Trouble with Characters

Hi All!

I have a pretty good ides for a story, but I'm having a little trouble coming up with the characters.

Do you have any advice on character building you could give me?

P.S. I have tried making character bio sheets and they don't work to well [for me, anyway].

P.P.S. I don't know were my story is going to be M/F or F/F.

What I'd suggest is you simply try to make the lee the kind of girl you would like to tickle. What do you like about girls, think about both physical and character. Do you like them to talk back, play tough, or be gentle and fragile. Then when you got the kind of character you would like to tickle, you can try a play at opposites attract and make a character who is not like that (I find this adds some hilarity to the story. Imagine you have this tough girl 'lee and a really gentle insecure 'ler and the lee is telling her to toughen up, however then the lee gets all soft at the slightest touch, and the ler goes power-crazy over the lee )
Another thing you can do is think of the situations you want, and then form characters based on the situations. Certain people do certain things in certain situations. A loose, maybe even "slutty" kind of girl would be the kind to wave her butt at a random guy in a cafe, however if you want the guy to go over and tickle her cute cheeks, you can't make the guy a Orthodox Christian conservative, now can you? He needs to be loose too. If he's a Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) player, he might even be playing an archer and have a few feathers up his cap

EDIT: One more tip: Characters are always an extension of yourself. They are somewhere within you. If you want a torture story, you can make a character which represents something you dislike and try to tickle it out of them

Building from composite characteristics of people you actually know simplifies the process and adds a touch of realism.

I don't think you necessarily need a biography of a character to effectively create one but it helps to sketch a bit of a background. Recently when I was writing a story, I was working with two characters that I was trying to develop. I knew that I had to get one of the characters to agree to be tied up by the other. I kept asking myself, why is he agreeing to be tied up? What makes him curious about it? What challenges him about the set of circumstances? So, as I was writing the story leading to that point in time, I had to answer those questions for the audience. The reader needed to understand why the character agreed to be tied up so that when it happened it seemed like a natural development in the story. All those little things I needed to invent to get that one character to that position became part of his personality. By answering those questions, I took an unlikely scenario and made it possible. So, rather than writing about the character's entire life history, focus on asking why the character is behaving a certain way and figuring out what things the character needs to be for the story to happen. I think that would help you a lot.

Thoses are all great ideas for character building, thanks!

Jerryb: I'm not talking about a "life history" bio, I mean one like

name:

age:

b-day:--ETC

but, I know what your saying, build the character around the story.

A character is not a set of stats. I see a lot of stories where we meet Mindy who is blonde, 5'6, big boobs, lactose intolerant and her friend Amber who is brunette, 5'9, smaller boobs etc and who cares? It tells you nothing. Introduce Mindy, the blonde bombshell who lives for shoe shopping and that's all we need to know, we can fill in the blanks. Then introduce Amber, the sporty brunette and again we start to create an image ourselves.

I think it's about show, don't tell. Show us something about this person - a timid librarian with a secret passion for reading tickle fiction conjures up something. Telling us how tall a girl is, what her cup size is doesn't really do anything.

Actually, making a set of stats isn't really even that bad for a character. Using a Dungeons and Dragons like system can really make things interesting since the writer doesn't really know what will happen. Dice + stats decide, and then the writer writes up what happened.

I am not against stats. I usually plan them for my characters and it's a good place to start but I think a lot of people stop there too.

All my characters have back stories but they don't always make it into the story. For example in the Cloak and Feather series I know all about Samantha Storm's childhood, where she grew up, who her father was and how she became a spy so it all informs how I write her but it's not necessary to put it out there for the reader.

If you want to see great characterisation, look at SoundSiren's 'All Undone' story. Brilliant characterisation but no description or stats of the narrator at all.

Rule one -- no need to take being stumped too seriously. Anybody reading your work has already decided to temporarily suspend disbelief and accept what they read as the truth about what happens in that world. If you're not sure what someone would say or do, just think of a few possibilities and pick one. Some characters are just completely random (imagine the people in life who you love because they say things that just seem to come out of nowhere), and they can lend freshness to lulls.

I almost universally base characters on myself. Try assuming you're in the situation of your characters, except that you really are just you. For variety, try thinking of a valuable lesson you've learned, or piece of wisdom that really shaped you, and subtract it. How would your thoughts and reactions to that situation become different? What if you subtracted a different lesson instead? That kind of thing can really help if you need two characters to have tension between them.

"Show, don't tell" is really useful for answering questions for the readers. Instead of "likes and dislikes," what counts in real life is what people around them would see as a result of that internal stuff. How do they react -- what would they say, do -- if they suddenly realize they're late for work? If they're locked out of their home, but it's sunny? If they're being examined by the doctor? If their pet is lost? If their roommate is having a party that night? That kind of thing can really vary by character, and by just narrating what they do, you can serve the same function as just spewing an analysis of them.

suikoden said:

A character is not a set of stats. I see a lot of stories where we meet Mindy who is blonde, 5'6, big boobs, lactose intolerant and her friend Amber who is brunette, 5'9, smaller boobs etc and who cares? It tells you nothing. Introduce Mindy, the blonde bombshell who lives for shoe shopping and that's all we need to know, we can fill in the blanks. Then introduce Amber, the sporty brunette and again we start to create an image ourselves.

I think it's about show, don't tell. Show us something about this person - a timid librarian with a secret passion for reading tickle fiction conjures up something. Telling us how tall a girl is, what her cup size is doesn't really do anything.

Click to expand...

Agreed 110%...and yes I'm posting. Shhhh It's funny I didn't expect to find you here, but was reading through and went HEY!

suikoden said:

I am not against stats. I usually plan them for my characters and it's a good place to start but I think a lot of people stop there too.

All my characters have back stories but they don't always make it into the story. For example in the Cloak and Feather series I know all about Samantha Storm's childhood, where she grew up, who her father was and how she became a spy so it all informs how I write her but it's not necessary to put it out there for the reader.

If you want to see great characterisation, look at SoundSiren's 'All Undone' story. Brilliant characterisation but no description or stats of the narrator at all.

Click to expand...

ty Suik! Link is actually in my sig still if the OP's actually interested in reading it. I would highly recommend checking out some of Marquis De Sade's work too in his archive here: http://www.ticklingforum.com/forumdisplay.php?333-Marquis-De-Sade-s-Story-Archive
Start with either Coma or Some Used More than Others.

The best advice I can offer is pretty simple on this subject tickle gamer, write what you know...and if you don't have someone you can "sub" in then try looking at some of your favorite characters in movies/books/comics/etc. Or hell, just random photos on Google imgs. Go from there. Beyond that I'll just add this, a character is so much more than a name and a birth date as Suik was explaining here.

Telling us how old she is doesn't add anything. Let the reader make her 25 or 45 if they want. YOU will know how old she is for you, but your reader will fill in the blanks in the world they create on their own. Unless the age/name is vital to the story...then find a way to weave it in naturally without TELLING us as Suik explained.


Oh, and read Boots by Suikoden. You'll thank me later. ^ ^