Advice/Help Difficulty Connecting to a Character?

Daisie

Don't trust Draven to... walk.
Roleplay Type(s)
Hey, y'all! Your friendly neighbourhood Demon Dragon speaking.

So a while ago I started a new roleplay. I created a character within the roleplay who I decided to go out of my comfort zone with. Now... I've found that I really thrive with a certain character type. I love playing characters who are the tough, powerful, slightly egotistical type, oftentimes having a bit of a superiority complex that is fun to iron out later in the plot. I don't always write this type of character, but when I do, it's an absolute blast. I've also had a few characters who were wise, mysterious, and quiet. I performed well with them, too.

But this new character has posed a definite challenge for me. Nate is an almost entirely logical mind. He works quickly in fast-paced scenarios, is extremely good at deducing what the best thing to do at any given time is, and tries his best to separate his life decisions from his emotions when necessary. He's not a very strong person at all, and of course, has his faults. Enough pressure is applied, and he'll crack for sure. But he's pretty darn solid.

The problem lies in my emotional attachment to him. This RP has been running for a decent amount of time now, and I've realized that I just don't care about him. Normally I get very attached to my characters, but I'm really having trouble putting any emotional investment into him at all. He just seems very bland to me, which is unfair, because he has a LOT of potential. I've sort of hit a wall with his character development, and I don't know exactly what to do, now. As someone who is very emotionally-driven, I'm having a tough time relating. Have any of you ever had a similar issue? Have you been able to fix it? How can I rebuild my hype?

I can answer any additional questions about Nate if you have them, just let me know.
 
Oh yeah, I've had this happen quite often. I try to go out of my comfort zone with characters as much as possible. Granted, I normally do this in my own private works so that I don't have to subject others to me figuring out how to write these types, but the same problem applies. I've had them in a few roleplays as well over the years and it's always a struggle. The one that's most memorable to me was this jokester character who couldn't take anything seriously but was also a bit of a coward (during a zombie apocalypse). I really struggled to connect with him emotionally and found myself mostly just slogging through with him. In the end he became one of my most beloved characters... so it is doable!

What I did (and do in other cases as well with private characters) is to explore backstory.
Normally I'll pick a point in time and a theme (ie. childhood, birthday) and write a few pages of backstory exploring the character through that lens. Since people develop in stages they can be quite different as children as opposed to adults and that can help me connect--if I am privy to the key events that formed this character. I'll sometimes do this a few times with different things (teenage years, first exam they failed) going as broad or as specific as I want to see how they behaved in the chosen scenario.

This is just something that's worked really well for me in the past. I've started doing it with characters that I love and have no problem connecting with as well. It helps them become more well-rounded in my experience and you get to dig in way more than you would in a CS overview. Not really a downside to this method and I find that you'll often discover something along the way that really endears them to you.
 
But this new character has posed a definite challenge for me. Nate is an almost entirely logical mind. He works quickly in fast-paced scenarios, is extremely good at deducing what the best thing to do at any given time is, and tries his best to separate his life decisions from his emotions when necessary. He's not a very strong person at all, and of course, has his faults. Enough pressure is applied, and he'll crack for sure. But he's pretty darn solid.

The problem lies in my emotional attachment to him. This RP has been running for a decent amount of time now, and I've realized that I just don't care about him. Normally I get very attached to my characters, but I'm really having trouble putting any emotional investment into him at all. He just seems very bland to me, which is unfair, because he has a LOT of potential. I've sort of hit a wall with his character development, and I don't know exactly what to do, now. As someone who is very emotionally-driven, I'm having a tough time relating.

Well, the first problem I notice here is that this isn't a person, it's a robot. Better put, it seems like the image/goal you have for the character is to make a robot. No emotion, all logic and when I read "extremely good at deducing what the best thing to do is" I read "he'll do whatver I OOC think would be the best course of action". If he seems bland to you, I reckon this may be a big factor in it: A lack of personality isn't a personality, and with this description the character hardly seems like the kind to push thing forward themselves to have reasons beyond being pushed into things. After all, what is motivation if not a matter of emotion? What is 'logical' about actively seeking the exciting and risky? The character seems like they can only move on the whim of the player's influence or in the influence of other characters.

To summarize that point: People think they are logical, someone may seem like they have no emotions or may have decent control over their emotions, but in the end of the day save thre be some psychological condition about this I don't know about, even psychopaths have emotions, and emotions are pivotal in getting characters invested and in turn, us invested.

As for how you could try fixing your issue of lack of motivation, my first suggestion is to try to explore this contradiction, give him a bit of an identity crisis by having him outburst with years of repressed emotions. I suggest maybe beginning by setting it up, giving him little mannerisms and signs of building tension without giving away your game right away, the use an opportunity that would really stress them out to have them outburst and cause something really bad to happen as a result, and have them have to confront the fact that they are very much emotional deep inside and how the way they've acted thus far has led to that outburst. To question themselves and who they really are.

