3 Weird Ways to Improve Your Characters

Need some help character writing? This has some great suggestions… like the Sims.

Which weird way helped you the most?

16 Likes

This is such a good post

3 Likes

This is awesome!
I’m taking the 16 personalities test for the main characters of my new story.
I don’t have The Sims (only the mobile version but it isn’t as fun as the other versions are described to be), but as far as outfits and facial features, I make those on Episode. It really gets you thinking about your character’s personal style. What’s their color scheme? Do they dress modestly? Do they prefer comfort, or do they dress to impress? What accessory do they wear the most?

3 Likes

These methods can also help with RPing.

Especially taking the personality test as your characters. I’ve only done personality tests for a few characters (mainly the ones I revamped for Camp Half Blood). Doing one of these tests can help you develop their personality on paper. Sometimes, for me personally but I am sure I’m not the only one, you can have how the character acts all in your head, but you can’t put it into words for writing out the personality. Other time you may have a personality written, but you want to develop it more or can’t decide on strengths and weaknesses. One of these personality tests really helps with that by giving you questions to think about for the character and then an in depth look at ways the personality type can be described with common strengths and weaknesses.

For making them on the sims, that doesn’t necessarily have the same effect but it can be helpful for some I believe.
When creating the character you have to find an image of how they look (also known as a faceclaim because you are “claiming the face”) so that gives you their facial features and depending on what can be seen in the faceclaim, their body type as well. A lot of RPs will also ask for their height and if they have notable features such as tattoos or piercings.
Then there are many RPers I know of that will commonly attach an image of the character’s outfit in their post as well.

Then the writing exercise is a good way to get into the mindset of the character.

2 Likes

YES so gooddddd shannini

2 Likes

That’s so clever! Using the mbti personalities on the characters would be super helpful.

Make them as sims seems nice, I personally prefer to draw them because the game is a bit… restrictive. But the walking style and voice is something that could be nice to visualize/hear and building their homes and location.

I love the exercise :heart_eyes:, but the link goes to the Episode forums where it says “ShanniiWrites Forums” lol.

2 Likes

I really like the last one mentioned, describing an object from the character’s point of view with a certain emotion. I’d rather do this when I’m bored or don’t know what to write next, maybe as a cure for writers’ block, not really to improve my characters though. Maybe it’s just too weird for me :joy: However, doing personality tests for characters is really fun and helpful. It helps me to think about what matters about my characters, although I never really listen to the outcome of the tests because very few of them worked for me as a real person so why should they be more accurate for my characters?

2 Likes

This is an awesome blog post, I had so much fun reading this!

These ideas are really cool! I agree with most of them. However, the only one I’ve tried is making my characters in the Sims. I always do that, and it really did help me understand the character, and how they see life, just by wanting to perfect their features, and give them the outfits they would wear. It helped me see through their eyes, as weird as this sounds. It is a truly effective method, I can 100% confirm! I never really had myself take personality tests for my characters, but when I am really into a story of mine, I find myself asking questions I have found on personality quizzes, or even picking out the foods they like. Surely, it doesn’t make a dramatic difference to the plot, nor to the character, but when you think about it, it makes your story a whole more realistic and pleasant. I started writing a new story really recently, but now that I think about it, I barely sketched out my MC’s personality. I think I will try these methods now.

2 Likes

I think that these were really interesting ways to think about the third character. The third method seems a little strange to me, but the other two are definitely helpful for improving characters. They force you to answer questions about your characters that are helpful and might not have otherwise come up. I tend to struggle a lot with making characters and having them actually be characters, so I’ll definitely try these when I’m working on one to see what happens. It really does help to think about more questions, and stuff like picking outfits or answering quizzes for them really forces you to see things through their eyes.

1 Like

Just added tags

1 Like

@Bloggers & @Writers, here are some weird ways that might help with character development.


Remember that if you really enjoyed this blog, feel free to recommend it (it’s similar to liking it). This will help with it being higher in the results of search engines too.

5 Likes