Personalities and Synergies

[AquaRegisteel]

Agreed, it also give a sense of character development that normally wouldn't be there, as the character is just reclaiming their lost self. Great for either the plot, OR if you're to lazy to develop a character in any way. XD I hope it's for the sake of the plot.

Also, I feel that making a hot head and a sarcastic jerk work together creates some interesting quarrels.

Your last point I have an example for: May and Drew in the anime.

Couldn't a death of a close person also shape character growth?

[Kutie Pie]

Couldn't a death of a close person also shape character growth?

Yes, for the good or the bad (in terms of how the character chooses their path, by the way, unless the writer is just that bad). It also depends on the relationship of the deceased to the character in question, but for the most part, it largely depends on who the character is as a person when he/she experiences this. Some of the ways the characters can mourn the death of a close loved one can seem either unrealistic, realistic, cynical, emotionless, over-the-top--whatever. Everyone has different ways to show mourning, and how they learn and grow from it. So while there technically is no right-or-wrong way to portray a character mourning, it just solely depends on who the character is. It's a life-changing experience, so it's possible their attitudes would change as well--in most cases, it does. How though depends on the situation, especially if the loved one died from natural or unnatural causes.

It's a hard question to answer completely due to individuality, but for the most part, yes, it shapes a character's... well, character, but the determined path of how it shapes the person depends on what action they take. And as no one knows the character well enough but the writer his/herself, it's all up to the writer to decide the path of character development/deconstruction.

[jireh the provider]

It makes sense I suppose.

Development of characters throughout the story is very important. Specifically their personalities. Going from what Crystal mentioned earlier, yes, there can be a point where the Protagonist/antoganist expereinces a sudden change in personality after an event, but for most of a story development is important.

For example, using an idea I have, the Protagonist is a young child for the first few chapters who is consistently bullied by a group of people. He is timid and doesn't talk to anyone except his best friend. When he gets a Pokémon he is slightly more confident and can talk to more people. His speech will also contain less pauses or ellipsis. When he is older he is far more collected and can get away with confronting the bullies by dismissing their comments.

Effectively, while visually you can see physical growth, such as posture or a certain swagger or whatnot, speech is the easiest way to show how a character has 'evolved'. You could begin the story with a character's speech included pauses and short words. As they develop, speech will be longer, and word length will increase. Also the way the tone is described can make a difference too.

Best Wishes

SeekerofLight

I can agree to this. But I think I can share a couple more examples from my current writing experience about the topic. Simple yet tricky to pull off. call it the art of Zen.

Anti-Criticizmic hero (against criticism)

In my current novel Arc (the novel banner below), the idea is that my my heroine early on is like every young girl but has a problem on taking criticisms (hates criticisms). My protagonist is the kind who believes that she's got everything right and only listen to her own beliefs along with others she trusted. But from strangers who are more mature and wiser than her, she won't listen easily. Imagine that happening constantly within a few days. That is enough to make someone cry and hurt themselves, and also part of human nature. There are people who wanted to be corrected in their own terms / who wanted to be corrected without shattering their ego. I kind of remember that one naruto Character who is against someone else's criticism. I just forgot his/her name (sorry...).

Thus, Anti-Criticizmic are characters who do not want to be criticized.

Parental Guilt

I don't know if any of us have written a hostage story/chapter. If you are the parent and your child is held hostage, ready to kill you kid when you don't give the thieves what they want. Of course let us say in your story someone saved your child and stopped the thief with a missile launcher. Even if the child is finally rescued, the mother/father can't help but blame themselves from what their son/daughter has tragically experienced.

[Feralninja]

Anti-Criticizmic hero (against criticism)

In my current novel Arc (the novel banner below), the idea is that my my heroine early on is like every young girl but has a problem on taking criticisms (hates criticisms). My protagonist is the kind who believes that she's got everything right and only listen to her own beliefs along with others she trusted. But from strangers who are more mature and wiser than her, she won't listen easily. Imagine that happening constantly within a few days. That is enough to make someone cry and hurt themselves, and also part of human nature. There are people who wanted to be corrected in their own terms / who wanted to be corrected without shattering their ego. I kind of remember that one naruto Character who is against someone else's criticism. I just forgot his/her name (sorry...).