Another idea would be to maybe create a new objective for the character or really focus on the interpersonal relationships of your character towards others. I don't know a lot about the character, so I'm not sure about what I would suggest for this, but to try to not use retcon like in my other suggestion, perhaps some grand and unattached objective .

Point is, step #1 : have a goal. If you have some direction for the character, you can get invested in setting it up and in reaching it.

#2: Humanize with quirks. Have you delved into his interests? Books he likes to read, tv etc... maybe he likes to write and is looking for a subject, or he likes the stars and the local planetarium has an event coming up that leaves your character unexpectadly excited like a little kid. Without changing the personality too much overall, you can still add little things which make the character more endearing.

Brandon Sanderson has this concept for character "levers", competency, proactivity, and relatability. Competency is how capable a character is, how skilled and effective at doing their job they are. Proactivity is how much the character takes charge in their own life, pushing things forward, acting for their own reasons and volition etc... relatability is, well, how relatable the character is. If you have all three levers turned up to the max, your character will often be a mary sue. If you have them all turned down to the minimums, you also have a pretty awful character. Mixing them up creates a more nuanced one. So my last tip is to, #3: remember the two other levers.. Being motivated to roleplay a character doesn't necessarily require relating to them, so long as you can still make the character capable and proactive. This concept applies more for reading about a character than writing one though, and you can't always control competency in RPs... but perhaps we can something else to the equation, like "theme" or "challenge" or "mystery". Explore some personal objective or an idea with the character and see where the rabbit hole takes you, or set up some hidden content that you can enjoy leaving bed crumbs for other players with. Oh, and of course, remember to be proactive.

In any case, best of luck! I hope it all goes well, happy RPing!
 
Well, considering you're someone who is emotionally-driven and you're playing a character who tries to be devoid of emotion (or at least pushes emotions to the background in favor of logic instead), it makes a lot of sense if you struggle to find a connection with him! But there's two different ways I can think of that you could try forming more of an attachment with him:

First, even though he's a very logical and rational person, try and focus on what kinds of emotions he would still be feeling in any given situation, whether he keeps it hidden or not. Even if you portray him as very stoical and dispassionate outwardly, try and get a sense of what he might be feeling inwardly, whether he acknowledges it or not. If you took this to an extreme you could almost think of him as a "double character" in a sense: most of the time he's that cold exterior, until that facade cracks and a warmer and more emotional person can be seen, if only just for a moment. But unless he's an unfeeling robot, he should still have some emotionality that you can connect with as a roleplayer, whether it's easily apparent to others or not.

Second, rather than trying to connect with his emotions as a character, you could try focusing more on his weaknesses and faults. If he's very analytical, then make sure that sometimes his analysis is wrong, maybe due to faulty information or something else such as overconfidence on his part. Have him pride himself on a logical mind, but then sometimes fall into a logical fallacies without even realizing it. Or have him be so focused on the big picture that he misses important details that others would find easily. In this way, you help to humanize him through his failings, which can help make him a more interesting and relatable character while also opening paths for him to experience introspection and maybe even new emotions such as self-doubt.

Of course, if neither of those works, then maybe it's just not a character that's easy for you to relate to! If that's the case, then I'd recommend finding elements of the overall story or different characters that you connect with or find interesting, and then focus on those to keep your hype up instead. Or you may have to think about making Nate more of a "side" character instead and seeing if there's a way to add in a new main character that you feel more of a connection with. Anyway, hope that helps!
 
So another bit of advice I have when you are writing outside of your comfort zone is stick to well known templates. By which I mean base your character on someone you know in real life or a character your familiar with from some other media. It has to be someone that you know well enough to be able to anticipate their reaction to the roleplay setting.

Ex. if it's just a casual acquaintance you might not be able to imagine them in a totally new scenario. but if it's say a brother/sister you can usually imagine them better because you know them more intimately.

I think sometimes the problem people have when making characters that are outside of their frame of reference is they basically start with an outline and aren't sure how to flesh it out because the character doesn't think in a way they're familiar with.

By sticking to a familiar template you can draw on your experience of the IRL person or the fictional character and just imagine how they would act in any given situation.
 
If you're not enjoying the character, and developing him as suggested by others doesn't work, I'd seriously consider just dropping him to an npc or killing him off. Sometimes the best intended characters, the ones you feel excited about at first, just don't work out. There's nothing wrong with that and part of exploring and experimenting outside your comfort zone is discovering what you like and don't like.
 
Your character just changes over time to become what you like more and you call it character development. That’s basically what authors do. There’s no issue in disliking a character you’ve made... most people dislike themselves, so it’s only realistic.
 
