Monday, September 9, 2013

More about character quirks

I think I spoke earlier about a list where the author had named things like "disability" and "pacifism" as character flaws.
It turns out that is a "character flaw" list for live role play players. Like Dungeons and Dragons. In that world both pacifism and disability can be seen as "flaws". But the one who posted the list forgot to mention this origin of the list, and suggested it for fiction authors...

Now, there's this e-book of 1001 character quirks to make your characters rounded and "real".
I think "SlyShy" says it all in her (or his?) review of the idea. (Now, that's just based on the information given on the advertisement page about the e-book, so we could be very unfair and wrong. Could.)

Here's some of the suggestions:
100 free character quirk ideas

I'm sorry to see this blog isn't flying. "1003 character quirks". I think he (she?) had a good idea there. Because "character quirks" are free and easily available. Plenty of material and apparently interested public.

Here's some thoughts by Audrey Kalman.
" the reasons behind the characters’ appeal and endurance “may lie in a deep psychological or mythic resonance, the artistry of their presentation, or the special circumstances of time and society that brought them into being and sustain their popularity.”"
 But - lists...

list of character quirks
50 random character quirks
100 Character Quirks You Can Steal from Me
quintessence of quirks (for roleplayers)

Writeworld's page on quirks

Yeah... For some reason I'm thinking about fanfiction and Marysues... I mean... none of that is really interesting. I don't care if someone bites their nails... unless the author makes me interested in it, like Terry Pratchett. And it doesn't really say anything about the character.

Use character quirks to grab the readers' attention

Oh... 


Closer quirks

1 comment:

Helena said...

I checked out the links and liked the list of 100 quirks best. Some were funny, some scary, but they made me realize how common quirks (character traits?) are and that they can make a character very distinctive. Thanks for these resources.