SirenSon117
Sage
I haven't gotten to actually writing down manuscripts, much to my dismay there's simply too much work to be done in pre-writing and I keep adding more onto that load, but thing I know for certain I want to do with characterization is to abandon the black and white "good versus evil" structure and instead adopt a more realistic and interesting structure of "people with ideals". Basically every character, no matter their relevance to the main plot, has some kind of philosophy, goal/dream. or other kind of guiding principle that determines how they behave. For example: Friederick Edelweiss would be a conventional Hercules-type hero, the strong man who protects others around him. There are two flaws in the way of that though: 1, Friederick is selfish about how he uses his incredible power and he prefers to continue developing his strength for future battles rather than fight opponents that are below him. He wants a match against someone on his level, but those kinds of people are hard to find and Freiderick has gotten his Elven behind handed to him twice, being humiliated both times, as karmic punishment for not helping the little guy when he could've. 2, Friederick was raised by a psychopath obsessed with noble title and then was raised again by a sentient wolf. Said wolf quite literally, "beat the weakness out of him" turning Freiderick into the strongman that he is and setting towards the plot. Because of his experience both being deathly ill prior to having said illness cured seemingly through training from hell, and then going through going through training from hell, and then also being an Elf and having the whole "communing with nature" ability that Elves have, Friederick Edelweiss is somewhat of a social darwinist, believing that the laws of the wilderness apply to literally everything. We see echoes of this "naturalistic" mentality in Freiderick's granddaughter Amelie Edelweiss, who admires Frederick and puts him on a pedestal but ultimately throughout her story comes to the realization that nature is separate from society and that's maybe, possibly a good thing. What I'm trying to get at here with this somewhat complex example is that here we have a character who: 1, is a protagonist by virtue of being the lens of the story rather than being "the goodest of boys" or "the chosen one"(ick). 2, is characterized largely via their ideology and how that ideology is presented. and 3, further characterization influences and is influenced by character dynamics. My goal is to create complex characters that reader will like to critique and analyze. My ultimate goal is for the different ways of thinking presented by these characters to perhaps influence a reader and make them rethink how they view things in their life. I may have given a bad example with Frederick but I'd still like feedback on this idea of characterization nonetheless!