{"id":277932,"date":"2018-11-14T21:17:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T21:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/14\/i-think-the-best-piece-of-character-design-advice\/"},"modified":"2018-11-14T21:17:12","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T21:17:12","slug":"i-think-the-best-piece-of-character-design-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/14\/i-think-the-best-piece-of-character-design-advice\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

elliewritesstories<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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mareebrittenford<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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writing-references-yah<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n

the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders\u2014obviously, it was a leadership<\/i> camp\u2014but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

he said to us all\u00a0\u201cyour curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses\u201d and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I\u2019m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws. <\/p>\n

previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in \u201cthis character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?\u201d but that\u2019s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can\u2019t have one without the other. <\/p>\n

is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they\u2019ll destroy the world for the people they love. <\/p>\n

it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist\u2019s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they\u2019ll be confident in everything they do. <\/p>\n

tl;dr<\/b> \u201cyour curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses\u201d there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is such a fabulous flip side of what I\u2019ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is brilliant!!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

elliewritesstories: mareebrittenford: writing-references-yah: I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.\u00a0 the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders\u2014obviously, it was a leadership camp\u2014but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.\u00a0 he … <\/p>\n

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