Mar 02 2012
How to Give a Character a Personality
One English teacher asked for an SN poster for his classroom. Here’s a poster I made out of a much longer article on how to make boring characters interesting. As always, please feel free to give advice/feedback/creative insults. Feel free to use it if you’d like.
Some things that stick out to me:
–Next time, I’ll try to incorporate some visuals into the margins. Maybe clip-art of someone playing a didgeridoo horribly or a criminal in a morgue.
–I think it would help if the text were justified, but I don’t know how to justify text in Photoshop.
–Not sure about the color scheme. My heart beats only for black-and-white and I’m sort of out of my depth when it comes to more creative contexts.
–I don’t think the margins are consistent, particularly the left and right margins.
Nevertheless, it’s cool!
I wonder what English class in my school would benefit the best from this. Permission to use it?
Not gonna win any art prizes, I guess, but honestly, B., that’s some of the best advice for writers in _any_ genre.
And would you drop me an email?
“I wonder what English class in my school would benefit the best from this. Permission to use it?” Oh, yeah, go for it.
…
“Not gonna win any art prizes, I guess…” What, lime green and navy blue on parchment isn’t working? Maybe I should stick to black and white. 😀
Also, I’ve sent you an email.
I’ve redone the color scheme a little bit. I’ve replaced the dark blue headings with dark green headings and I think it is a bit easier on the eyes. Also, I added 14 pixels to the right side, which resolves most of the OCD issues I was having with uneven margins. (If you’re interested in the original, you can see it here).
I can say there’s an improvement. Less of an eye-sore.
The choice of green-over-brown is interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s bad or good. I’ll see how it looks with a black-and-white printer.
I’m guessing that the green lines of text will look pretty bad if printed out in black-and-white. They’ll be too light to stand out against the black lines of text that follow them. However, I think that PERSONALITY will look better because it has a greater value contrast with the background than the green sentences do with the black sentences.
Could you refer to the character as “they” instead of “he”?
“For point 1, dude-with-didgeridoo chats to the ladies while dude-with-tennis-racket looks on forlornly from the other side of the paragraph…” I love that.
I personally read this every time before i write my story. so helpful 😀
I will now list playing the didgeridoo well at the top of my list of requirements for a guy. 😉
All I really want in a many is someone who is clean, reasonably dressed, and wont eat my leftovers. The last trait is probably the most important one. :3
BTW the green looks pretty good to me
Won’t eat your leftovers? Lol I never even thought of that one! 🙂
Well there is nothing I know of that is more annoying than a serial leftovers thief
“Well there is nothing I know of that is more annoying than a serial leftovers thief.” In my defense, I am good at the didgeridoo. You’ve got to make choices somewhere.
I will always eat your leftovers if you leave them unattended. No food goes to waste >_>
I don’t waste it. People just steal it before I have time to finish it. Leftovers thievery is a capital offense in my family. :l
Another good example of a character making a decision most others wouldn’t is when star lord stays in the prison to retrieve his music in guardians of the galaxy.