Thus, Anti-Criticizmic are characters who do not want to be criticized.

I'm pretty sure that not taking criticism well is just a character trait, and while it can be a big trait in a character, I don't think there's a whole character class devoted to it. Not being able to take a critique has to do with stubbornness, being obstinate and headstrong, usually coupled with overconfidence. This could be a character flaw, or a driving force but it is most certainly not a character class in and of itself.

[Zibdas]

I typically take two-four characters that have no common ground or common trait and throw them together, just to see how they interact. It usually works well.

[jireh the provider]

I typically take two-four characters that have no common ground or common trait and throw them together, just to see how they interact. It usually works well.

So what kind of odd personalities? Something like Mr. Bean's kind of characteristic? At least specify

[SeekerofLight]

So what kind of odd personalities? Something like Mr. Bean's kind of characteristic? At least specify

By odd, don't make an utter crazy weirdo who talks in capitals and shouts random jokes like 'ORAN BERRIES HAVE MOUTHS SO THEY CAN EAT THEMSELVES' or something to that effect.

Instead, to save you from trying too hard to make a gag everytime the character speaks, give them a trait. Take Gollum from Lord of the Rings, he has a strange style of speech, as well as coughing 'gollum' a lot. So maybe a character who says something evey few words could class as 'odd'. Speaking in the third person or pronouncing words differently

Outside of speech, comment on the way the character moves. Maybe they walk with a limp, or that their eyes dart around to every moving object. Also the way that they fight would be different. Illogical if you will.

[Crystal]

I typically take two-four characters that have no common ground or common trait and throw them together, just to see how they interact. It usually works well.

So what kind of odd personalities? Something like Mr. Bean's kind of characteristic? At least specify

The immediate example I can think of was Red and Blue(Green in Japanese version) of the Pokemon Special Manga. Their characteristic generally are uncommon, and their attitude towards certain incidents also quite different. At the beginning of RGB Arc, the two were even having quarrels every time they met. But after the Pokemon League, the two had became friends and yet like rivals.

There does exist such kind of odd pairings, where I personally called these as "Magnet Pairs". The personality of the two persons are like the two opposite poles of the magnet, which is completely different or even exactly opposite, but yet they are "attracted" to each other. Such magnet pairs were usually fighting at the beginning, but at the end they can become friends, allies, or rivals of good-competition, forming a beneficial relation between each other.

[The Teller]

That's another interesting topic about personality: Sudden change of personality during the story. Please note that this is different from growth/maturing.

But for sudden change of personality, that will be a different kind of growth, if you may called that as "growth". Example, a carefree guy suddenly changed to become discreet and cautious about every single little event around him; a gentle girl that loves to help the others suddenly become reticent and antisocial; or like the example of jireh gave, the Darkrai in PMD explorer suddenly changed from an absolute villain to a courteous gentleman after the post-story event.
Such sudden change in personality of a character were mostly changed to a complete different one, such that the character feels no more like the "original" person. Usually such sudden change involves a major event that greatly damages that character, either mentally or physically. The damage causes trauma in the character's mind, or induce long-term amnesia, where these causes a sudden change in behaviour and/or personality of the character.

Of course, there also exist many other reasons that causes such sudden change, depending on your story. It can also be something else like sudden change in environment, relationship between some important person, or even sudden becoming wealthy by winning lottery, etc. But these sudden change of personality has a trend: which there must exist a major reason that causes such change in characteristics.

I wrote a story once where the main character was an unlikeable douchebag and, since the story was in his perspective, he justified all wrongs flung at him as not his fault (hint hint: a lot of the bad stuff that happens to him were of his own doing). A lot of my readers didn't get that he was SUPPOSED to be unlikeable. At the end of the story (that spanned over 50 chapters), he only BARELY showed signs of being a better person. The whole story took place in a matter of 6 1/2 months. Again, readers complained "X didn't learn anything! He didn't grow as a person! He didn't learn his lesson!" I had to tell them "No, he didn't. He's freakin' 18 years old. He's not gonna have a life-changing epiphany and suddenly become Saint X and save kittens from trees. He's has no reason to. Plus, I made it very clear over the course of the story that he's especially stubborn in his beliefs (that he's not a horrible person). Honestly, think back. When was the last time you personally saw someone do a 180 in personality? If you did see someone do that, did something life-changing just happen to them? 'Cause I think "sudden change in personality for no reason" is a symptom of a mental disorder. In summary, it's just not realistic (and realism is a theme I strive for) for someone to change their entire personality for no warranted reason over the course of a few months." People ASSUMED that all bad people (who aren't cackling villains) change their personalities to good ones at the end of the story, even if there's no justification for it whatsoever. And that's my rant that I hope somehow ties to what you're saying.

[Crystal]

I wrote a story once where the main character was an unlikeable douchebag and, since the story was in his perspective, he justified all wrongs flung at him as not his fault (hint hint: a lot of the bad stuff that happens to him were of his own doing). A lot of my readers didn't get that he was SUPPOSED to be unlikeable. At the end of the story (that spanned over 50 chapters), he only BARELY showed signs of being a better person. The whole story took place in a matter of 6 1/2 months. Again, readers complained "X didn't learn anything! He didn't grow as a person! He didn't learn his lesson!" I had to tell them "No, he didn't. He's freakin' 18 years old. He's not gonna have a life-changing epiphany and suddenly become Saint X and save kittens from trees. He's has no reason to. Plus, I made it very clear over the course of the story that he's especially stubborn in his beliefs (that he's not a horrible person). Honestly, think back. When was the last time you personally saw someone do a 180 in personality? If you did see someone do that, did something life-changing just happen to them? 'Cause I think "sudden change in personality for no reason" is a symptom of a mental disorder. In summary, it's just not realistic (and realism is a theme I strive for) for someone to change their entire personality for no warranted reason over the course of a few months." People ASSUMED that all bad people (who aren't cackling villains) change their personalities to good ones at the end of the story, even if there's no justification for it whatsoever. And that's my rant that I hope somehow ties to what you're saying.

You gives very good points here, and mentioned a good stereotyping mistake that happens in many preteen shows, even in the current Pokemon series.

Very true and very correct, nobody can have a sudden change in personality if there doesn't exist a justifiable reason that greatly affects the character. That is true for everyone, not only the protagonist, but also the antagonists, the supporting characters, the minor characters, and villains.

Justifiability of the reason that changes the personality of a character may varies according to different people. Previously I mentioned amnesia is just one, there can be others like being victims of serious crime, decrease of a person that is very closed to the referred character, or some realistic one like very serious addiction to drugs, gambling, etc. Most of those can affect the life of the character.

For one specific reason of change of personality of one specific category of character, the justifiability is really questionable: The villain lose to the protagonist. This happened a lot in many preteen animes, Pokemon series is one that "abuse" this to the greatest extent.

By reality speaking, losing a match to someone else will not affect the character's personality, no matter how much that match was important to him/her. Therefore, even up until now, I am still unable to understand the change of Giovanni after Red (or whatever name you choose the protagonist to be) defeats him in Viridian Gym in Pokemon RGB/FrLg series.

Personality of villains, especially villains of criminal characters, is difficult to change if look from realistic viewpoint. Yet I don't understand that why there will be a stereotyped view that bad suddenly changes to good after the so-called "final battle" with the good protagonist. I will accepted that they changed back to the good guys after several years or so, but definitely not immediately after the final match.

