An article, to accompany this prompt about character design.
Why is it important that characters be distinctive?
Generally as an artist, you want your audience to sympathize with your characters, grow attached to them, and get to know them. Recognizing each character is step number one in that battle. If everyone looks the same, a piece such as a comic can get very dull very fast- readers won’t be emotionally invested if they can’t keep track of who’s who at all. (Even live action movies can make it hard to differentiate the character’s designs, which can be a recipe for apathetic viewers).
When working in visual mediums, audiences will usually be remembering characters based on their faces, and learning names later. A distinctive face is a memorable face- and memorable is good.What makes a character distinctive looking?
When I say distinctive, I mean that if I, within the context of talking about a work, said ‘sideburns guy’, everyone would know exactly who I meant without elaboration. ‘Distinctive looking’ means that their character design does not (or would only intentionally) overlap with the other characters. Within the group they stand out, and if you made a ‘cast on bleachers’ picture, followers of your work could label them all off without too much trouble (if you’ve read or watched Fullmetal Alchemist, take a look at the picture up top, and see who you can name. FMA is a great example of a large, varied, and recognizable cast).
What keeps characters from looking distinctive?
Usually, when someone learns to draw, say, a nose, they learn to draw it one way, and that becomes ‘how to draw a nose’. Additionally, artists often end up drawing characters that look to some degree like themselves. It’s not usually out of vanity- it’s just that your own face is familiar, and easily available whenever a reference is needed, as long as there is a mirror/photobooth/side of a kettle on hand. Sometimes, this can result in all their drawings resembling themselves, which doesn’t make for a very distinctive cast. The best way to remedy this is to study different people’s looks, by looking at varied images, drawing from models, and to practice drawing the different looks. Make yourself some ‘features banks’ that you have down, to draw from when creating new characters. If you notice that two characters are a little similar, make a side-by-side comparison chart, highlighting their differences (and adding some, if you need to).
Purposeful Resemblances:
There are times when you are going to want certain characters to resemble each other. For example, you might want a family to have similar facial structure, or maybe you want a new character to remind someone of a person that they used to know. This is much, much easier if the rest of the cast is varied. Two people with the same eyes are noticeable in real life and in works with varied casts. It will be ignored if one or two eye shapes are the norm throughout the cast. If the resemblance is clearly deliberate, it will be picked up on by the audience.
It’s also possible that you have Important Artistic Motives behind why your cast lacks variation- again, as long as it’s very intentional, you’re fine.Challenges In Distinctive Features
You may want to pick your battles with varied features, based on your media. For example, if you are writing a comic, having leads that are 5’0” and 6’4”, respectively, could pose a problem- they won’t fit in frames together. Therefore, certain similarities are definitely allowable if practicality demands it. Likewise, if you have to draw a character repeatedly, intricate tattoos or very complicated patterns will result in you weeping rivers of tears after four pages. Decide what is best for how you’ll be working.
A few ways in which characters are typically differentiated:
- Hair style or color: While people will naturally categorize things by color, color of hair often isn’t quite enough to differentiate people if they have similar faces (especially if a viewer can’t see the full spectrum). Additionally, there are only a few basic hair colors that humans have without the aid of dye. And if you work grayscale… you have black, white, and tone. Style can help, but you should still have different faces for your characters. Basically, hair has a lot of options for variants- so use that for all it’s worth, but mix up other traits too.
- Eye color: Again, color only gets you so far. Eye shape on the other hand will alter the whole look of the face, and can be seen from a greater distance.
- Accessories: If something is worn perpetually, it can be a big help- glasses, for example. Piercings can set someone apart a bit. As a general rule, though: Don’t rely on it if it comes off.
- Clothing: If someone has a permacoat, or always wears a hat, it can really mark them out, particularly if you work in color. If they will only wear one outfit, go ahead and make those really distinctive. If the clothes will ever change, run the Shaved And Uniformed test.
- Body Type: Why is body type not used more? My guess is the artists haven’t seen enough naked people. Go check out different body types. There are more shapes out there than you might think. ‘Muscly’ does not mean only one look. ‘Curvy’ does not mean only one look. Have some height variation, have some weight variation. Having differing body types will help you so much.
