Tillman talking about character design—or more specifically, visual character design. I came, I saw, and needless to say, I started thinking about how to apply what I’d learned to prose, to the point where I ended up following up on the jokingly oft-repeated exhortation to [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Character image, Characterization, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Art in writing, concepts, Cross-discipline, roleplaying, silhouettes, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 8, 2011
One of the toughest things about a relatively new character can be figuring out where their boundaries and obligations lie—which is a pity, because those can be the fastest way of making a character interesting. Shinali recently poked me with a solution, based on her regular quoting of Gibbs’s Rules: write the character up a [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Exercises, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: characterization exercise, code of conduct, roleplaying, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 29, 2011
Corruption. It’s one of those dark things that we like to use to make antagonists out of characters who really don’t seem like the type to go into full-out villainy, pretty much as soon as we step into a setting that screams out “bureaucracy”. They’re evil HR managers, embezzling accountants, stock traders with inside information—they’re [...]
Categories: Character archetypes, Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice |
Tags: antagonists, bureaucrats, Characterization, corruption, roleplaying, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 9, 2011
This was inspired by (and, in fact, supposed to be a comment to, before it turned post-length on me) the recent Hathor Legacy article “Pride and Possession”. In it, Gena responds to seeing a debate on whether or not Mother Gothel might not have been so bad after all (I’ll admit, this concept rather scares [...]
Categories: Character dynamics, Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Motivation, Reviews and technique, Secondary characters, Symbolism, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: antagonists, Beauty and the Beast, Characterization, redeemable, responses, roleplaying, Tangled, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 30, 2010
We’ve all heard about people who describe their characters too much, too florid, often when it really doesn’t make sense to do so; I think most of us can agree that that’s generally a bad idea. But some people have the opposite difficulty; they can settle down in a character’s head, dredge up personality, skills, [...]
Categories: Character creation, Character image, Characterization, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: character descriptions, Characterization, roleplaying, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 11, 2010
(Sorry about the delay; unable to enter new posts due to server being down.)
Some people describe their characters and places with a quality but don’t show how they qualify (beautiful happens a lot, let’s put it that way). Some get them across by describing everything down to the minutest detail and hoping that the images [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: description, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on October 26, 2010
A while back, I wrote about getting to understand the kernels of one’s characters by casting them into character roles from an existing story. That’s a fun way to find the parts of the characters that define them, but it’s not always easy; as often as not, most stories aren’t going to get you anywhere [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Kernels, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: Characterization, kernels, roleplaying, themes, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on October 20, 2010
I spent yesterday’s post talking about things that make a monster or equivalent thereof lose my respect. Since it’s my rule to try not to post don’ts without corresponding dos, here are some things that get that respect in the first place.
Intelligence. Sure, this is an alien sort of creature, and I’m not sure I [...]
Categories: Biology, Character image, Characterization, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Nonhuman characters, Technique, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: monsters, mood, respect, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on October 14, 2010
Yesterday, I asked, “How does the character view the world?” The logical converse to that, of course, is “How does the world view this character?” But when that question last got put in front of me, I started getting nervous. “How does the world view this character?” seems to me to be a rather fraught [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Characters in the world, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice |
Tags: Characterization, impressions, meta, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »