You know what’s amazing about working in a field you love that happens to collide with your hobbies? That moment where you’re doing a hobby thing and suddenly realize a whole new approach to something for work.
Yesterday, I was rolling up a character for a gaming side project. I had intended this guy to be kind of a throw-away, but even so, I wanted to build him so he matched the concept I had in my head—make him good at certain things, not so great at others, etc. So as I was distributing numbers and choosing spells and such, I realized I was making very intentional choices about who this person was and how that affected what he is good at.
💡 And the light went on.
As a writer and role-playing gamer, I’ve literally been developing characters for years. Yet, yesterday, the connection between the two clicked. I finally realized how I use my fiction background to make game characters and my gaming background to make fiction characters.
This may sound like a “duh” moment, but it’s actually huge. When we know how to do something, we just … do it. We don’t really think about the how because it’s so natural that the how gets lost behind jumping in to complete the task. I can look at a manuscript, see a character acting out of (well) character, and point out why they wouldn’t necessarily act that way. To take this a step further and dig deeper, what I actually do is look at the character profile I’ve built in my head, note that an action is out of place because it doesn’t match the profile, and find an alternative action that accomplishes the same goal while fitting who the character is.
And I can do that because I understand how to literally start with nothing and create someone.
Every role-playing game has different mechanics for creating characters (and even different editions of the same game do things differently). Some allow for more customization than others, and creating fictional characters is like having a character-building game engine with all the options you could possibly conceive, plus a few you probably haven’t thought of.
Staring at this endless list of options can be intimidating. Where in the world do you start?
That’s where rolling up characters comes in. It organizes the character-creation process into a defined start point, followed by a logical progression, with key steps to take along the way. At the end, you have a profile with specific strengths, a broader skillset to back up those strengths, and definitive holes that represent weaknesses. Then, when you plop this person down in a story, you know who they are, what they can do, and how they will approach obstacles that crop up. Even more, you’ll know what kinds of obstacles might stymie them, why they aren’t equipped for those obstacles, and (bonus!) what strengths their friends should have for some well-rounded teamwork.
I feel like I could go on about this forever and a day. After all, I love talking about this stuff. That said, this is potentially bigger than a blog post—a class, perhaps? Or a series of videos? I want to do something with this idea. Probably not right away because I’ve got a different class to teach at the end of the month, but I’ll keep this tucked in the back of my mind for consideration afterwards.
Until then, feel free to comment or contact me to talk more about how this works. At the risk of repeating myself (okay, no risk—I’m repeating myself), I love talking about this stuff. 😉
👋 Fair travels,
Mary
P.S. A big thanks to Semevent from Pixabay for the image.
P.P.S. If you’re interested, that class I’m teaching is on role-playing games for professional development and hosted by the Editorial Freelancer’s Association. You don’t have to be a member to sign up (but if you are a member, it’s free!). Anyway, it’s at this link.
