Character Theory Let’s Talk Character Design and Development

[laceanddoodles]

Nobody ever seems to use the character theory prefix, and I really don’t know why. Anyway. It is past midnight, and I can’t stop thinking about , well, a bunch of esoteric character design and development nonsense.

If you’ve interacted with me in any capacity on this site, there’s a pretty high chance you’ll have figured out at least one of these two things: I’m a creative writing student, and I really like history, especially historical fashion. Both of these things majorly play into how I go about designing and developing my characters, and it got me thinking.

I tend to go real in depth into how my character dresses, and why they choose to dress that way, as an in to the character. Take one of my current D&D characters, Celestine— the world of her campaign is Victorian inspired, and she is a fashionable, noble born, socialite. She is also a red tiefling in a vehemently anti-magic society rife with religious based oppression. If it weren’t for her parents’ status and respectability, she would be on the bottom of society. On top of that, while her family is nobility and well respected, they’re kinda hurting for money. So she dresses accordingly.

All of her outfits are chosen very deliberately and with great care. Her wardrobe is constructed of pieces that deemphasize the color of her skin, minimizing the redness as much as possible. She wears hats whenever it is appropriate for a lady of her status to do so, and gloves. Her dresses are cut fashionably, but without a lot of lace and frill. She prefers pieces that are deceptively simple, but incredibly well made, perfectly fitted, and meticulously kept up. She, like any good little Victorian lady, is quite comfortable mending and farming and keeping up with her clothes so as to get as much wear out of them as physically possible before having to buy new ones.

(Celestine, pictured here with party-mate Asthir and two child NPCs, sporting a sweater modeled after real examples from the 1890s and a simple walking skirt. Practical, elegant, and fashionable.)

And I go through this sort of process with all of my characters, analyzing why they dress the way they do and what that says about them as a character.

So! What are some of the more odd questions that you ask yourself when making a new character? What sorts of things do you consider, and in what ways, if any, do the physical character and costume design, end up affecting how you develop them?

Also, why do your characters dress the way they do? Just for fun.

 

[Dirge]

All my characters have similar characteristics regardless of the world they originate from. My friends on other forums have come to liken then all as trademarks to me and joke about other characters being a “Dirge OC” when they find them on the internet lmao. Such traits include

1 - Neutral colored hair (Black, Gray, White) with possible dichromacy (dual hair colors)

2 - Glowing eyes, ocular Powers, heterochromia or all three.

3 - Wears black as their primary color.

4 - When applicable possesses superpowers based on duality (light and dark, fire and ice, left and right, up and down yadda yadda)

5 - When applicabile, possesses high physical stats or regeneration abilities.

6 - Has hair covering one eye. (This ones a joke lmao)

I don’t know why I do it. But in superpowered RPs my characters generally have multiple of these traits. It’s either “They look like a Final Fantasy character” or “They look like someone out of Devil May Cry” or my favorite “She looks like she belongs in NieR”

I guess I’ve been unconsciously influenced by those designs lmfao

 

[Grey]

I don't think about character and setting fashions enough, and I really should. I love that you've really done your research - even for such a seemingly small thing, it can do so much. I'll need to tempt you to play in one of my games sometime.

I don't make characters often, but I do like exploring their morality and how it formed. I write a lot of characters whose notions of right and wrong are shaped by cultures unlike my own - in some cases, minds unlike my own, such as with my various demons and fairies - so I'll ponder things like "what is this character's attitude to their body? To the idea of bodies?" and stuff like that. For example, Lezek Apollyon, patriarch of House Lezek, can literally see the guilt in a person. True innocents are completely invisible to him. So he's extremely judgemental and condescending to most people he encounters. Similarly, an NPC I keep in reserve is a Magus, a human with magical power, in her case concerning time and space. So she thinks a bit like the Septapods in Arrival, or Doctor Manhattan; her cognition is unmooored from linear time. She doesn't remember things; she experiences a constant present of the moment and of reliving every prior moment, and sometimes a short span into the future.

I also really like expressing character and some of their, uh, spiritual characteristics through physical traits. Again, the habit of writing non-human characters.
Again, to reference Apollyon, his face looks like a marble bust reminiscent of a statue of justice, carved perpetually in a look of contempt.

