I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
Such a good tip for writing realistic characters.
Tag: to remember
Care to debate abortion?
Nah
Mood.
-VThis reminds me of a party I went to last year. I was standing with some friends, chatting, and someone said something that indirectly implied that sexism exists. Some trivial recounting of the basic facts of daily life for most women. Something so mild, so uncontroversial, so mundane that I don’t even remember what it was.
Suddenly, this man standing on the outskirts of our conversational circle piped up with “actually, I think men are more discriminated against than women these days.”
All conversation died.
I turned to look at him and he had this smug, insufferable grin on his face, relishing this moment, expecting us to waste our time and energy refuting this ridiculous thing he had just said.
The Devil’s Advocate was among us.
And, in my mind, I saw the next 15+ minutes playing out. The parade of facts and statistics in a vain attempt to defend ourselves, our gender, and to prove that misogyny is real. The glib, snide denials from some shithead who is getting off on our pain and frustration. The Gish Gallop of bullshit that would take a whole evening to properly dismantle. It was depressing and overwhelming. I hated it. I had to kill it before it began.
So I looked him dead in the eye and I said “OK,“ shrugged, and just walked away.
Nothing I have ever said to another human being has ever been so crushing. As I walked away, I watched the smug grin vanish and confusion and anxiety set in. The rest of the group turned their backs to him and carried on as if he had never spoken – as if he was invisible. He was still staring at me when I walked over to another friend and told her what he had said. I pointed him out for her and made direct eye contact with him while we both laughed.
tl;dr: Don’t feed the troll. Let it perish, cold and hungry, in the wasteland of your indifference. It is weak and you are strong. Live your best life.
I know I told this story before but last year I was having complications with a surgery and I just broke down in a public place and I was trying to gather myself, sitting and leaning on a wall when this girl in cowboy boots approached me and sat down and she asked what was wrong and I told her it was medical issues and she said “I understand, I have to have my foot amputated next week” and it shocked me out of crying and I was like “wow that sucks!” And she said “yeah.” And then she just touched my arm so tenderly and told me “I promise you that this problem will have its place, and everything is going to work out.” And the way she said it just made me really believe her. She said. “We’re just gonna have to cowgirl up.” And then she stood up and walked away and I’d call that a genuine encounter with an angel but the truth is there is a lot of goodness right here on earth in humanity and it’s shining and pure.
Okay but “this problem will have its place” is genuinely inspiring
THAT REALLY STRUCK ME because I’ve always hated the tired rhetoric of “this happened for a reason” and this feels like a more genuine, comforting take on that. Not “it happened for a reason,” but “this will find its spot in your life and your future that it fits into in a way that will eventually work out even though it sucks that it happened.” Love that.
How did you cultivate your skepticism? I think of myself as fairly intelligent and yet I’m also exceedingly gullible when it comes to things I know nothing about. How did you train yourself to question instead of accepting what even a seemingly reliable/trustworthy source says?
I started and re-started my answer to this ask half a dozen times. Because it’s a really, really important question, but it’s also a hard question to answer in a useful way. I’m going to do my best.
Nothing is as important as what you believe is true. If I can control what you think, I can control every decision you make. I can control what products you buy, who you vote for, which of your friends you trust—and which of them you distrust; I can choose which social causes you apply yourself to, and how effectively you champion them; to a very great extent I can even decide what you’ll major in in college, who you’ll marry, IF you’ll marry, if you’ll STAY married if the marriage goes bad, what job you’ll go for, how well you’ll do in that job, how you spend your leisure hours, how you treat your children, how you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror, what you’ll eat for dinner, and if you’ll respect yourself in the morning.
EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE is based on what information you’ve accepted. So if I can make you believe what I want you to believe, I own you.
And make no mistake: my best interests are NEVER the same as your best interests. The most you can hope for from ANY source is that their interests and your interests align. If I’m a company, then it’s in my best interest if you buy my product. I am only interested in the quality and safety of my product to the extent that you will not buy it if it’s garbage, or too dangerous. If I’m a newspaper, believe me, my goal is not to make you a more informed citizen of the world. My goal is to sell newspapers.
However, it may be that my reputation is an important part of reaching my goals: and if I feed you misinformation, my reputation may be damaged. And so a degree of trust may be invested in sufficiently reputable sources, since their goal (“to maintain a high reputation”) and your goal (“to learn something”) are aligned. Be VERY CAREFUL when bestowing this kind of trust on a source, and NEVER let them act as your ONLY source. You can never know for sure how important that reputation really is to them, or for what ends they may be willing to compromise it.
“But this information is from a random Tumblr post, not a news corporation, or a professional blog. Nobody’s making money, here. So why would they lie to me?” Attention? Attention’s a big one. Those posts you see going around, full of SHOCKING CLAIMS, usually have tens of thousands of notes. Tens of thousands of people shocked – shocked! – to learn that feeding bread to ducks makes them sick, or that Charlie Chaplin was a Nazi, or that bleach mixed with baking soda can eat through concrete. It doesn’t matter that none of those things are true. It doesn’t even matter if the OP, or all of the people reblogging it, BELIEVE that they’re true. What matters is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE had in their own interest something that was more important to them than “make sure the things I’m reblogging are accurate.”
Maybe they wanted the prestige of being the first to bring interesting new information to their social group. Maybe they were alarmed by what they read, and they wanted to keep their friends and loved ones safe. Maybe what they read reinforced some bias that they had, and so they disseminated it because they wanted it to be true. Maybe having this surprising intel on their blog made them feel more intelligent, or more socially conscious. There are lots of reasons, because there are lots of people, and every single one of those people had their own best interests.
And none of those interests are yours.
So because what you believe is SO important, and because you are the sole guardian of your own best interests, I think it’s downright reckless to accept any piece of information as fact without asking two questions first:
– Who is telling me this? Do I have reason to trust them? Should I trust them SO MUCH as to let them be the sole arbiter of what I believe on this subject?
– Who benefits if I accept it as the truth? THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. A lot of information masquerades as being in the interests of one thing when really it’s in the interests of something else. Really think about it.
When you choose to believe someone – anyone – about anything, you are giving them power over you. And skepticism is the only thing that protects you from giving that power to people who don’t deserve it.
When you choose to believe someone – anyone – about anything, you are giving them power over you. And skepticism is the only thing that protects you from giving that power to people who don’t deserve it.
And this is why we research outside of tumblr before reblogging posts that claim something as fact, and why we research by looking at more than one source.
a professor that accommodates ptsd? what is this??
Today I was talking to my professor about my ptsd and how it may affect class performance, because it’s a very participation-heavy class. The system that my professor came up with is kind of beautiful, so I want to share it with you guys.
She gave me some neon pink post-its, the kind that can be seen for miles because of how bright they are. If I’m having a flashback, dissociating, panic attack, etc., I can just put one of the post-its on my notebook, or somewhere in front of me on the desk. She’ll take that as a cue to not call on me and not expect me to participate. When I’m ready to engage in class again, I’ll just move the post-it out of sight.
I definitely appreciate having this accommodation, and I plan to use it with my future students someday. It’s simple, works when I’m non-verbal, and it doesn’t look like anything weird or attention-grabbing to classmates.
I’m going to use this with any of my students that need this kind of accommodation.
This is genius. Sticking it in my mental filing cabinet in case I ever have a student who needs it.
learning to let go and learning to relax means just freaking sticking those stickers on something. stop worrying if it’s the right place. burn that nice candle you’ve had for a year. it doesn’t need a special occasion. I’m gonna use those fancy soaps I’ve been collecting in a drawer even though they look so pretty and it means I’ll use them up. everything is temporary so just enjoy the littlest pleasures you can possibly have we all need to just let go and enjoy things while they last. the sticker’s gonna look fine on your water bottle I promise
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