Thus far I have been somewhat limited in the sorts of characters I've written for and am interested in expanding. What experiences, tips, thoughts, etc. you all have on the subject? I'm still trying to figure out how to go about this.

Well, i think this is where roleplaying proves the more fun. I have to come out of my comfort zone every once in a while. When i first started, i could never play a mean character. Never the less, the cool evil looking character. I always played the sweet hearts and the shy characters, because i was so new to the rping. I personally had no backbone also, so i couldnt set a standard to myself.

It all takes practice and it really requires to use of a muse to help. I get ideas and i really try acting out characters. After a while, you get used to it an that challenge isnt such a challenge.

I remember that when i first played my first mean character, it was really hard because i felt bad saying the things i did and i had to soften up before i ripped out my hair. So, yeah, it took a bit...but things are expandable, definately.

Watch the way the people around you act.

I second what Vanity says. I read as many threads as I have the possibility to, especially because I play on a lot of higher lit, canon boards. It helps to watch how other's play a particular canon, because it kind of opens you up to seeing how other people play them. It gives you ideas that you would have never thought of personally. I have played Storm from the X-Men for seven years on multiple different sites...and sometimes when I'm bored I like to go on and read how other people play Storm, and it has helped me evolve my personal playing of her from a somewhat two demensional weather goddess, to a person who has emotions, and feelings, and actually knows how to express them.

I'd also reccomend journal entries in the character you are thinking of taking on. I have been doing it for the past few days as I am picking u a canon that I have never played before, and actually am not a fan of at all. Yet I wanted something different, so here I am, and I am finding that I love playing him.

On almost every board I join I make two characters by the end. I start with the character I really want to play. The one that I had everything planned out of how they were going to be from the get go... or on some boards the character I usually play (typically female, sarcastic, and a bamf). I then take that character and make a foil to them. Not necessarily on gender or looks (though that sometimes helps to have a PB that is the opposite) but mainly on personally, goals, aspirations, and history.

For example lets go with a highschool setting:

Primary character: The popular girl who is perky and fun. Everyone likes her and she never has a mean word to say. She tends to keep everything inside if it doesn't scream happy and lives up to the expectations of others instead of being who she really is.

Foil Character: Not the outcast but a lesser known individual. Has a few friends and a few enemies. Speaks his/her mind and is very blunt about it. Has no apologies for who they are or where they came from. Don't like them, then shove it.

I find that doing things like that challenge me as a writer and keep me from getting stuck in that "I only play the shy characters" rut. Hope that helps.

What I tend to do is take every idea I have and record it somewhere, then let it stew. For example, I had the idea to make a male character who was a lust vampire with strict morals so that every time he fed (on lust) it was a struggle for him. My very first idea, though, was just to make a vampire different to the norm (because I hate vampires).

Vanity is giving good advice and watching people can often help to give you ideas or information on how to carry out the ideas you have.

I don't know how much you craft your characters before you get down to playing, but something that I find helps me to make spontaneous and different characters is to write them spontaneously. I don't plan them at all, just give myself enough information to write (IE their gender usually) and then write with someone. IM RP helps there, because you don't have to write a lot about a character you know nothing about and the immediacy is preserved.

Mostly you have to ignore your inner critic. If you have knowledge of, say, a transvestite and you want to play one, don't let yourself think that you'll not be able to play them well enough - just do it. Unless people have concrit to give about your representation of certain stereotypes, ignore what they have to say. Try to play characters for the sheer fun in playing them.

I find that personally i usually put alot of myself into my character so it's always a challenge to play someone who is completely not like me, one thing i find that helps though is to as Vanioty said, to watch the people around you, if they have some similar personality traits to the character you're playing it can help to take not eof how they react to different situations. Also i find it helps too to give each of my characters a defining trait, or something that is different from every other character you have, this can just help you seperate the different characters in your midn when you're playing so you don't fall back into old habits.