As for dress and presentation of my characters, I choose that based on material circumstances and how much they are inclined to think about it.
For example, an old character of mine whose name escapes me right now took painstaking care of his ancestral suit of armour, and ensured his beard and hair were immaculate, but paid very little attention to his civilian clothes.
A character I'm currently playing is a supervillain who styles himself in a Luciferean mould, in a very calculated way. In his civilian identity, he wears a variety of disguises and takes pains to blend in, variously as a busker, a drifter, a freelance journalist, that kind of thing. In his supervillain identity, he favours finely tailored three-piece suits - in part to resemble his street identity as little possible, in part because he considers theatrics important to a good leader in the cape scene, and in part because he's a bit conceited; the mask affords him the mental detachment to indulge in vanity.

You can see why I don't join a lot of roleplays.

 

[laceanddoodles]

I don't think about character and setting fashions enough, and I really should. I love that you've really done your research - even for such a seemingly small thing, it can do so much. I'll need to tempt you to play in one of my games sometime.

I don't make characters often, but I do like exploring their morality and how it formed. I write a lot of characters whose notions of right and wrong are shaped by cultures unlike my own - in some cases, minds unlike my own, such as with my various demons and fairies - so I'll ponder things like "what is this character's attitude to their body? To the idea of bodies?" and stuff like that. For example, Lezek Apollyon, patriarch of House Lezek, can literally see the guilt in a person. True innocents are completely invisible to him. So he's extremely judgemental and condescending to most people he encounters. Similarly, an NPC I keep in reserve is a Magus, a human with magical power, in her case concerning time and space. So she thinks a bit like the Septapods in Arrival, or Doctor Manhattan; her cognition is unmoored from linear time. She doesn't remember things; she experiences a constant present of the moment and of reliving every prior moment, and sometimes a short span into the future.

I also really like expressing character and some of their, uh, spiritual characteristics through physical traits. Again, the habit of writing non-human characters.
Again, to reference Apollyon, his face looks like a marble bust reminiscent of a statue of justice, carved perpetually in a look of contempt.

As for dress and presentation of my characters, I choose that based on material circumstances and how much they are inclined to think about it.
For example, an old character of mine whose name escapes me right now took painstaking care of his ancestral suit of armour, and ensured his beard and hair were immaculate, but paid very little attention to his civilian clothes.
A character I'm currently playing is a supervillain who styles himself in a Luciferean mould, in a very calculated way. In his civilian identity, he wears a variety of disguises and takes pains to blend in, variously as a busker, a drifter, a freelance journalist, that kind of thing. In his supervillain identity, he favours finely tailored three-piece suits - in part to resemble his street identity as little possible, in part because he considers theatrics important to a good leader in the cape scene, and in part because he's a bit conceited; the mask affords him the mental detachment to indulge in vanity.

You can see why I don't join a lot of roleplays.

Okay, but the character who sees guilt is so fascinating. Does he, specifically, see what the character should be guilty about, or an actual manifestation of the feeling of guilt? I'd be quite interested to see how he'd respond to, say, a narcissist with very little guilt or remorse versus someone with disproportionate levels of guilt and shame despite doing very little harm.

And yeah, it is definitely important to consider how much or how little the character would think about clothes. I have a character who's one half of a set of identical twins, and this girl has pretty much never allowed herself to think about herself and her own wants and needs. Her whole life has always been taking care of somebody else, so when she was asked outright "if you could look however you wanted, how would you dress" by an NPC, she pretty much malfunctioned. So, in that way, claiming her own individual style and differentiating herself from her twin is going to be one major facet in her journey of self discovery. Always fun.

(But honestly, you seem fantastic and I'd love to join one of your games, some time.)

 

[Malphaestus]

I think rather simply on the nature of clothing, and instead a lot more on what the 'full product' represents. What aspects of their apparel designs illustrate, when combined, the theme of my character in an often times subtle manner?

I suppose this might be because I am not very fascinated with clothes, and instead what they can produce when combined with character. So not a lot of "this character would certainly pick this shirt, because with its red tint it would imply his alliegance, and due to its cheap fabric his status of low income is represented in his dress-up." Instead I see it more as form, a painting to produce something with. Less form after function.

When it comes to appearance, I prefer the visual culmination of everything working in conjunction over the logic of form after function and the nature of history and representation through apparel.

This only applies to characters of importance, for side-individuals I try and present a story in how they appear, but not much of their personality.