Oh yeah, I've had this happen quite often. I try to go out of my comfort zone with characters as much as possible. Granted, I normally do this in my own private works so that I don't have to subject others to me figuring out how to write these types, but the same problem applies. I've had them in a few roleplays as well over the years and it's always a struggle. The one that's most memorable to me was this jokester character who couldn't take anything seriously but was also a bit of a coward (during a zombie apocalypse). I really struggled to connect with him emotionally and found myself mostly just slogging through with him. In the end he became one of my most beloved characters... so it is doable!

What I did (and do in other cases as well with private characters) is to explore backstory.
Normally I'll pick a point in time and a theme (ie. childhood, birthday) and write a few pages of backstory exploring the character through that lens. Since people develop in stages they can be quite different as children as opposed to adults and that can help me connect--if I am privy to the key events that formed this character. I'll sometimes do this a few times with different things (teenage years, first exam they failed) going as broad or as specific as I want to see how they behaved in the chosen scenario.

This is just something that's worked really well for me in the past. I've started doing it with characters that I love and have no problem connecting with as well. It helps them become more well-rounded in my experience and you get to dig in way more than you would in a CS overview. Not really a downside to this method and I find that you'll often discover something along the way that really endears them to you.

I've already explored Nate's backstory quite a bit, and I like the concept of it. Maybe the issue is...
He's in a roleplay where he's basically lost all of his memories, and is slowly regaining them. Also, there's a BUNCH of other things happening to sort of push his memories off to the side. Maybe I need to home in on it more.
I'll try going more into his backstory in the RP! Thank you!

Well, the first problem I notice here is that this isn't a person, it's a robot. Better put, it seems like the image/goal you have for the character is to make a robot. No emotion, all logic and when I read "extremely good at deducing what the best thing to do is" I read "he'll do whatver I OOC think would be the best course of action". If he seems bland to you, I reckon this may be a big factor in it: A lack of personality isn't a personality, and with this description the character hardly seems like the kind to push thing forward themselves to have reasons beyond being pushed into things. After all, what is motivation if not a matter of emotion? What is 'logical' about actively seeking the exciting and risky? The character seems like they can only move on the whim of the player's influence or in the influence of other characters.

To summarize that point: People think they are logical, someone may seem like they have no emotions or may have decent control over their emotions, but in the end of the day save thre be some psychological condition about this I don't know about, even psychopaths have emotions, and emotions are pivotal in getting characters invested and in turn, us invested.

As for how you could try fixing your issue of lack of motivation, my first suggestion is to try to explore this contradiction, give him a bit of an identity crisis by having him outburst with years of repressed emotions. I suggest maybe beginning by setting it up, giving him little mannerisms and signs of building tension without giving away your game right away, the use an opportunity that would really stress them out to have them outburst and cause something really bad to happen as a result, and have them have to confront the fact that they are very much emotional deep inside and how the way they've acted thus far has led to that outburst. To question themselves and who they really are.

Another idea would be to maybe create a new objective for the character or really focus on the interpersonal relationships of your character towards others. I don't know a lot about the character, so I'm not sure about what I would suggest for this, but to try to not use retcon like in my other suggestion, perhaps some grand and unattached objective .

Point is, step #1 : have a goal. If you have some direction for the character, you can get invested in setting it up and in reaching it.

#2: Humanize with quirks. Have you delved into his interests? Books he likes to read, tv etc... maybe he likes to write and is looking for a subject, or he likes the stars and the local planetarium has an event coming up that leaves your character unexpectadly excited like a little kid. Without changing the personality too much overall, you can still add little things which make the character more endearing.

Brandon Sanderson has this concept for character "levers", competency, proactivity, and relatability. Competency is how capable a character is, how skilled and effective at doing their job they are. Proactivity is how much the character takes charge in their own life, pushing things forward, acting for their own reasons and volition etc... relatability is, well, how relatable the character is. If you have all three levers turned up to the max, your character will often be a mary sue. If you have them all turned down to the minimums, you also have a pretty awful character. Mixing them up creates a more nuanced one. So my last tip is to, #3: remember the two other levers.. Being motivated to roleplay a character doesn't necessarily require relating to them, so long as you can still make the character capable and proactive. This concept applies more for reading about a character than writing one though, and you can't always control competency in RPs... but perhaps we can something else to the equation, like "theme" or "challenge" or "mystery". Explore some personal objective or an idea with the character and see where the rabbit hole takes you, or set up some hidden content that you can enjoy leaving bed crumbs for other players with. Oh, and of course, remember to be proactive.

In any case, best of luck! I hope it all goes well, happy RPing!
I'm actually going to disagree with you here, I do NOT think he's like a robot. He does have emotions, it's just that he tries to default to not using them. He's still very flawed - he gets awfully scared at times, he has yelled at people in the past, he's completely frozen up when he's needed to get moving, he has made brash decisions for the sake of a crush. Thanks for your input, however, I'll think on these things.

