Discussion Traits? Backstory? How do I come up with something like that??

I was reading a story about an ML who could only speak one sentence and the FL understood him.

Then, I began to wonder, Is this considered a trait? Or a backstory? How do people come up with this? How can people be so creative and make such unique characters and stick to their personalities through out their writing???

Like ‘48 hours a day’, the character has something that sets them apart from everyone, and all main characters have this, yet when I write my character I feel a sense of loss. He’s not unique enough! Am I not writing his personality well enough? Does my character even have a personality?

I wrote a whole character sheet yet I can’t seem to set him apart from the other or bring out what I want of him. I’m also not very happy with how I’m writing, is it too wordy? Too bland? Not enough action?

I feel I’m also just rushing everything and not planning it out, besides a character sheet I have no plot planned and just write what I feel at the moment, I have the long term plan but not the short term one.

Is this also how other writers feel? Like looking for a needle in a haystack, is it even worth it to look when you can just purchase a new one?
Is my writing forever going to be a messy line of words no one finds interesting?

 

best to post this in "Author discussions," also, if you want character uniqueness, it comes from seeing people and nature. I'm sure the one sentence thing came from someone irl who was just too quiet. ALso, nothing needs to be unique about the main character, it could be some average joe just trying to find his way in life. He doesn't need to be unique and I'm not sure where you got the idea from.

 

I usually start by writing the basic background and setting of the story, building the world that would make it possible for a character with particular traits to be born in and deciding from there how the world would react to them and vice versa. The more details you put in the world of the story, the easier it will be to create characters that appear in that world. Everything from customs to factions to common knowledge to laws contributes to creating a solid setting for your story. Occasionally, I'd first make the character and then design the world around him. That's how it is for me.

 

How I make my DnD characters is by giving them an interview:
Start off with name, age, physical attributes.

Then go into favorite colors, food, where they grew up, family, hobbies, favorite locations. Dating profile sort of stuff.

Then start asking them hard questions. Where do they stand on immigrants, environment, their government in general? Do they feel strongly about religion? Where do they stand on the trolley problem? How confident do they feel about raising any potential children they may have in their current environment? What's their worst fears? Their biggest strengths? How do they feel about their family? The sort of questions a therapist or potential job employer may ask.

Through all this you'll have to build up a world where this person lives. A history for the character and their environment. Some of it you can make up along the way as you're writing the story/roleplaying, but the interview should give you some good seeds.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks, I see now that I created my characters habits, looks, likes and dislikes but not his personality. I based my characters more on his likes and dislikes then actually based on his own inner self.
This was very helpful!

Thank you! I never really thought about the world my character was in and was basing it off my own, I now see that I, myself, haven’t actually experienced the world so I wouldn’t be able to write it. I’m thinking of just making a world of my own! Similar to this one but with things that I understand.

 

Think about the things you appreciate about the characters you read. It might be helpful to think less about a deep backstory and inner workings (when it's not relevant to the main plot) and focus on up to three common (in your story) things that the character has a strong reaction to. Some guy could point out every beautiful woman he sees and make some incredibly sexist comment about her to his buddies. It has no real bearing on the story, you don't need a psychological analysis of why he's doing that, but it's a character trait that makes him instantly recognizable if he's the only one who does it. Or if someone else does the same thing later, you can compare them to him.

Rather than traits, I'd probably call this sort of thing "quirks". It's similar to some Japanese authors giving each character their own verbal tic-desu. What it does for the reader is, makes it easy for them to remember each character - the guy before would be "oh, that sexist pig, right?" What it does for the author is, makes it easy to write character interactions - the guy before becomes incredible easy to write lines for when new women appear, which also helps you describe the new woman organically, and then you can just have other characters respond appropriately. It helps fill up the pages without looking like filler.

The more effort you put into building a character from the start, the more effort you have to put into all his/her interactions. For most characters, just one personality quirk and a quick appearance quirk ("fatty", unusual eye color, birth marks, fun hair style, etc). For major characters, expand it to 1-3 of each along with something that can motivate them best. You can always add more details later as needed by the plot, and that's easier when you have more blank space to work with.

 

This is all really good stuff. A character trait is something about that character that's significant in some way. It could be some sort of strongly held belief, or an overarching goal for the character, or something particularly noteworthy about the character's personality. The things listed in the OP are more quirks that wouldn't change a character much whether they were present or not. Don't get me wrong; quirks are still useful for fleshing out a character, but without establishing that character with meaty traits first, no amount of quirks will make all that much difference.

And this really brings me to one of the key weaknesses I see in Japanese webnovels. Too many of them define characters with quirks alone, and it's just not enough to give them very much in the way of personality. It's okay for giving the reader a feel for who the character is but there's just not much depth there so it's very hard to make them feel like people.

As for advice, I think that what all beginner writers should do is to ignore what their teachers taught them, and start out by stealing! By this I don't mean to plagiarize, but that writers should feel free to take ideas, plots, and characters from the stories they like and apply them to their own writing. A lot of great literature does exactly this, and learning what does and doesn't work and why this is so is a big part of the learning experience.

 

I usually work backwards when creating characters. Like, I'll start with an idea for a cool power or goal or circumstance or something else a character might have, then work to figure out what kind of background would lead to a character having said power or goal or circumstance. From the background comes the character traits, as personality will naturally develop when going through certain events. So basically, my answer is to come up with an elaborate backstory for your character, regardless of whether said backstory actually comes up in the story.

For example, the process of creating Nami from One Piece might go like this:

-I want her to be someone who initially hates pirates, so Luffy can change her mind and show pirates can be good or bad
-Why would she hate pirates? Because pirates attacked her home and caused a great personal tragedy for her.
-Why is she out at sea to meet Luffy? Because she made a deal with the pirate who attacked her town to pay him money in exchange for mercy, so she goes out and steals from other pirates
-As a woman with no combat experience, she would be best suited to being sneaky and tricking people out of their money. One such trick would be seduction, so she has developed a flirtatious personality
-With such a serious and severe backstory/circumstance, she will also be a no-nonsense type character when it is demanded
-Raising the money to save her town is really important to her, so she became obsessed with money. Give her a poor childhood to exacerbate this personality quirk
-Why would the pirate even agree to make this deal with her? The Straw Hats don't have a navigator yet, so let's make it so she is a genius navigator, and the pirates who attacked her town want to take advantage of that by forcing her to make maps
-Every Straw Hat has a dream they want to accomplish. Since she's the navigator of the crew and is so good at drawing maps, her dream could be to make a map of the entire world.

 

I think the most important thing while creating your fictional character is, you have to understand them inside out. Of course it's only if you want to make your character realistic and humane. Don't forget that real people is never one dimensional like in the book. I personally find any characters to be poorly written if they don’t have some redeeming qualities or reasons for being the way they are. So it's very important to think about why certain character have certain traits.