 

[Melpomene]

Okay, first of all, I absolutely ADORE this question because I think it is underappreciated how much how a character dresses (and certain physical characteristics) can affect a character. While I always say personality is the most important part of a character (and begin developing it first) their physical appearance does play a role in the shaping of their personality and clothing choice. And as always, you are supremely detailed in properly choosing what your character can and would wear in their time period and social status.

So, questions I like to ask?

1. Where are they and what is the culture like? Their class? RELIGION??

I hate limiting myself to ONLY basing things around medieval Europe. In the novels I am writing (I promise I am not trying to plug myself by bringing them up so much xD this is just the story I always have on my mind more than anything else since I am only really in one RP atm) but in these novels, I have characters from deserts, a places based off of Japan and China, The Jungle, Mountainous regions, you name it. Of course, some places are European-esque, but I have grown tired of only seeing that in Fantasy and the media (Plus often times it is specifically England when there were SO MANY interesting fashion choices going on around the world. Where you at French, Spanish, and German rep?) so I decided to have several characters who aren't from a place-based only on Europe/England. Because of this, there are major cultural factors that go into how a character dresses.

One of my characters is raised in the Jungle and she wears clothing that is very flowy and most of the time she does not wear multiple layers. Only one band which wraps around her breasts and then A large piece of fabric is then wrapped around her (in a similar fashion to a saree). It is able to be worn in multiple different fashions because of this, and she prefers one which allows her the most leg mobility since she is a fighter in training and very active. while you'll find her father's two wives each have other preferred fashions. Because her family is semi-high class, the fabric is good and colorful, however, it has no intricate details because they are still on the poorer end of high class. This, along with simple jewelry is what allows them to show themselves.

Another character I have is a noble lady (soon to be Queen through marriage) from the North where it is all cold and snowy. She becomes a Queen to a powerful and rich king in the story, and her original family was royalty as well, making her dress extremely richly. One thing about her is where she comes from, woman must wear their bodices with a shirt beneath it that comes up to their necks. When she goes farther South for marriage, she is near scandalized to see women, even those of higher class, with the tops of their breasts and hair on display.

2. How do they like to wear their hair?

Some might see this question as odd and superfluous, but I have found it really differs depending on what time and place the story is set in.

This is heavily dependent on the culture, obviously. In my novel series, religion plays a heavy heavy role on both the plot and the lives of the characters, all the way down to how they do their hair. In one region, men and women believe it is a sin to cut their hair. I have a character from this region, and because of these values being engrained into him despite losing that religion, he wears his hair long. Often times he doesn't do much with it, but he likes to look put together being that he is the head of a branch of a prestigious knightly order. So, he usually keeps it brushed and clean, more often than not pulled back into a neat ponytail.

In the desert, women and men are often wearing something that protects them from the sun, and sometimes that means covering up their heads, however when they are in a place that is not a heat death trap, they uncover and women are often dressed in something loose and flowy to allow air in. Men as well. Cropped hair is the style for both men and women there. So most people from there have short hair that likely comes to their ears if not shorter.

Up North men keep their hair cropped, women keep it covered with some sort of headdress whether they are married or not. They wear hoods which in some cases cover all of their hair (but some people have made it fashionable to wear their hair in such a way that you can see a few strands framing their face). I find a lot of people forget about the hoods and headdresses worn in more medieval periods and I want to bring them back into fashion, dang it.

The Jungle is where many characters really begin to do interesting things with their hair, as it is disgraceful to cut it (and one only cuts their hair when they are to be mocked and disgraced). Men let it grow long and braid it up with beads and ribbons given to them as gifts from their lovers. Women who are unmarried wear their hair loose, with a few ornamental braids thrown in. Married women would often wear their hair in an updo, richer women would wear jewels and silk ribbons in it. Complex braids were popular for these women, as well as wearing a veil.

3. Functionality over looks? or Vice versa?

Kind of explains itself. I am going to stop rambling about different cultures because I have talked way too much already xD but I think this applies to how a character wears everything including armor. I think it says a lot about a character that goes out of their way to look a certain way when it only makes them more uncomfortable in the long run.

Many people like to think there was no such thing as "sexy" armor, but they are wrong to an extent. While armor was certainly used to block sword strikes, it was also designed to be aesthetically pleasing for the time. Aesthetics were very important to people all throughout history. So, you will actually find that some medieval armor was purposely made with a cinched-in waist to emphasize how skinny a man was (since a man being very skinny was all the rage in the time period this armor was made in). Hell, the ancient Greeks etched abs and pecs into their armor and god knows that was unnecessary. That doesn't really affect the functionality. However... codpieces? Oh they were probably like, downright uncomfortable to ride a horse with. And from what I can tell, they were PURELY aesthetic. Because some men just needed a monster codpiece for their magnum.... I shouldn't finish that, I'm sorry.

