Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Ginger asks

What are three examples of physical or verbal schtick that you’ve used to develop your characters? Schtick means trademark gestures or phrases that identify your character uniquely. It’s about showing, not telling.

I try to give my characters interesting quirks, which generally leads to “trademark” phrases or habits. Bronwyn, a druid character of mine, makes a habit of conversing with trees. Another example is Annika, one of my newer current characters. Annika is an ex-professional athlete turned small-town piano teacher as a result of a combination of parental pressure and injury. She has spent the last five years of her life (since the injury) in an undiagnosed depression, teaching scales and finger exercises to the younger siblings of the people she hated in high school. She watched her classmates go off to start their lives, while as far as she was concerned, her life ended when she could no longer train or compete. Signing up to fight aliens gave her something to do with the rest of her life. No matter how bad the situation gets, she will say, with all seriousness and great conviction, “it beats teaching piano in Nebraska.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2003 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Games & Gaming, Gaming Memes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.