- Facial Structure: I’m talking eye shapes, noses, mouths, the shape of the head and face. There are fourteen kinds of nose, there’s no excuse for everyone in your cast to wear exactly the same one unless it’s An Important Stylistic Decision.
- Expression: Facial expressions can be a big part of character! Try putting a sappily cheerful grin on a habitually grim character- the effect is unsettling, isn’t it? In addition to the ‘resting’ face structure, your characters probably have a few default facial expressions- one is more prone to scowl, one is more prone to smile. People’s faces move differently, based on their structure- someone with a naturally downturned mouth won’t smile the same as someone with one that goes up, and expressions are often colored by the defaults.
- Ethnicity: If you have a large cast, and no reason why they need to be of the same ethnicity, I don’t know why you wouldn’t vary your cast’s ethnicity.
- Body language: Similar to expression and posture- what sorts of gestures are typical of your characters? Maybe one moves their hands a lot when they speak? Maybe they nod a lot. Habitual gestures can be used as markers for particular characters.
- Posture/lines of action: Does your character slouch, or stand up military straight? Are they floppy or rigid in their movements? Are their lines of action angular or curved? Try reducing the character to a stick figure, and check out how they stand and move.
Ways to test your cast’s distinctiveness:
- Draw them with shaved heads and in similar outfits/naked. Can you still tell them apart?
- Draw your cast as silhouettes- can you still tell them apart? Is each character recognizable from a silhouette alone?
- Get other people to review your character designs, and find out how easy it is for them to recognize characters. This will vary based on how good your subjects are with faces (some people aren’t good with them at all), but it will remove the familiarity that you have with your cast.
- If you work in color, put everything in black and white.
- If you work in color or grayscale, I hereby reduce you to outlines. Can you still tell them apart?
-This has been Evvy, at FYCD.
Further reading:
^ (Where I retrieved the image used as an illustration at the top).
Different Body Types- Drawing Reference
Palmistry For Hand Shapes: Weirdly Drawn But You Get The Point
Artist’s Guide to Human Features
Practicing Expressions/The Classic 25 Challenge (each character should have a somewhat different 25!)
How to make a story based around a character
- Pick an emotion to be your character’s default emotion.This will help color your character’s voice and make them more of a complete, congruent human being than a list of traits.
- Give them something you’re insecure about. This will be your character’s internal conflict. Avoid balancing it by giving your character a trait of yours you’re proud of. The idea is to make a character you can relate to the issues of, not an author avatar.
- Find traits, hobbies, and quirks that other people have that are interesting, but not really your thing. For example, I’m not a scuba diver, but I do think it’s an interesting thing for people to do. Those kinds of things make your character unique.
- Figure out two things your new character wants. One should be a concrete motivation, like “the girl he loves” or “the magic spheres of Punco.” The other should be a motivation that by its nature can never be completely fulfilled, like “more happiness” or “more power.”
- Give your character at least one major flaw. This should be something readers won’t think is adorable. Shallowness, megalomania, self-hatred, and indecisiveness are good examples of flaws. Clumsiness, ugliness, being “too heroic,” and being “too much of a dreamer” are not good examples of flaws.
- Take your character’s concrete motivation and put it as far away from your character as possible. Make it so hard to get that your character seems to have no chance. Other characters can arrive to help or harm your main character on his or her journey.
- Be sure to change your character during the story. Watch out, though, when altering your character’s abstract motivation and default emotion, because you can make them an entirely different person instead of a different version of the same person. Make sure that by the end of the story, your character still has flaws.
- Bam. Instant story. Proceed to rake in the
millionstens.A post I submitted to The London Magazine’s Tumblr a few days ago. 🙂
I’m absolutely 100% sure you’ve already answered this, and using your toolbox I must regrettably inform you that I couldn’t find it, so I’m going to ask again and apologize for cluttering your askbox- when writing a sex scene, what’s the difference between the use of the word “cum” and “come” I’ve searched the meanings, but can’t come up with a definite answer- Have a lovely day and best regards to the lovely people who run this amazing blog, TB
I believe you’re looking for
Be sure to check out the comments of the post. There is a lot of great stuff there that might help answer your question!
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Thank you for your kind support!
-C
An Amazing Resource: ObsidianBookshelf.com (Val Kovalin)
Index of All Articles by Title:
- Characters – Too Many Unnecessary Characters!