Which, a little tangent here but, for those of you into making female armor, if you created a world where women are just as likely as a man to become a warrior, there are good chances this world would have armor that emphasizes the female form. All that would happen is that the dome which is usually at the diaphragm would be raised to the bust. (So y'all make female armor to your heart's content, it looks f'ing badass if you ask me).

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ARMOR, I DIGRESS.

I think a character emphasizing a certain amount on aesthetics is telling. I have a character from the desert and he purely thinks in functionality and if it will cause him any trouble or discomfort to wear something. He only wears things he can properly move in and are comfortable.

My Queen, however, thinks almost purely in aesthetics. As long as she can walk, breathe, and move her arms somewhat then she is set. Nevermind if she can't run, nevermind if it limits her arm movements a bit, nevermind if she is even uncomfortable in it, as long as it looks nice and shows off her status she is fine with it. Even if the jewelry and crown are heavy, she wears it.

My little warrior from the jungle, after she leaves the jungle and is exposed to a very different culture, takes a liking to corsets. Anything that she feels hides her feminine form, she likes to wear corsets over to bring it back. She is a spear warrior and in most places that is a man's job, not a woman's and often she feels very mannish, because of that she wears corsets to feel and look more feminine. This is why she wears makeup and does special hair-dos as well.

4. Anything they want to hide or emphasize?

I mentioned my spear warrior liking to emphasize her feminine form, but also she has eyes which are a color she dislikes and in the religions, many places follow, gets her ridiculed and sometimes even attacked for having, so since she likes to see, but also doesn't like her eyes, she often wears her hair in her face to try and partially hide them. It also heavily affects her mannerisms as she often will not make eye contact with people because of it. Her wanting to look pretty, as I mentioned before, also heavily influences her fashion, especially in times which she is just chilling and not fighting or planning to fight anyone, it also affects her choice in ceremonial armor (which I will save you all the annoyance as you probably want me to shut up now)

My Queen character has a pretty face according to her society, but she is on the thinner side when plumpness is what is fashionable, so she likes to wear very pretty hoods to bring more attention to her face, and often goes farther in getting very fine fabric and jewels.

My character who leads the knights enjoys wearing dark clothing and robes because he believes it adds to his overall aura and makes him seem more frightening. He does not wear much jewelry because he feels it inhibits him. However, he is not as muscular as he would like to be and is more on the lanky side, so he sometimes puts padding beneath his robes to make himself seem bulkier and more threatening. His status and wanting to seem threatening also leads him to always having a sword at his hip.

I have much more, but I am going to save you guys my ramblings and just end it here because it is a lot already and probably way more than I should have talked about haha. Sorry.

 

[Skipper]

I had to actually take a moment to think about the kinds of things I consider when making a character. Usually, when I first get an idea for a character, it's one trait I think would be interesting to encounter in the wild. For the most part it turns out to be a super power I think is really interesting or don't see a lot, and then the rest of the character is built around that. What kind of person would have this trait/power? What can it be used for, and what kind of person would use it for those things? That usually leads into other questions that help me flesh out my character. How did they get this power? or once they have more of a personality, What happened in their backstory to make them like this? While personality is almost never the first thing I know about my character, once I get a feel for it, it does end up influencing pretty much everything else, including what they wear and how much they care about their appearance.

Currently, I have a character that started as the power to absorb sound. Eventually that evolved into a guy that doesn't interact much with other people in a casual environment. He watches and listens, but is rarely seen and never heard, and in fact goes out of his way to be as unnoticeable as possible. So from there he turned into a very average person appearance wise, meaning very neutral colorations with little to no distinguishing features. He's not the kind of guy you remember unless you interact with him regularly, and even then you might glaze over him in a crowd. His clothes are never flashy or bright and tend to be very simple, but are well kept and in decent quality. If anything, the most memorable thing about him is how hard it is to remember anything about him.