For example.

If i had two characters, say the perky fun person and the moody quiet person, i might give one the trait of being a bit of a clutz and the other the trait of being especially creative.

Little things like that i find just help me seperate the characters in my mind so that i don't mix in uncharacteristic personality traits that i use in my generic type characters.

Hope this helps you :-)

And don't use character crutches.

I've seen the "creative but shy girl with sketchbook" routine enough times thanks.

Just let yourself go. Don't try to constrain your character to popular stereotypes and archetypes. Think of a character. Think of how you want for their mannerisms to be. Think about the type of person that you want for them to be. Whatever overused thing comes to mind, be sure to cancel them all out. Take notes if you have to. Organize their likes versus dislikes. Have REAL flaws, quirks, hobbies, etc.

Make your character make sense.

Additionally, a good character is all about how they're played. You can have a character that can be phenomenal - but if you play them like crap, you've messed up.

I really tend to make different characters all the time when I'm making a new character. On my newest RPG I think I created two of the most different characters ever, one is the tough captain who can fight like hell and isn't afraid to bark her crew around if necessary. The other is a sixteen year old shy'ish girl, not very educated and living in a frontier town. I just try to make different characters all the time, not kinda the same characters after each other.

So my advice really is when you make a new character, make it different from the last character your created.

Well, I had a somewhat similar thread like this. :lol:

I like trying other personalities than my own. Seems like I don't really do well with those "fantasy" personalities. Where the character is mostly who you wanted to be in life, and all that stuff. I don't know exactly why, but I'm not really fond of doing that. It kind of takes away the imagination and playing a different role. [Maybe that's because most of the cases I see like this, their characters turn out a little Mary-Sue-ish..] If you know what I mean, but maybe that's just me. ^-^;;

The only tip I can give you is try to imagine life as another different person, I guess.

Don't think too hard about it. I haven't played huge amounts of characters, but I have played enough so that it takes me a while to come up with something new. Sometimes the inspiration may need to hit you more than you need to think something up. Like other people have said, just keep your eyes peeled and have an open mind. There are so many personality variations within human beings that you have an unlimited fount of characters, it's just a matter of combining things differently. Sometimes you may be surprised if you just start writing without a goal.

You could try different stereotypes and mold them to your liking. Or check out sites like this which could inspire you. Maybe people watching at the local bookstore or super mart could give you a couple ideas. If you really have no idea of what direction you should go in, you could look at all your characters and summarize them into one or two words. Then create a character with opposite or extremely different traits. Really though, since this is a creative process, there's no hard-and-fast way of doing things. Just don't overthink it. There are so many different people out there that it shouldn't be a painful thing to come up with new charries.

I have two charries at the moment who are very different from my 'normal' characters. One is mean and nasty and unpleasant; she knows it and doesn't care. She enjoys being a Grinch, really. The other character is an emotionally retarded bachelor, who genuinely doesn't feel or understand strong emotions like love or anger. He's very cold and medicinal and ignorant of how other people work, but perfectly polite and gentlemanly all the same. After writing these characters for a while, I fell in love with the first but grew to hate the second.

It's important to note that when I started, their personalities weren't like that at all. They grew into it. I think that our characters lead us in new directions naturally. And it wasn't until a year or two ago that I really started to branch out into different sort of characters as a writer. For a long time it felt like I was writing the same tragic good guys over and over again. I've matured as a writer since then, so now I can "pull off" different sorts of characters. A lot of the time the difference between characters was made when I put them in different scenarios, changed or removed their motivations, and made them interact with different sorts of people.

Oh, something else...I think some people are just better at creating a plethora of different characters. Like my one good RL friend has been RPing with me for years, and she is capable of producing huge amounts of characters that are all completely different, while I tend to carefully develop a few.

Anyhow, that's my $0.02. Yay characters!

EDIT: Nevermind, that's more like $0.25. I wrote a flipping novel. :lol: