Are there ways to help stick to character traits?
So, I'm not much of a writer, in fact the last time I wrote a story was when I was 10 (Been nearly 10 years since).
Where I usually write is in roleplay situations. Where my characters are constantly interacting with others, as we all make our way through some ridiculous problem together, or kill something disgustingly difficult.
What I wanted to know, are there any specific exercises I can take as a person to accomplish the following.
Keep My characters personalities separate. It may seem like a silly question, however I struggle with this. What i mean is, when running multiple characters I tend to sort of merge their personalities into one abomination, it takes time, but eventually they all become the same old character with different weapons, or something.
For example, I had two characters, one named Adrian, another named Ashley. In the beginning Ashley was a light hearted smooth talking kinda guy, whereas Adrian was more on the Edgy side of things. He had a classical 'I'm rich, so i'm better than you' demeanor... In the end, their personalities merged slightly and it was just messy.
I want to prevent this in the future, though don't want to stop my Roleplay activities. Is there anything I can do?
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1 answer
The first thing that determines how a character acts in a story is not their personality, but their motivation. In short, what do they want. If your characters all want the same thing, they will tend to seem the same.
People with different personalities will definitely pursue their goals in different ways. But what people want is also a result of their personality. People with different personalities, in other words, are likely to want different things. That puts you back in the realm of what they want.
Then the issues becomes, is their behavior in this scene consistent with what they want. What they want and how they act to get it will reveal who they are. If they want the same things, to the same degree, chances are they have similar personalities that will be hard to tell apart. If they have different personalities, that will manifest itself in different actions in pursuit of different goals.
The trick in any scene is to keep each character pursuing their own goals. If you forget what one of your characters wants in a scene, they are not going to ring true and will probably start to blend in with others. They are blending because you have forgotten what their individual motivation is.
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