[jireh the provider]

I wrote a story once where the main character was an unlikeable douchebag and, since the story was in his perspective, he justified all wrongs flung at him as not his fault (hint hint: a lot of the bad stuff that happens to him were of his own doing). A lot of my readers didn't get that he was SUPPOSED to be unlikeable. At the end of the story (that spanned over 50 chapters), he only BARELY showed signs of being a better person. The whole story took place in a matter of 6 1/2 months. Again, readers complained "X didn't learn anything! He didn't grow as a person! He didn't learn his lesson!" I had to tell them "No, he didn't. He's freakin' 18 years old. He's not gonna have a life-changing epiphany and suddenly become Saint X and save kittens from trees. He's has no reason to. Plus, I made it very clear over the course of the story that he's especially stubborn in his beliefs (that he's not a horrible person). Honestly, think back. When was the last time you personally saw someone do a 180 in personality? If you did see someone do that, did something life-changing just happen to them? 'Cause I think "sudden change in personality for no reason" is a symptom of a mental disorder. In summary, it's just not realistic (and realism is a theme I strive for) for someone to change their entire personality for no warranted reason over the course of a few months." People ASSUMED that all bad people (who aren't cackling villains) change their personalities to good ones at the end of the story, even if there's no justification for it whatsoever. And that's my rant that I hope somehow ties to what you're saying.

You gives very good points here, and mentioned a good stereotyping mistake that happens in many preteen shows, even in the current Pokemon series.

Very true and very correct, nobody can have a sudden change in personality if there doesn't exist a justifiable reason that greatly affects the character. That is true for everyone, not only the protagonist, but also the antagonists, the supporting characters, the minor characters, and villains.

Justifiability of the reason that changes the personality of a character may varies according to different people. Previously I mentioned amnesia is just one, there can be others like being victims of serious crime, decrease of a person that is very closed to the referred character, or some realistic one like very serious addiction to drugs, gambling, etc. Most of those can affect the life of the character.

For one specific reason of change of personality of one specific category of character, the justifiability is really questionable: The villain lose to the protagonist. This happened a lot in many preteen animes, Pokemon series is one that "abuse" this to the greatest extent.

By reality speaking, losing a match to someone else will not affect the character's personality, no matter how much that match was important to him/her. Therefore, even up until now, I am still unable to understand the change of Giovanni after Red (or whatever name you choose the protagonist to be) defeats him in Viridian Gym in Pokemon RGB/FrLg series.

Personality of villains, especially villains of criminal characters, is difficult to change if look from realistic viewpoint. Yet I don't understand that why there will be a stereotyped view that bad suddenly changes to good after the so-called "final battle" with the good protagonist. I will accepted that they changed back to the good guys after several years or so, but definitely not immediately after the final match.

Intriguing. I would see this kind of trait to sub characters who help the protagonist in a pessimistic way. I am using one who barely changes his view even if my heroine kept encouraging my sub character to soften up. It is personally one of the easiest to make since that kind of character completely knows itself.

I call this term as "respective disagreement". open to opinions but they won't do the advice given by others.

As a nice example, lets say a friend suggested to you that you must take a break from your studies every now and then. While you respect the suggestion, you'd rather not listen to that advice and continue to study too much.

[jireh the provider]

A long while since the last post.

But what are your opinions about writing internal conflicts to your characters?
Personally, I find them very fun to do since you put every character's limited loyalty to the test.

I bet all of us know Serverus who plays as a double agent. Loyal to "the guy's name not to be spoken", but truly loyal to Dumbledore.

The other kind of internal conflict that I know is from the Da Vinci Code, where Sophie is hostage by Teabing and Robert Langdon has to solve the puzzle from him or Sophie gets killed. If he solves it for them however, Teabing will use the answer from the Cryptex to destroy the current Christianity by revealing to the world that Sophie holds the bloodline of Jesus Christ. They were at Westminister Abbey when this happens?

So back in topic, what are the different personalities that can intertwine with internal conflict scenarios?