How do your characters change during development?

Azzagorn

Azzagorn

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Now some of you would of read my critique entry about my characters Lyrissa and Frederick. Now over the course of my planning they have changed so much from being bounty hunters Lyrissa is currently working for a government agency and Frederick is a scientist in a world where magic is king.

Tusk is still a *******. But now has a first name Avalon Tusk. Expect he works for his own means and has a foot in the door at the government. This is a marked change from when he was just a ruthless gangster trying to make as much coin as he could.

I am wondering guys, girls and hamsters (Other rodents are welcome to comment too). How much your characters change over course of planning? And what was the strangest change to happen to each of you?
 
Once I had a throwaway character who decided somewhere along the way to become an evil genius...

Lots of my characters change as I write; I think that's pretty normal since even the best-plotted outline inevitably changes as you write it out. :)
 
All of my characters underwent a major overhaul at two points during the writing process.

First when I decided that my stories would be set in an Ancient-Roman period, rather than a medieval one.
Then they all changed again when I realised that, due to where they lived in my world, all my characters were people of colour, rather than fair-skinned.

Otherwise, most individual changes so far (other than normal character development, that is) have happened when I realised that I could connect two of my stories with a tiny change in the character .
 
My mc is seven at the beginning and twenty-one at the end, so he changes in the normal ways. But his basic motivation remains the same. Book three is seeing a more mature man who MUST change to survive.
 
I once had a human character that halfway through the story I decided had to become an android. Thankfully, he was sufficiently advanced that I barely noticed the difference. I'm not sure he would say the same.

One problem I do have is character names. I tend to give my characters placeholder names until I get to know them and their story world better. The problem with this is I become attached to them which makes it difficult for me to think of them with a different name.
 
Ah, yes, names. I've just written a name for a alien character. Glen of the Forrest Fortitude. How's that?
 
Droflet said:
Ah, yes, names. I've just written a name for a alien character. Glen of the Forrest Fortitude. How's that?
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Let me guess. Belongs to a branch of the Fortitude clan. Brown hair, moss green eyes and legs like tree trunks :)
 
VinceK said:
One problem I do have is character names. I tend to give my characters placeholder names until I get to know them and their story world better. The problem with this is I become attached to them which makes it difficult for me to think of them with a different name.
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I have the same problem, so I no longer use placeholder names. Now I look in a baby-name book or an online random name generator until I find a sufficiently unusual name. Otherwise, all of my characters would have generic names.
 
I have a character in my newest book that was pre-planned to die a rather grizzly death, and I made him really fussy and fidgety so he could annoy my main character. Somehow, their personalities just clicked, and my main character ended up working really hard to save his weaselly life. I guess I'll have to kill off someone else now. Ah, well.
 
The best characters tell you what happens, not the other way round. Towards the end of one of my books I realised the bad guy was in fact the good guy and vice versa, which then prompted me to completely rewrite it and change to first-person
 
Dave Barsby said:
The best characters tell you what happens, not the other way round. Towards the end of one of my books I realised the bad guy was in fact the good guy and vice versa, which then prompted me to completely rewrite it and change to first-person
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And welcome to the chrons forums, Dave Barsby. :)
 
I'm a pretty heavy outliner, so before I start I know who my characters are and where they come from. That doesn't mean I know exactly how they will evolve as the story unfolds... more than once I've found they weren't willing (or else weren't ready) to do whatever my outline called for, so I had to pivot. But rarely am I pivoting on who they are deep down, or their general role in the story.

I find it endlessly fascinating how many ways one can approach writing.
 
SpacePixie said:
I have a character in my newest book that was pre-planned to die a rather grizzly death, and I made him really fussy and fidgety so he could annoy my main character. Somehow, their personalities just clicked, and my main character ended up working really hard to save his weaselly life. I guess I'll have to kill off someone else now. Ah, well.
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Wouldn't that make the death have more meaning, than someone you didn't care about?
 
Zebra Wizard said:
Wouldn't that make the death have more meaning, than someone you didn't care about?
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Gotta leave something for the sequel...



My second finished manuscript doesn't have a title, so I refer to it as Gumshoe Paladin, that being the genre mash-up at play. He started off as being something of an ideal knight - courteous, patient, gentle. As I wrote the book, he informed me that while those are worthwhile traits that he used with those who deserved them, most people didn't. At first he just snarked a lot but as I prepare for the redraft, I realise it goes deeper. He is angry. Angry with everything. He's caustic and bitter and a bored adrenaline junkie. Which is a far cry from the original envisioning. It will be my first time writing such a character tbh.

I'm not sure why he changed. Most of my characters don't change much, possibly because all my stories start as characters and I put in far more prep time on my characters than anything else. I think possibly he didn't start off as a concrete character so much as an archetype. Possibly he reflects a change in my world view and influences. Partially because he's more fun to write as a more confrontational character.
 
Zebra Wizard said:
Wouldn't that make the death have more meaning, than someone you didn't care about?
Click to expand...
Yes, it absolutely does make the death more meaningful. The problem I ran into was that the character decided to weave himself into the rest of the storyline and I couldn't figure out a way to resolve some of the future adventures without him. Very sneaky of him.

I decided to kills off one of the other characters, though. She didn't see it coming, poor woman. And maybe if she was shocked and appalled by her death, then my readers will be also. Mwahaha.
 
In my current WIP, I find that it's not quite accurate to say that my characters change as I write them but that:

1. They tell me where to go with the story. I know what the ending is going to be... but they dictate HOW we get to the ending. HA!

2. It's not so much that they change but that they've revealed sides of themselves that I previously didn't know of (or that they themselves previously didn't know of).

And some of them are such distinctive people that my writing group actually points out if they've gone out of character!
 
Other than growing older, as one would, they don't change that much. I insert additional aspects of their nature and individual personality as the story progresses, but essentially, they are who they are. The additions simply fill the characters out, making them more rounded, more realistic.
 
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