I was talking about this with some friends on Nabyn, and it occurred to me that it would probably be a good idea to gather up my vast collection of writing resources in one place so that it would be both easier for me to dig them up and use them and for me to share them with other people. Without further ado, I present Steph's Ridiculously Large Writing Resources Database...Thing.
Character Development
I put a disturbingly large amount of effort into developing characters. I have a ton of techniques I use, including acting out scenes as characters and having conversations with them (this has confused my family, who frequently asks me who I'm talking to, to which I always respond with, "I'm writing!"). Here's a few of my resources for developing characters you've already got:
- Gotham Writers' Workshop character questionnaire
- The Mother of All Character Questionnaires (This one literally touches on everything ever.)
- 100 Character Development Questions for Writers
- NaNoWriMo's Character Questionnaire
- The Speech Accent Archive (This is an incredible resource if your character speaks English with an accent. It covers accents from all over the world, including regional accents from various countries.)
- Seventh Sanctum (If you're not using it...yeah. Use it.)
- F Yeah Character Development on Tumblr
- Character Development Prompts
The plot of your story, fanfiction or original fiction, is just as important as your characters are. I tend to write character-driven plots, but you can do whatever you like with yours.
The best resource I have for plot development is, once again, Seventh Sanctum. Check out the plot generators and see what you can come up with!
Character Creation
If you're having trouble creating a certain character for a certain situation, it can be quite frustrating. I've been known to use Seventh Sanctum's character generators as a starting point and then put the characters through character questionnaires to get them to fit nicely in the roles I need them for. Another technique that works well if you're an artist is to draw random characters and see where that takes you - sometimes someone's personality will jump out at you from the drawing in your sketchbook!
I'd also suggest using BehindTheName.com for character naming if you're stuck there. You can find names used in pretty much any language/culture/country and even use a name generator. There's also a surname section of the site, as well.
I'll add more writing resources to this page as I find them! Happy writing!
