Folly + Zmija wrote:Hell to the no. Most of my characters have abusive parents. I feel like I give them that though cause I'm a rather depressive person and I don't like writing through a perspective I'm not sure of. If people don't like my sob story, they can suck it.
Okay now that just made my day right there XD
My sentiments exactlyfroslass wrote:heh. not really.
i was supposed to have a character with a dark past for a one x one so i made his story pretty sappy and sad. his mother was mugged and killed, father hung himself a few years later, he and his sister went to an orphanage, they got separated, he was adopted by a family who made him do their dirty work, he stabbed someone beating his adoptive father to the ground, and then was taken into a friendly overprotective household. i went a little overboard but hey, he was supposed to have a past even darker than that, i guess. eue
Well that happens to people in real life(at least to some extent) so I really don't see the problem with that XD
I could pretty much guess the logic behind why and how the events probably took place just based on what you told me, common logic, and a little understanding of psychology. The thing is, I could imagine this happening to someone in the real world, and what's important to character development is realistic cause-and-effect that's believable.
NCC-1701 wrote:Have you guys ever been hesitant to give your character a sad history because you're afraid that people will think that you're trying to give them a "sob story"?
I wouldn't say "afraid" so much as I do pause sometimes to sit and think about it. I'm not afraid to have some characters with sad or tragic backstories, it's just that it's important not to have all of your characters basically be carbon copy wangst characters(in otherwords, have some variety).
Springhole provides a good short summary of what you should consider most before writing a character with a tragic or sad backstory:
"First, ask yourself WHY you're giving your character a tragic or traumatic backstory.
Are you giving your character this backstory to build up/explain what kind of person your character is now? Or are you simply doing it to make readers or other characters feel sorry for your character, or to make your character seem more badass/tough for having survived the ordeal?
The first is a legitimate reason to give your character a tragic/traumatic backstory.
The second one is spurious at best. Even worse, trauma/tragedy often is used as little more than a device to provide an excuse for the character's intended love interest to snuggle/comfort xir."More on this article and some other helpful ones for things you could be unsure about can be found here:
http://www.springhole.net/writing/bette ... tories.htmhttp://www.springhole.net/writing/write ... acters.htmhttp://www.springhole.net/writing/respo ... riting.htmAnother important thing to factor in is, as I said above, cause-and-effect...
One of the characters I’m currently working on has a plethora of problems up to here because of past events, but he didn't stay in a frozen stasis ever since “big bad thing” happened. Age factors in this, because over time people change and develop. A teenager will perceive events and react to them very differently than an adult would. The interesting thing I’ve discovered is that ”big bad thing” doesn’t even have to be anything dramatic or horrible [death, abuse, disease, what have you], and that how horrible the events are actually depends on the characters themselves. Death of a family member that might be tragedy to one character could be a mere blip on the radar for another. Similarly, say, losing an important heirloom could be easily shrugged off by one person, but become a catalyst to something far worse for another. If you're creative [and bored] enough, you can play around with “angst” without actually falling into the pitfalls of sad pasts. Also, I think it’s important to remember to show events developing in a believable manner! Suspension of disbelief and all that. A character doesn't exist in a void [unless they, like, literally exist in a void], and they won't be the only one influenced by what happens.
^...and this explains it pretty damn well if you ask me XD
I mean, I have a character with a heinously depressing, dark, trauma-filled past; abuse, bullying, orphaned, et cetera. You name it, it's probably happened. And he fully shows it with his attitude. He's the type other characters can't stand to deal with, and wouldn't deal with except for the situations in roleplays and stories that basically force them to interact or depend on each other to get through something.
But here's the thing: That character is
supposed to be that way. He's supposed to be unlikeable and difficult to deal with, and react explosively to things others might take as a small issue.
And why did I put the character through that much?
For one, his backstory involves him eventually murdering someone, but his core nature that was genetically passed on to him by his parents(soft nature from his mother, and unyielding stubborness from both) he had was not one that would do something like that without being pushed, and pushed, and pushed to the extreme. As a character, he would have been the complete opposite if he hadn't gone through everything I put him through in his story. That's simply the way he developed. I will note that he's softer inside than out, but no amount of hugs and cuddles and petting alone would ever bring it out, especially when most other characters can't stand to be around him long enough to even accomplish giving him a hug(and suffice to say he's my favorite character despite that some others don't like him, as he does border on the side of angsty sue, but again, he was intended to be that way, not made that way by accident with other intentions in mind).
