I Think The Best Piece Of Character Design Advice I Ever Received Was Actually From A Band Leadership

I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.

the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.

he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.

he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.

previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.

is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.

it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.

tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.

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esile-pr23

1 year ago

Does anybody have fic recs for one or both of them being inexperienced romantically it’s so so cute and I feel like I haven’t read any in such a long time

anyway, biorender is the best thing to ever happen to biologists since we found out we could manipulate peas

it’s a web program with like over 20k pre-made science icons you can use to make professional diagrams in minutes (or hours if you dick around a lot like yours truly. don’t mind that second thumbnail. it’s apparently supposed to be a mouse tumor but now it’s my friend).

GONE are the days when we have to individually make a phospholipid by hand on powerpoint and then copy+paste until we threw up

or use lame speech bubbles for cells

just LOOK at all these amazing illustrations the company and/or users have created:

(lol way better than mine but that’s besides the point) go check them out!

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esile-pr23

1 month ago

I promise I didn't disappear, I just don't have any impulse control and started several at once again haha

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esile-pr23

1 year ago

I don't think we as a society understand the importance of having someone like Taylor Zakhar Perez at the peak of success right now and I'm not even joking. A mexican man, lead actor in a queer romcom, who explicitly talks about the need in Hollywood to have more latinx stories, speaks out for queer rights, for trans rights, talks about the need to have more women in positions of power, philanthropist, he helps people with associations founded by him, he is smart and positive. He's a good person and god knows how much we need it in Hollywood right now.

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esile-pr23

6 years ago

I'm ugly sobbing rn I'm not okay