Writing Tips and Reviews

The Creation of A Strong Character

I mean physical strength and personality in this sense. Making a good character takes so much effort and thought that writing about how to make one would take me an hour at least. So I'm going to be talking about how to make a character strong physical and personality wise only.

Strength of course can be seen as the character interacts, their power can be shown in battle or just when they pick up something heavy. Personality wise, they need to show they can get hit, insults don't effect them as much and they either walk it off or fight back. Weak personalities won't do that, they'll cry or cower away. This all depends on who the character is and their backstory. Look, if you don't see me saying "my sister said something mean to me is the worst backstory and motivation to become a murder," then what do you expect from me?

A character has to have a real reason to become stronger, maybe a family member or friend died, maybe they want revenge, maybe it's purely self conscious reasons, whatever it is, it has to make sense to who the character is.

One strong character I can think of is Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria. She had it easy as a kid to teenage years until the betrayal of her brother in law lead to her own brother's death. She sought revenge and growing stronger was the only way to do it. She's powerful both physically and personality wise. She's shown to take down high level monsters and she doesn't take no for an answer. She moves forward despite the tragedies that follow and the betrayal of her own family.

Here's another good example I know someone is going to love me bringing up. I see you Vanessa. Sorey from Tales of Zestiria is strong-willed, despite him not being a dark badass like Velvet, he shares the same trait of being determined. He stands up for his friends and he doesn't back down even if it scares him. In the game he's shown to be resilient and he'll step forward when no one else will. In the beginning he fights off hellions because he knows it's the right thing to do, he doesn't cower in fear like the others around him. Dezel from the same game shows this determination as well. While I won't spoil anything, he's fine with facing death itself and is shown to be an enemy to be feared.

Strength in personality is much harder for new writers to grasp. Physical wise it's easy, just have them beat up a bunch of other characters. But the personality still has to be understandable. Some characters can be children, both mentally and physically, and be powerful. It's fully explained where they got the power, why they're so strong, what purpose they play, and why they're the way that they are.

I'll bring this up as a bad example and just call the character Sky for the meantime. Sky is the "my sister said something mean to me is a tragic backstory" character, her personality is pathetic, it's that of a wannabe cool kid but comes off as a whiny baby. The creator wants to show her as some dark edgy badass but only made a dark edgy Mary Sue. Sky as a whole is pathetic, she brags about herself and how powerful she is without showing any power and when confronted, cries while calling the opposition a "wimp." Isn't that hypocritical?

Her creator states she's only had five years of training and is the most powerful being in the universe, one version of her is the ruler of the universe, which, I don't even know what type of bad writing that is. (We're going into anecdotal evidence pretty soon. So be prepared.) The main part of her bio is that she's a ruthless killer who has no heart, but in role plays and her own story, she's a whiny baby who can't handle not being the center of attention. Her personality is stated to be emotionless or cunning and manipulative depending on which one of the THOUSANDS of versions there are of her, but no matter what, she's always played as a whiny little kid. She's not strong in any category if she can barely hold a gun and don't even get me started about the bragging about how much she hurts herself like it's a trophy. And the fact she's invincible and immortal because "no one can't hurt my oc."