A Quick-Start Guide For Creating Characters

Random haughty writers and editors: Obviously there’s something wrong with you, stop doing that to your characters.

My ADHD Therapist, many years later: Oh, that’s fantastic, please keep on doing it.

- Neil Gaiman

— Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author (quoted in this tumblr post here)

‘Writing tip of the day: it is perfectly acceptable, when working on a scene that vexes you, to write “DUMBEST VERSION” along the top of the page and start from there.   As I, a human who has been writing professionally for 25 years, just did. Give yourself permission to suck.‘

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

i have just scrolled by yet another one of those “how to write queer characters if you’re straight” posts and they fucking exhaust me. because they’re almost always just a list of things not to do, and most of it is fucking wrong. and they always put in this caveat ‘you can do these things if you’re not straight :)’ and it makes me want to flip a table, because guess what, i don’t look up an author’s sexuality because i don’t give a fuck, and someone shouldn’t be required to out themselves in order explore certain themes. 

so let’s go through some common advice that i fucking hate, and what i, personally, would suggest instead. i am one person, and do not speak for the whole community, just like no one person of any group ever speaks for the whole community. note that i use gay as an umbrella term for not straight

bad rule: don’t have a gay character have close friends who are all straight

in my group of seven very close friends, i am the only one who’s not straight. the idea that is is unrealistic and ridiculous and means the character is a throwaway is stupid. i went to a notoriously gay school and have lived in multiple major cities, so it’s not like i lacked opportunity. it just turned out that all my really close friends are straight. it happened to me, it’s happened to others, sometimes it just happens. 

better rule: don’t have your gay character be the only gay character in the story. 

what is unrealistic is when the gay character is the only gay character. just because they don’t hang out with other gay people, and so other gay people aren’t in most of the story, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. the pretty lady at the bus stop is waiting for her girlfriend, someone’s dad is gay, two girls on a date past them in the street, the history teacher talks about his husband, they’re playing a game of spin the bottle and a girl plays on both sides because she’s attracted to multiple genders. unless part of the queer character’s story is that they feel like the only gay person on the planet, they shouldn’t be portrayed the only gay person on the planet.

bad rule: never kill gay characters

sometimes, people die. we are all so, so sick and tired of watching ourselves die on screen and in books, but the idea that we don’t die is silly. 

better rule: try and only kill gay characters in the same percentages as straight characters

i think it’s important to think in percentages rather than just numbers. the thing is if you have eleven major characters in a story, and only one of them is gay, and then you kill them and one straight character? you have killed 100% of the gay characters, and only 10% of the straight ones. 

so say you have two gay characters, and eight straight characters. if you kill one gay character, and four straight characters, you have killed 50% of the gay characters, and 50% of the straight characters. 

think about the movie mad max. there was a lot of women in that movie, and so when some women died, it didn’t feel like the end of of the world. because there were more women. in your writing, don’t let death come off as a “punishment” for being gay. if death happens, it should happen indiscriminately. so if you’re doing a dystopian novel, and lots of people are dying, but you’re killing off a much, much higher percentage of gay characters then straight, it doesn’t look great. 

this is not a perfect system, but hopefully by keeping it in mind you avoid falling into the trope where the gay characters always die. 

bad rule: don’t show problematic gay relationships, fighting within a relationship, or characters who have “too much” sex

we are not all pure uwu babies, and every time i see someone telling people to portray us this way i want to scream. we have shitty relationships, we’re shitty people, we like having sex, and some of us like having it a lot. who we’re attracted to doesn’t change the fact that we’re people, and even people with the best of intentions are far from perfect.

better rule: do not reduce characters to their faults, or to their sex lives

if all we’re told about a character is that they’re gay and in a shitty relationship, or that they’re gay and have a lot of sex, then those two things become muddled together. write well rounded characters! 

first of all, sometimes people in perfectly healthy relationships fight, or have disagreements, and accidentally hurt each other. there is nothing wrong with portraying this, because most relationships are’t one hundred percent happy and peaceful all the time. 

moving on. yes, the roommate brings home someone new every night and has loud sex with guys and gals and whoever, but they also bake pies and hate the taste of cilantro and have a boss they like and coworkers they want to fling into the sun. 

he’s too controlling, and he looks through his partner’s phone, and he gets mad when he doesn’t know where his bf is. his bf isn’t financially stable enough to leave him, but hates feeling constrained. it’s just not going to work. he’s an exec at a hedge fund, bf is a barista, he hates his job, bf loves his, they have mutual and different friends, they watch movies, and he went straight to college, and bf spent a year roadtripping instead. 

bad people are still people. don’t reduce people to bad and gay. bad and gay and a shitty boss and rich and a sore loser gives your audience more to work with, and then you haven’t drawn a clear line between gay and abusive. as long as you’re writing well rounded and complex characters to begin with, this shouldn’t be a problem. 

you should take care when portraying sensitive subjects, and do your best to portray it well. but that’s true regardless of the gender or sexuality of your characters. 

i would note that having only abusive/abused gay characters is probably not great. remember, gay people are everywhere! try and include them in small, casual ways in other parts of your story if possible. this is easier with longer fiction, but if you’re doing a shorter piece where the only characters are the couple in question, then it’s not option, and that’s okay too. just try and be careful that you’re giving people more to work with than gay and abuse. 

if you want to portray happy and pure love, that’s totally fine!! sometimes all we want is to sink into a story of happiness and comfort. but if you don’t want to write that, and want to explore darker themes, that’s okay too.

bottom line: 

giving people a list of things not to write isn’t helping them to write better. it’s just telling them not to write. 

also, don’t demand that authors out themselves to you so you can “decide” if they’re allowed to write about certain things. either something is poorly written and offensive, or it isn’t, and i don’t get to know personal and private details of people in order to decide if they’re allowed to do something. it’s none of my fucking business, or yours. 

as writers, we write about things that we’ve never experienced and will never experience. the only way to get better at things is to keep doing them. will you mess up and write something insensitive or upsetting? 

probably. 

i sure have. but the answer here is to learn how to do it better, to be more authentic in our stories, and be willing to listen and learn from people who know more than we do. 

