Character building

Character building - pain

Something that every person has to deal with at some point is pain. Be it physical or purely emotional, how a person handles pain says a lot about that person, and people can learn a lot about themselves when they have to encounter pain of some sort.

I find that figuring out how a character reacts to pain is a great way to flesh out a character. It's usually just a thought experiment, though occasionally I'll write a brief scene to help me solidify the things I learn about that character. For example, I'll put the character in a situation that would cause the "average person" some sort of emotional pain - the death of a family member. Finding out how the character reacts to that brings up a ton of questions right away:

How close is the character to the family member in question?
How does the character react externally, in public?
How does the character react privately?
Is there anyone that the character would feel comfortable expressing their pain to?
What's the first thought that runs through the character's head when hearing the news?

There are stories that can grow out of this information right away - if the character isn't close to the family member who died, why? Was there some sort of estrangement? If the character breaks down in public, how do the people around the character react?

Physical pain is less similar that it would seem on first blush. Speaking from personal experience with chronic pain, I know that I can "push through" pain I'm used to, but will be laid out flat by something unexpected. I have chronic head pain, so I'm used to working around headaches; however, if I throw my back out, the slightest shift in movement will leave me incapacitated. So ask yourself:

What kinds of pain your character can work through, and what will drop them into the fetal position?
Does your character react differently if someone witnesses an injury, as opposed to being alone?
At what point will your character ask for help?

In general, people don't like to think about pain. However, seeing how someone reacts to different kinds of pain can help give a character depth, even if it never comes up explicitly in the text. Try not to torture them too much, though - you don't want them to run off screaming into the night.

Comments

Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

Search This Blog