- Description – Body Types, Male, Large
- Description – Body Types, Male, Medium Size / Athletic
- Description – Body Types, Male, Small
- Description – Eye Color, Examples of Great Descriptions
- Description – Eye Color List
- Description – Eyes, How to Describe
- Description – How to Describe Hair
- Description – Hair Color List
- Description – Physical Description Clichés
- Description – Physical Descriptions, How to Write
- Fantasy Fiction – Character Names
- Fantasy Fiction – Clichés to Avoid
- Fantasy Fiction – Everyone’s Most Hated Fantasy Fiction Clichés
- Fantasy Fiction – Titles, How to Choose
- Writing – Find Your Thing
- Writing – How to Finish Writing Your Novel
- Writing – How to Finish Writing Your Rough Draft No Matter What!
Val Kovalin has also written books on describing characters!
How to, like, write cover letters and resumes and know what jobs to apply to and shit.
Basically I have been blessed to be close to people who work in hiring and were very, very willing to pass along their knowledge and tips and since a lot of people I know on here seem mystified by these things, I will share my vast wealth of knowledge with you*
*Some of this knowledge might be contradicted by specifics from your own field. If you’re a chemical engineer some of these things might not apply and that’s fine. This is just ~*widely applicable*~ stuff.
Cover Letters
Cover letters are the stupidest part of a job application. The cover letter is really only there to show two things: 1) That you have a command of language that is both accurate and appropriate; 2) you read the job listing.
- Your cover letter should be short. The hirer has likely read hundreds that day, and by read, I mean “skimmed over lightly.” You don’t need to fill up an entire page.
- It should only contain pertinent information. Do not try to be cutesy or “creative” unless the job listing SPECIFICALLY asks for that. Trust me, I’ve had to hire people. Those people’s letters got passed around for mocking. DO NOT BE THAT PERSON.
- It should speak to the job listing, but only enough that it shows that you read it. If the job listing emphasizes that they’re looking for somebody who is willing to work odd hours, throw in a line that in your past experience you have been noted for being flexible with time. It doesn’t need a Faulkner-length explanation.
- If you know the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed, address it to them. If you it is a blind application, you don’t need to put “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Sir/Madam;” just don’t say anything.
- Stop freaking out about it. Seriously, your CL is not nearly as scary as you think it is. If you want to see a screenshot if an example cover letter that is a “catch all,” click here. I just pulled this out of my ass for a fictional job/person.
Resumes
Your resume is not an “employment record.” Unless you have no experience, it should only list the things that are the most impressive or demonstrate your abilities the clearest.
- If you have an “Objective” on your resume, take it off. All of the employers I know said, “We KNOW your objective—you want the job! It just takes up space.”
- Always make sure that your resume is formatted cleanly and with maximum readability in mind. I strongly, strongly suggest visiting this link to see how to format your resume best. Visual cleanliness matters.
- Your resume should be ONE page. Just one. Not two or more.
- You can’t lie on your resume; you can learn how to make things sound more impressive. If you worked at a hair salon cleaning up, don’t say “Swept floors.” Instead write, “Contributed to the efficiency and cleanliness of the salon by sweeping floors.” It sounds like bullshit to you, but to a prospective employer, it sounds like you’re happy being part of a team. Try to describe what you did in at least 7 words.
- You can divide your resume if you want to highlight certain experiences over others. Making two sections such as “Relevant Experience” and “Other Experience” breaks it up, allows the reader to skip around, and let’s you highlight what you want to highlight.
- Learn to weed things out. Unless you can make it look like it taught you something huge, don’t waste the space. At the same time, if a job sucked but you can make it appear like it really impacted you, use it. This is not the truth about how you felt about that last job. This is you advertising yourself. You’re trying to get a job, not a Nobel Prize for emotional honesty.
Now, what about the Skills section? You should have one, but as one friend said, “Nobody gives a shit if you went to France and had a great time. What we care about is if you’re proficient in French.” That should be your metric for things:
- Only list experiences that would aid you in this job or a similar one—not things that were “cool.” This is the place for things that you’ve learned but perhaps can’t tie to a job. Examples: foreign language skills, clerical training, courses/certifications, etc.