No no no no no no. 

Sit down we must have a conversation.

There were 6 Celtic nations.

Éire, Cymru, Alba, Kernow, Breizh, and Ellan Vannin.

Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, and the Isle of Mann respectively.

They’re all related, but not the same. They all have different languages descended from a similar group, Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish (Gàidhlig), Manx (Gaelg), Welsh (Cymraeg), Cornish (Kernowek), and Breton (Brezhoneg). Some are more widely spoken than others, for example Welsh is still commonly spoken in Wales, whereas hearing Cornish in Cornwall instead of English is rare.  All Celtic nations have varied mythology and culture. Irish Mythology is different from Breton Mythology, and even Welsh and Cornish mythology (arguably the most related Celtic Nations) have subtle differences to each other. I wish I could add more about the cultures at this time but my knowledge of Celtic nations is primarily made up of the history and languages of those regions, particularly Cornwall. 

You might have notice that England and English are missing from this, because the English descended from Anglo-Saxons, who were German invaders that came to the isles right around the Fall of the Roman empire in the 5th Century, erasing the Celtic influence in what is now England. 

BBC: Where is the seventh Celtic nation? Spain Then and Now: The Celts in Spain Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies: Celtic Legacy in Galicia University of Pennsylvania Museum: The Modern Celts of Northern Spain

is from what archaeologists call the La Tène period, named after the lake in Switzerland where it was first identified (and the Gundestrup Cauldron, above, which is the type-art for the neo-Celtic god Cernunnos although we have no idea what or who it was originally meant to depict, was found in Denmark but probably made in Greece)

And no, the Celts did not build Stonehenge. Or Newgrange, for that matter, or any of the other great stone circles or structures of northern Europe - those had been standing for thousands of years by the time the Celts turned up and wove them into their own mythologies. Celtic structures still exist throughout Europe but you have to have a good eye to spot them, they mostly look like this:

I see people putting their characters through war, abusive relationships, health disorders, and intense grief. Since popular writers often fail here, I hope you guys are also considering how these things will affect your character in the long run. I don’t mean “Oh, they have bad dreams now and are jerks to everyone, but only for a little while.” I mean has their entire outlook on life changed dramatically, and if so how? Does it show? Do they try to hide it and move on, or do they accept that this is who they are now? Does it take them a long time or a short time to realize things can never again be the way they were? How does that affect them? Do they choose to keep this new personality, or do they try to change it?

Not everyone wants to acknowledge this type of development in a character because it gets in the way of their plans or disrupts plot. Also, some characters are made of stern stuff or are just flexible enough to survive with their personality intact. Yet, major events in a story should leave a noticeable impact on a character, the more personal the event generally the bigger the personality change.

Behold, the Archive of Our Own!

Because I have.

I’ve noticed recently that other people seem to think they can also write and post the same idea, and it’s just not okay. If someone has shared an idea they have, if someone has said they are writing the idea, then it’s theirs, it belongs to them. Don’t go write it and post it without permission. Just don’t do it.

Do you have any idea how much it hurts to see someone else getting praise for your idea? And it’s sad really, because one of my favorite parts of writing was sharing what I’m working on, teasing people about the ideas in my mind. It gave me a lot of motivation to actually get it written and shared.

But now I don’t want to share, because I don’t want my ideas getting shat on by someone who doesn’t see all the details of the idea in my mind, and if they get it posted first because I have a life and a job and kids and a husband and a house to clean and so on and so forth, it’s super frustrating.

Tumblr can be a buggy platform so there's no reason to make it worse for people to get recognition for ideas! It takes 2 seconds to check in with someone and costs nothing!

I regular check in with these beautiful writers if we're jamming on an idea! Or I get an idea thats similar to something I've read. Often you end up with very different ideas anyway or it sparks different plot bunnies - there are so many ideas out there!

If they ask you nicely not to - i get it, it can be disappointing if you're seized by inspiration BUT try to view it as an excellent writing challenge to make an idea completely different!

We’ve all been there. Staring at our planning document with a long list of characters who are like our children. We love every single one of them, but what about the reader? Will they get confused? Will they be able to keep track? Will they care about any of your characters if they don’t get enough page time? 

If these questions have plagued you, it might be time to think about who gets the chop. To help with the dilemma, I have put together a list of questions to ask yourself.

What does each character bring to the story thematically?

List what each character does to advance the plot?

Could any of these things easily be done by another character?

Do they all have distinctive personalities? 

Do they all have distinctive mannerisms/speech/appearances?

If you’re struggling to answer these with a clear yes or no, it might be time to bin some characters. Bonus questions to consider are:

Is there potential to merge two characters into one? 

Does this character need a name, or are they just an extra?

Hope this helped!