Generally, I don't put that much thought into specific clothing choices, but I do make sure I have a reason for why my characters have a certain clothing preference, at least superficially. Do they care about how other people see them? Do they only care about how they see themselves? Is the only thing that matters functionality? And if that's the case, what are they likely to be doing? Clothing preferences tend to be pretty far down my list of priorities when creating a character, and I really don't spend that much time considering it, but it is something I make sure I think about, if only because they have to wear something. I put a lot more thought into physical characteristics. What's their hair color? Eye color? How tall are they? How much do they weigh? How do those traits affect how they present themselves and how other characters see them? Do they have any distinguishing characteristics like a scar or tattoo? How did they get it? Why? I usually use personality to determine what they're going to look like. What is this character likely to have done and what lasting marks might it have made on them? With inter-character relationships, I ask myself, how might an encounter with this other character have gone? What marks might that have left? And that helps me flesh out backstories too.

 

[Archie]

I don't put much stock into what the character looks like in the beginning of the RP. I just change things over time in ways that make sense, a more fancy word for this is character development. My all time best characters have been people that honestly were horribly fleshed out in the CS, but because the RP continued for a long time, they started reacting to things over time and powering up as the GM required, just like people do in fiction or in real life.

 

[laceanddoodles]

I don't put much stock into what the character looks like in the beginning of the RP. I just change things over time in ways that make sense, a more fancy word for this is character development. My all time best characters have been people that honestly were horribly fleshed out in the CS, but because the RP continued for a long time, they started reacting to things over time and powering up as the GM required, just like people do in fiction or in real life.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I fully know what character development is. I’m in my third year of studying creative writing at university. But as somebody who is a visual artist as well as a writer, the processes of character design and character development often blur a little. I spend a lot of time drawing my characters, and figuring out things about their physicality, dress sense, etc. from that. I posted this thread not so that I could be educated on what character development is, but so that we could have an already educated discussion on the sort of eccentric things we consider or put thought into during the character development process. And, obviously, that process is ongoing over the course of the story, at least to an extent.

The way I see it, at least for my own writing, there are two kinds of character development— the initial development process where I figure out who they are, what they want, how they think, act, speak, etc. and then the story, which by definition is how the character grows, changes, responds, and struggles through the circumstances of the plot, trying to reach their goal.

When I think of “why does my character dress the way they do” as a question for character development, it’s mostly implemented into the first phase of character development, but the answer to that question can also change and develop over the course of the story, along with the character in question. If a character’s goals and values shift, there’s a pretty good chance that the way they present themself in the world will reflect that, right?

Take one of my D&D characters, Delphine. She is currently going through a major crisis identity shift, and that is coinciding with a change in her costume design. You know, she’s 14, her Dad died less than a month ago, she and her twin found out that their aunt is a mafia boss with a de facto license to kill who may or may not have tried to murder the twins when they were born... they entered the city where their murder aunt lives and works, coincidentally ran into her after less than a day in the city, poor Del got blackmailed into joining said mafia (her twin joined right away, no persuasion needed), two of our party mates joined a DIFFERENT mafia, and now there’s a hit out on Del and her twin is being held hostage as bait.

Literally everything she knew and everything she holds true is being called into question in some capacity and her entire life has been turned upside down. So, obviously, I have a lot of questions to ask myself as to her character development and where to take her from here.

 

[Grey]

Okay, but the character who sees guilt is so fascinating. Does he, specifically, see what the character should be guilty about, or an actual manifestation of the feeling of guilt? I'd be quite interested to see how he'd respond to, say, a narcissist with very little guilt or remorse versus someone with disproportionate levels of guilt and shame despite doing very little harm

He sees perceived guilt, specifically, and because he wields considerable political power, to date he has such people arrested if he doesn't kill them outright. I'm currently looking forward to how he reacts when the newly crowned emperor starts imposing laws against such arbitrary punishments. That particular game is probably going to require a little emphasis on fashions just because it's meant to take place over decades and the players are significant political figures, so it'll be a nice indicator of changing times and technologies. For example, the Stormlords, a hereditary nobility of primarily weather-controlling Magi, incorporate demonstrations of their enchanting ability into their attire effectively to communicate 'I am so powerful, skilled, and wealthy I can enact these workings of Magic just to look cool.'

Funnily enough, I think when it comes to static fiction I under-describe appearances most of the time. Overcautious about boring the reader, in part, but stylistically I favour a relatively light touch to let readers fill in the blanks, which is sort of ironic considering the masochistic level of detail I put into worldbuilding. At least in To Turn The Wheel I should spend more words on appearances in general.