Talk:Character Creation/Character background

Heritage and Home? Ridiculous. (And insultingly obvious.)

In order to make a plausible character, don't think that you're making a character, think that you're making a human. A real person. Look at yourself. What in your past had most impact on how you've turned out to date?

Heritage is certainly not as important as the author of this wikibook makes it out to be. I am Swiss and American (a dual citizen). What difference does that make? Those two words are so general and vague that they hardly matter. It matters a bit more that I grew up in a boring little suburb of a city in Wisconsin, not small enough so that you know everyone, but not large enough to have interesting history or unique little shops; the majority of people in town are annoyingly conservative; when I was 9 my family and I moved back to Switzerland, but only for a year, and I now yearn to live abroad. From just that bit of information you can probably guess a lot about my personality and views about the world. The fact that I am "Swiss" tells you nothing.

And "accent". Agh! Saying that a person has an "Irish" accent is silly. I've little doubt that someone who has grown up in Ireland could pin-point the accent of a fellow Irishman down to a city, or at the very least, a county. Make your freckled, ginger-haired lad, if you must, but at least tell us he speaks (and probably swears) like a dock-hand from Belfast (supposing those exist...). If his British accent matters enough for you to tell us about it, it should matter enough to be plausible and precise.

Also, speaking of home, what about the people that brought you up? They are perhaps the most influential part of anyone's background. Who were they? How did they treat you? Were they divorced? What did they do for a living? Were you brought up by a crazy uncle on your mum's side that was obsessed with medieval history, his violin, and prostitutes, and didn't care much about children? The point of "background", as far as I know, is that it makes you who you are. One might turn out differently if one had walked in on their uncle with one of those prostitutes...

Siblings. Were you the passionate enemy of all 3 of your younger brothers, or bosom friends with your older sister? Did you fight with your brothers and sisters as a kid, but develop respectful alliances as an adult? Were you an only child?

What were your friends like? Did you even have any, or were your books/computers/stuffed animals your only friends? Did that cause you to develop a vivid imagination?

What was your situation at school? Were you an over-achiever, the valedictorian, concertmaster, winner of prestigious awards and scholarships? Was it your dream to go into academia? Were you bullied? Were you (to the annoyance of your parents, who were both university professors) hellishly average at everything? Were you a downright failure? Did you briefly get away with doing drugs?

And, if your character has to be distinctly from one country, what happened to the rest of the world? Too many characters are of European descent. How about a Chinese-American who grew up in NYC to an impoverished and demanding, but supportive family? (Ah, but even there we're still located in the U.S.!) Be original, damn it! Have a character from the Cote d'Ivoire, even if it necessitates some research on that country.

Not all of a character's background is relevant in a story, but all of it shaped him/her. Be realistic but creative. (Why did I bother writing all of that? Unless someone is as thick as the author of this "book", they shouldn't need any more than their own creativity and common sense to think up a character.)


 * Thanks for signing your post.

Here's the deal, it was about three years ago when I made this wikibook, back then, I knew nothing about character creation and wanted to. You guys didn't have a book on the subject, so I made one. It's not the best, but it can become the best through numerous edits by myself and others. In fact, the purpose of wikibooks is to provide valuable information where there wasn't any before, so, instead of deleting this book, why don't you just try and edit it? ~VNinja~ 13:52, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Ignore the rant. If only the editor had put this effort into working on the book. Unusual? Quite TalkQu 22:46, 25 December 2008 (UTC)