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Nov 22 '20
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u/Cyan_Tile Nov 22 '20
I have a character who's essentially a time-displaced Victorian scientist who's also a closet weeb to not only project my weird shit but to also show culture shock and shit like that
It's how you use their quirks in your story
Besides what kinda guy doesn't like anything? Ot makes them seem more human
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u/Cyan_Tile Nov 22 '20
Well I believe it's how you put them into action and use that matter in the story.
And besides, you can tell a lot about someone's personality based on what they like/don't like.
i.e. someone might listen to metal as an outlet for pent-up rage or play videogames to better their hand-eye coordination or might like Nic Cage flicks cuz they might be addicted to him (it happened)
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u/Puzzleboxed Nov 22 '20
This kind of information is important to define the character's personality, which is always relevant to the story. Obviously you shouldn't spend a lot of time on it when you don't need to, but sneaking in a sentence mentioning the character's love of musical theatre or unusually large collection of vintage horror movies goes a long way to humanize them and isn't going to make a reader tune out.
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Nov 22 '20
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u/Puzzleboxed Nov 22 '20
That's because everyone loves pizza. It's not an interesting interest for a character to have. If you say the character loves authentic Thai food because they were introduced to it by a close friend, or they love sushi so much it inhibits their judgement when being asked on a date to a sushi place by someone they don't actually like that much, those are interesting interests. They don't need to be mentioned ever again to be important because they've already made an interesting statement about the character.
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Nov 22 '20
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u/Puzzleboxed Nov 22 '20
You don't get it. Personality is a complicated, multifaceted thing that has to be built up carefully from many perspectives with varying degrees of explicitness. You can't just say "this character is a x personality type who does y or z" and be done with it.
Saying a character loves authentic Thai food does say something important about that character. It isn't part of their personality by itself, but it provides a window through which to see the personality, and when combined with other glimpses allows the reader to form a full three dimensional idea of the character as more than just words on a page. That's the point of this post.
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u/Fairyhaven13 Nov 22 '20
The best, most believable characters have a host of information that seemingly never gets used in the story, because it's important to their personality and alters how you write them once you have it in mind. Pixar does this with every movie, they had a whole, fleshed out background written for all their sharks in Nemo that you can read on the wikis. It might not seem relevant, but it is more than you think.
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u/64Marlin64 Nov 22 '20
I think it works best in long-form storytelling like comics (which is what Homestuck is) or TV shows that deal with multiple arcs. Characters will typically have more down time where they can explore their interests on screen in stories like that
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Nov 22 '20 edited Nov 23 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Chradi Nov 22 '20
“cool” is very dependant on who is judging it. You might think artsy movies are cool, but if I have to talk to the type of people who tends to like artsy movies I’ll have to constantly fight my primal instinct to shove them into a locker.
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u/Puzzleboxed Nov 22 '20 edited Nov 22 '20
Cool is highly subjective. There are lots of people who think artsy movies and kungfu are very nerdy. The point is that in real life people often tone down their expression of interest in things they are passionate about because being passionate about things opens you up to criticism and judgement from people who don't share those passions. The point being made here is that you should not do that for fictional characters because it makes them boring. Have them embrace their passions whether they are cool or not (at least privately to the omniscient reader).
If a character is obsessed with LARPing have them be obsessed with LARPing. If a character is obsessed with football have them be obsessed with football (and not just in a "doing this for the approval of peers" way... unless "getting the approval of peers" is their actual passion, which is a different potentially equally interesting character).
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '22
And you don’t have to like what they like to make it good