Can Gaming and Character Creation Mix?
Connecting game character sheets and characters in your longer stories.
Admittedly, the method I am about to describe is, very likely, a bit involved for shorter stories. However, with NaNoWriMo firmly in season, I thought I might give some character tips for some of our novelists that can be both quickly applied to existing character, and generated for new characters.
This concept is one that roleplayers, or D&D players, or players of other tabletop games, might be very familiar with. It involves having different statistics applied to each character (things like intelligence, strength, stamina - you can include any sort of trait you'd like, really, depending on the type of story you are writing - perhaps intuition), and using those statistics when appropriate. This can add surprising twists to stories, and can be quite fun when applied to characters in the context of a story. (Yes, I dropped an f-word, but it's a good one, I swear.)
To utilize this method, you want to do the following:
 Have a list of statistics or traits you want to apply 'points' to.
Decide on a maximum number of points for each statistic or trait. It should be the same, whatever it is for every statistic or trait. Can they get up to 20? Up to 50? Up to 100?
Have a finite number of points to spread out between the statistics and traits. Remember that no one character should be amazing at everything, as flaws make characters interesting, so make this finite number of points such that no one character can have maximum points in absolutely everything. The lower statistics or characteristics are a great way to represent flaws in your characters.
When a difficult decision, or difficult situation, comes up for your characters in your story, roll a virtual die with the amount of sides that represents the maximum number of points represented in the second bullet, and compare to the statistics of your characters. How they react can depend on the dice roll.
If the dice roll is higher than the statistic or trait, it would be a FAIL, and they would not react well.
If the dice roll is lower than the statistic or trait, it would be a PASS, and they would react well.
If the dice roll is EQUAL to the statistic or trait, it would be a toss up. You could either choose to reroll, or you could choose either way - which ever way reacts well with the scene
The above would be an interesting way to vary your scenes, and even surprise you (as the writer) as to how the characters would react. It also can give you a challenge, and give you the chance to have your characters fail every once in a while, which is good for keeping interest, and for character development. |
Mystery: November 06, 2019 Issue [#9855]
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