- List all of the software that you know. Even if it doesn’t seem relevant to that job, weird things happen. List any MS Office/equivalent software, if you are familiar with both Mac and PC, any graphics editing software you know…
- SOCIAL MEDIA IS A THING THAT YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY MAKE KNOWN. To people ~30 and under, social media seems like a given. But to many employers, it’s a mystical world filled with equal amounts of marketing opportunities and terror. Make it clear what social networking sites you know how to use—obviously Facebook and Twitter, but also LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc.
Applying to Jobs/Interviewing
Unfortunately, I can give you less specific advice here because we are not likely working in the same field—but here are just some general things to file away:
- If there’s a job listing that you feel qualified for but the listing says it wants more years of experience than you have, apply anyway. Those employers are unlikely to find that unicorn that has 4+ years of experience and is willing to work basically minimum wage. While more experience is a plus, they really just want somebody who can do the job. When it comes to applying to jobs, you really have nothing to lose by applying to anything that tickles your fancy.
- Interviewing is an entire post unto itself, but I’ll give you the tips that I’ve been given by my people: be calm, be on time, and ask good questions. Always have some questions lined up, even if you already know the answer. “What are you looking for in the right candidate?” is a good example, or “Are there opportunities for growth within the company?” etc.
Accepting a Job
So you got a job offer; exciting! Before you immediately accept, really vet the place to make sure it’s somewhere you’d like to work. Months of unemployment make you desperate, but sometimes jumping at the first opportunity it isn’t worth it. THIS HAPPENED TO ME, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.
Things you should think about:
- Do I know ALL things about the job, including: what I will be paid/how often, if there are benefits and when I get them, what hours I am working, how overtime is handled, how sick time is handled, etc. These are all incredibly important to know and if your employer is legitimate they will welcome you asking them.
- Is the distance commutable, or is it too far from home? (Think about how transit/gasoline will cut into your paycheck.)
- Does the job give me the time necessary to do other important things?
- Does the office environment seem like one I can spend at least six months in? (Every month at a bad job feels like an eternity—if you have bad feelings, trust them.)
- Does the job offer me anything besides a paycheck? Will I be learning any skills at this job or making important connections that can help me down the road?
IMPORTANT: If an employer tries to give you a W-9 tax form upon your hiring and you are NOT a freelancer (independent contractor), RUN. This is tax fraud and is very messy and is entirely there to screw you. Become familiar with the legal definition of a freelancer so you know if you’re walking into a shady place. It happens more than you’d think, and it sucks, and is weird.If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message or whatever, I’ll gladly answer to the best of my ability! GO GET ‘EM.file under shit they don’t teach you in school
Here’s your pro-tip from an English Major for the day:
If you’re confused about the correct place to put the word “whom” in a sentence, use the “he/she” vs “him/her” test.
he/she = who
him/her = whom
For example, if you’re saying “Who wrote this letter?”
Who is correct here because he/she wrote the letter.
Now if you’re saying “To whom do I give this letter?”
You are giving the letter to him/her, thus, whom is correct.
15 sexyass tracks to do it slow and steady to—starts more indie/dream pop, gets hip-hop soul-ish and ends with instrumentals. (bonus track is a rip of unconsolable done unplugged because i don’t give a fuck if he says it’s about his childhood—that drum track alone is arousing as hell.)
high for this (the weeknd cover) – ellie goulding
head over heels (tears for fears cover) – digital daggers
angels – the xx
white sparks – animal kingdom
shuck – purity ring
marvins room – drake
montreal – the weeknd
thinkin bout you – frank ocean
hypnotize u – n*e*r*d
sure thing – miguel
novacane – frank ocean
the birds part 2 – the weeknd
dmt – xxyyxx
i’m god – clams casino
unconsolable (unplugged) (bonus track) – ambassadors
Asthma for Writers
I often see asthma attacks depicted oddly in writing, and as someone who has asthma, I thought creating a guide might be helpful. Here’s a few things:
Writing Questions Answered: Writing a Deaf Character
Anonymous asked writing-questions-answered: I have been writing for quite a bit now and have recently started a new story. The main character in this story uses sign language to communicate. What do you think is the best way to represent this?
The best way to represent sign language in a…
Rambles & Rabble 
