Attack on Titan: Creative Process

Part 2: Origins, The Why

The characters you create, as with all great characters, need to have an origin. Some sort of backstory that explains how they've reached the point they're at now. Even though this receives only a limited amount of focus, don't underestimate its importance. It determines their behavior, personality, morals, and how they interact with the world and with themselves. Remember, even though your story focuses on your character living through a set series of (usually linear) events, the foundation for your character, and therefore your story, is established, chronologically, much earlier.

When creating an origin for your character, it is important that it makes logical sense. What I mean is don't make an origin that conflicts with your character's current state of being. Character development should be a well thought out process that develops naturally. Naturally is the key word. If your character is supposed to be an idealistic but rather naïve individual, don't have his origin be witnessing their parents being slaughtered before their eyes. That doesn't logically make much sense. If you're a very clever author though, you might be able to weave this narrative somehow, but there must be steps that bring your character to where they are in a clear, defined, and most importantly natural process.

Knowing this, you might now understand why I choose to think of things in terms of effect then cause, rather than cause and effect. It's because I know what I want my character to be and knowing that makes it easier to work backwards and determine what my character was. If you take for example my character from MHA (referred to as MHA-C, or My Hero Academia Character), you can see how this process was done. I wanted MHA-C to be antisocial. More than antisocial I wanted him to be alone. Someone who has been abandoned by society and those closest to him and has therefore fallen in on himself. Working backwards from that effect, I now must decide the cause. Why is he like this? There are a number of different things that could have led to this point. Perhaps he had a heteromorphic quirk (like Shoji) that altered his physical appearance. Maybe his parents mistreated him and that caused him to learn not to trust others. I decided it was because his quirk made him dangerous. It's up to you as an author to decide.

Another thing that is important to note is the magnitude of cause and effect. Take Newton's third law (didn't think you'd need to refer to physics in order to write, did ya?). Every action has an equal reaction (ignore the opposite part for this example). What this means is that the more drastic of a characteristic you give to your character, the more extreme a personality trait, the bigger the cause has to be. Take for instance the Phineas and Ferb movie: Across the 2nd Dimension. I know, I know, but bear with me. In it, Dr. Doofenshmirtz's doppelganger of the same name, is a tremendously evil villain (in comparison to the original). His reason for being evil? He lost his favorite toy train as a child. Whereas the original, less threatening bordering on only slightly menacing Dr. Doofenshmirtz was abandoned by his family, bullied relentlessly, homeless, on top of a plethora of other things. This is what I mean when I say equal reactions. Now I understand that Phineas and Ferb is a children's show and meant to be very comical, but it still offers this valuable lesson.

Let's again look at MHA-C. If his origin had simply been him being a victim of bullying, he would not be so closed. Distrusting of other people? To some degree, maybe, but not the extreme I've made him. Because of the magnitude of this personality, I needed to create a backstory of equally large proportions. Let's take an in depth look at MHA-C's personality and dissect the reason for each. I will break this down into effect (current state of being) and associated cause (origin). Note that some of these have several layers

Effect: Finds the idea of heroes to be foolish and irresponsible

Cause: Believes that the use of quirks to harm others is morally wrong

Effect: Believes the use of quirks to harm others is morally wrong

Cause: Is unable to use his quirk and is afraid of that fact that he cannot control his power and fears hurting someone