I found out this amazing narrative trick from the walking dead.
When I played walking dead season 1, I realized something about the characters. They all act like human beings. And so I found out the trick to make a character human is to pretend in your mind that you are them. I came up with lots of ideas when I was pretending to be Lee, Clem, Kenny(In my head). So anyway I just wanted to share this with you guys. Mabye some of you already knew this, but I wanted to share this with those that don't. And also I realized this technique also reduces plot holes.
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You on drugs? You need help!
You mean empathy? It works well in the real world too...
So if I pretend I can be anyone...? Wait... what?
Not really appropriate here, but feels like deja vu since I haven't posted this image for years.
I haven't watched that show in sooooo long!
I was walking through Walmart a while back and saw a RvB dvd in the movie section. Nostalgia kicked me in the face.
Confucius say: be the character. The character is as real as you.
Back when I was a fanatic of Red vs. Blue (still am in some aspect, though I don't go crazy and buy all their merchandise like I did back then) I actually got to talk to Joel Heyman (the voice of Caboose) himself. It was one of the coolest things ever.
YESS!
Where die you speak to him at?
In 2008 (just before Achievement Hunter was a thing) he posted saying; "Skype" and made an account for a few moments and said; "Go nuts." And I was thankfully one of the first in line. It's actually how I joined Skype also. It was also how I got his staff award (it's the pair of 3D glasses on the bottom). Was only a few moments long, but I think I got him to laugh.
Haha that's awesome. Congrats!
Haha... in a way, it does make a lot of sense, considering that many players are biased against the characters because they didn't put themselves in the characters' shoes.
A good idea for reading a book or playing a game - empathy is how I forgave Lilly for her murder and how I forgave Kenny for his- but a pretty disastrous one for writing narrative.
I mean, if when we write stories we imagine ourselves to be the characters we made, then the characters would all end up being the same and it would be pants.
Its not like that. Its like imagining you are the character and doing what the character would in that situation. I think thats the reason why Walking dead is so in depth.
But even when we imagine how the characters would act, we are instinctively turning it towards things we would do in their situation, as we're human.
Which is why the Walking Dead franchise is so succesful.
...no, as in, when we write characters with personalities, even if we imagine we are them we will still do what comes naturally to ourselves, and hence it's still a bad way of writing narrative
That's the trick to making well developed characters, imagine yourself or someone you know in that position and go through it in your mind.