Well, considering you're someone who is emotionally-driven and you're playing a character who tries to be devoid of emotion (or at least pushes emotions to the background in favor of logic instead), it makes a lot of sense if you struggle to find a connection with him! But there's two different ways I can think of that you could try forming more of an attachment with him:

First, even though he's a very logical and rational person, try and focus on what kinds of emotions he would still be feeling in any given situation, whether he keeps it hidden or not. Even if you portray him as very stoical and dispassionate outwardly, try and get a sense of what he might be feeling inwardly, whether he acknowledges it or not. If you took this to an extreme you could almost think of him as a "double character" in a sense: most of the time he's that cold exterior, until that facade cracks and a warmer and more emotional person can be seen, if only just for a moment. But unless he's an unfeeling robot, he should still have some emotionality that you can connect with as a roleplayer, whether it's easily apparent to others or not.

Second, rather than trying to connect with his emotions as a character, you could try focusing more on his weaknesses and faults. If he's very analytical, then make sure that sometimes his analysis is wrong, maybe due to faulty information or something else such as overconfidence on his part. Have him pride himself on a logical mind, but then sometimes fall into a logical fallacies without even realizing it. Or have him be so focused on the big picture that he misses important details that others would find easily. In this way, you help to humanize him through his failings, which can help make him a more interesting and relatable character while also opening paths for him to experience introspection and maybe even new emotions such as self-doubt.

Of course, if neither of those works, then maybe it's just not a character that's easy for you to relate to! If that's the case, then I'd recommend finding elements of the overall story or different characters that you connect with or find interesting, and then focus on those to keep your hype up instead. Or you may have to think about making Nate more of a "side" character instead and seeing if there's a way to add in a new main character that you feel more of a connection with. Anyway, hope that helps!
There are some really good ideas here... Thanks! I'll try to think on this a bit more. :)

So another bit of advice I have when you are writing outside of your comfort zone is stick to well known templates. By which I mean base your character on someone you know in real life or a character your familiar with from some other media. It has to be someone that you know well enough to be able to anticipate their reaction to the roleplay setting.

Ex. if it's just a casual acquaintance you might not be able to imagine them in a totally new scenario. but if it's say a brother/sister you can usually imagine them better because you know them more intimately.

I think sometimes the problem people have when making characters that are outside of their frame of reference is they basically start with an outline and aren't sure how to flesh it out because the character doesn't think in a way they're familiar with.

By sticking to a familiar template you can draw on your experience of the IRL person or the fictional character and just imagine how they would act in any given situation.
I do have a few people in real life who are like Nate, so I'll try to stick to this advice a bit! It may turn out to help me a lot. c:

If you're not enjoying the character, and developing him as suggested by others doesn't work, I'd seriously consider just dropping him to an npc or killing him off. Sometimes the best intended characters, the ones you feel excited about at first, just don't work out. There's nothing wrong with that and part of exploring and experimenting outside your comfort zone is discovering what you like and don't like.
My partner and I have actually considered killing him off! We'll probably only end up doing so if push comes to shove, however, cause he is one of the four main characters. As interesting as it would be to kill off a main character, I don't think it's for me at this moment :P Perhaps later on in the story.

Your character just changes over time to become what you like more and you call it character development. That’s basically what authors do. There’s no issue in disliking a character you’ve made... most people dislike themselves, so it’s only realistic.
Cool, thank you! That does make sense. If nothing else, it makes me feel a tad better about disliking Nate. Most of the characters I make I have an instant connection with, so I was starting to feel really bad and frustrated about this one. Thank you!
 
I'm actually going to disagree with you here, I do NOT think he's like a robot. He does have emotions, it's just that he tries to default to not using them. He's still very flawed - he gets awfully scared at times, he has yelled at people in the past, he's completely frozen up when he's needed to get moving, he has made brash decisions for the sake of a crush. Thanks for your input, however, I'll think on these things.
I do understand that he does have emotions. Hence saying that it seems the "image/goal" is to make a robot. Your description focuses mostly on those robotic aspects, for instance in "Nate is an almost entirely logical mind" though I will admit that reading it again now, the part about emotions seems a lot more circumstancial than I remember. Still, if he does have flaws which are a part of the character (as opposed to sporadic uncharacteristic moments of passion), they were not pointed out much less stressed out (the fact they do have flaws was very much pointed out, but the fact that what kind of flaws wasn't in the innitial description suggests they aren't all that focused on and possibly not even defined).

Still, this is only the interpretation from the description. You know the character better than I do, naturally. Hope the advice still serves some purpose though. Either way, once again, best of luck!
 

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