On the flip side, I have other characters who've barely seen hardship in their life, aside from the normal hardships of losing friends, or having pets and family members die, et cetera.
And I have others who are somewhere in-between that.
I have a character who's mother left, and later discovered that he was gay, while having to live with an overbearing anti-gay father who was verbally abusive, but never raised a hand physically against his son, and later kicked him out and excommunicated from him when he refused to convert to being straight(after all, not all abuse is physical, though it seems to be the common misconception that abuse looks a certain way or it's only physical).
And I have another character who is incredibly affluent, a teenager, lives with his father, and has a great relationship with him, never having faced any sort of abuse, but having to deal with a recently wed step-mother who hates children and constantly tries to turn his father against him, but the character isn't bothered by it because he knows his father would never openly go along with it and do anything to jeopardize his relation with his son.
Point being, variety matters, even if other people don't see it or you don't always flaunt certain ones or types of characters. Not all characters have to face physical abuse to have a traumatic home life, sometimes the abuse is verbal, or sometimes the abuse is something as little as neglecting to comfort their child when upset or notice the work they do and give praise for it
(but the effects of even little things over time adding up can be just as severe on the person/character's psyche as someone else who's being physically abused). Some characters have a great home life and suffer abuse or bullying elsewhere(such as in school). Others don't face hugely dramatic trauma either at home or elsewhere, but life still throws them punches(car accidents, sports injuries, boy/girlfriends breaking up with them that meant a lot, friends moving away or dying, pets dying, losing important items, et cetera)
In the case of the angsty sue character I mentioned, I first went with what I wanted as a personality and physical appearance, and most important key events in his history.
To go further with developing him, I asked myself, "Where did this personality come from?", and I decided that it would be a developed personality(he's mid/late teenage years). His younger personality would be different from his older one.
That led me to having to explain how and why the shift in his personality and thinking happened, and exactly how much it would take to push the character so far as to commit murder. That is one important thing to note is knowing how far a character will have to be pushed into doing(or not doing) certain things, since everyone has a point of breaking, and each persons(or characters) points where they snap differ. Some snap sooner than others, and some snap sooner at certain things that others see no problem with or doesn't effect them as heavily.
Another thing to be aware of(which you may have already read in the Springhole article linked above,
How to write better abuse victims and abuse situations) is that abuse tends to start off small, and work it's way up. Over time, the victim of it becomes de-sensitized. The character I'm explaining faced abuse since he was small(4-5 years old), so while you might have the idea yourself(if you haven't faced abuse yourself before, especially) to leave and not put up with it, someone who has faced it since early childhood might see it as "normal" or "just how things work", and stick around as it gets worse until reaching the point of extreme that caused the character to snap.
Likewise, in the case of this character, it turned him into a rather unpleasant person to be around, and distrusting of others, because even if they intend only the best for him, in his mind "EVERYONE is out to get him, or use him, or hurt him", no matter how much you try to coddle or hug him or assure him otherwise.
What I'm saying is, again, Cause-and-Effect. You have to take into consideration where the personality come from, and why, and if you can't come up with a good reason for why a character behaves that way, it's best to come up with an explanation, or if you can't, maybe scrap it entirely.
- A character whose been physically abused probably doesn't want hugs and cuddles(though some do, it's sort of 50/50 on that subject, because again, everyone is different) because they've been conditioned to think Touch=Pain.
- Likewise they might panic and run, flinch, or dodge away when they see a lot of movement from other people, because in their mind, they might be conditioned to think Movement=Someone is about to hit them.
- A character whose been verbally abused might break down under even a small amount of criticism or insults, or turn verbally aggressive and inflammatory themselves with very little provocation.
- A character who was neglected of getting attention and praise from their parents(or maybe one who didn't have parents at all, such as Naruto or Iruka) might be an attention-seeker and act out to gain others' attention or praise to fill the void.
- Someone who lost family members or close friends might be a little overly and maybe unhealthily possessive of people when they get attached to them.
- A character who is constantly told "no" or that they can't have something might then develop a complex that they HAVE to have their way because they feel like they never do if they don't insist on having what they want.
Et cetera
....I'm just going to stop now cuz this is getting long... XD
by yuki, » Sun Jan 05, 2014 11:21 am 
