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NaBloPoMo Day Two
November 2nd, 2010 07:56 pmDay 2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
I love Ai's answer for this- it's completely perfect. I honestly don't have a lot more to say on the matter besides what she said, but I'll try. If we're talking just major characters, discounting anyone in the background or that shows up only once, counting gets a little easier. What I can come up with off the top of my head is in the ballpark of 30 or so, and I'm completely positive I'm missing a bunch, not including the minor ones I left out on purpose. As a writer, you have certain things in your arsenal. There's the physical, obviously- pen, paper, computer, thesaurus, dictionary, research materials, possibly a desk- but there's the arsenal in your head, too. Vocabulary, random plot bunnies hopping around, spelling, grammar, and yes... characters. Characters are the singular most important thing in a story, I think. More often than not, it's the characters that determine what happens. Even if your piece is plot-driven and not character-driven, your characters will still make decisions about how to react to the events that are happening, and it's not always what you expect. Despite being figments of your own imagination, they can surprise even the writer if they're developed enough. I know a lot of us, especially in roleplay, refer to our characters as "muses", but there's really some truth to that. It's like they develop minds of their own. They become real, almost, even if they're still in your head. I've had characters outright refuse to do something that I wanted them to do, for whatever reason. I suppose this is how I know whether I'm being true to their character or not, but it's certainly not something a non-writer could possibly understand. One of my older sister's exes told me once that it seemed like most writers have some degree or other of multiple personality disorder. I disagree, though I see his point. Either way, you still have all of these people, other personalities, floating around in your head all the time, and they're not always quiet. I think most people would fail to see the difference between the two.
As far as males versus females, I think they're just about equal, with maybe a slight preference toward males. There's plenty of gay people of both genders, and there's even a MtF trans person in there (and yes, she was trans WAAAY before I started reading Hourou Musuko, if anyone asks. XD). So I'd like to think there's a decent amount of gender and sexuality equality in there for the most part.
( The rest of the meme! )
I love Ai's answer for this- it's completely perfect. I honestly don't have a lot more to say on the matter besides what she said, but I'll try. If we're talking just major characters, discounting anyone in the background or that shows up only once, counting gets a little easier. What I can come up with off the top of my head is in the ballpark of 30 or so, and I'm completely positive I'm missing a bunch, not including the minor ones I left out on purpose. As a writer, you have certain things in your arsenal. There's the physical, obviously- pen, paper, computer, thesaurus, dictionary, research materials, possibly a desk- but there's the arsenal in your head, too. Vocabulary, random plot bunnies hopping around, spelling, grammar, and yes... characters. Characters are the singular most important thing in a story, I think. More often than not, it's the characters that determine what happens. Even if your piece is plot-driven and not character-driven, your characters will still make decisions about how to react to the events that are happening, and it's not always what you expect. Despite being figments of your own imagination, they can surprise even the writer if they're developed enough. I know a lot of us, especially in roleplay, refer to our characters as "muses", but there's really some truth to that. It's like they develop minds of their own. They become real, almost, even if they're still in your head. I've had characters outright refuse to do something that I wanted them to do, for whatever reason. I suppose this is how I know whether I'm being true to their character or not, but it's certainly not something a non-writer could possibly understand. One of my older sister's exes told me once that it seemed like most writers have some degree or other of multiple personality disorder. I disagree, though I see his point. Either way, you still have all of these people, other personalities, floating around in your head all the time, and they're not always quiet. I think most people would fail to see the difference between the two.
As far as males versus females, I think they're just about equal, with maybe a slight preference toward males. There's plenty of gay people of both genders, and there's even a MtF trans person in there (and yes, she was trans WAAAY before I started reading Hourou Musuko, if anyone asks. XD). So I'd like to think there's a decent amount of gender and sexuality equality in there for the most part.
( The rest of the meme! )
