This is a post I made on my Kōtiro development blog. I copied almost the whole thing here, except the section about how I actually applied this material to my own game. Click here to read the whole article including how Kōtiro became a drug addict.

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When I was reviewing my script to gut the weak subplot out of it, I made a bigger realization. Kōtiro, the protagonist and main character, is weak. She’s a “strong woman” but she’s weak in the sense that she isn’t memorable.

===What makes a memorable character?===

Part of making a memorable character is giving them a critical flaw. Some demon that haunts them and threatens to derail the story goal completely.

When a character is always good and brave and smart and kind, he’s boring, and the situations he’s in are also boring. That bland nobility is what Kōtiro was suffering from.

==Upping the Ante==

There is a little known trick that may be the key to turning an alright character into one that is classic.

The trick is to make a character’s critical flaw also their greatest strength—to make the characteristic that almost dooms them the very same one that makes them the only person that could achieve the story goal.

===Examples of Classic Characters===

==Frodo==

I’ll pull a character straight from geek cannon: Frodo Baggins. He’s actually a little bland for my taste, but he illustrates this principle perfectly. Frodo is the main character in Lord of the Rings, and he is tasked with bringing the “one ring” to Mt. Doom to destroy it.

The reason he’s classic is that his primary characteristic is that he’s innocent. He’s small, and fat, and sweet, and kind, and good-hearted, and innocent. All the things you definitely don’t want to be if you’re fighting Sauron and his vast armies of orcs and trolls. Frodo’s ignorance of battle very nearly dooms his quest to failure.

However! No one else is capable of delivering the ring to Mt. Doom, precisely because Frodo is innocent enough to carry the evil ring without become immediately corrupted by it.

This tension between how necessary Frodo’s innocence is and how damning it is, is a perfect example of a classic character flaw.

==Kratos==

Another, more recent, example of a character with a classic critical flaw is Kratos, protagonist of the God of War series. I knew there was something special about this series when I first played it, but to be frank, the storyline is pretty much paper thin. Still, Kratos is such a compelling character, he’s became an instant classic.

Kratos is essentially a sociopathic Spartan warrior who kills everything in his path. His skill in battle is only matched by his brutality and callous disregard for life.

Without a single-minded focus on bloodshed, Kratos could not possibly succeed at the story goal of exacting revenge first on Ares, the titular god of war, then on the entire pantheon of supernatural beings from gods to titans.

The irony is that Ares had used Kratos’ brutality and disregard for life to trick him into killing his own wife and daughter, which launched him into his revenge quest to begin with.

So Kratos’ critical flaw of being almost inhumanly cruel is both his downfall and the characteristic that makes his story possible. Classic character.

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Click here to read why Kōtiro was too weak, and what I did to make her more flawed..

Re: Pete

I don't know where you are in your process, but perhaps you could also describe other options to make a character memorable. (Because it looks weird to just show one.)

Making memorable characters
o Give the character a critical flaw
o Make the character human
o Make the character different
o Give the character a unique perspective
o Put the character in an extraordinary situation
o Give the character the opportunity to act extraordinarily
o Give the character an extraordinary goal
o ...

Quote: When a character is always good and brave and smart and kind, he's boring, and the situations he's in are also boring.

If a character that is good, brave, smart and kind is boring, then the situation in the story is too easy for him. Instead of giving the character a flaw, you could also raise the challenge. If the warrior is strong enough to fight ten enemies at once, make him fight again when he is injured, poisoned, outnumbered, etc. What does a good, brave, smart and kind hero do when he is defeated or captured? Instead of nerfing the character, intensify the situation, create challenges appropriate to the character's qualities.

And then there's Laurie Hutzler's Character Types.
See her Emotional Tool Box website: http://www.etbscreenwriting.com/

Some elements for the character:
- Compelling passions who leads him (goals): a character needs to push forward the story.
- Deep fears: something that the characters don't want to face.
- Contrasting values: like love for the family vs love for justice. (these conflict needs to be raised by the story)
- Unforeseeable: the character who act in ways you did't expect.
- Markers: some element that you can remind easily, like a scar on the forehead.
- Avoid cliches!
- Flaws, yeps. But also features that can be useful in some setting and unuseful in others, like cruelty. (this element needs to be developed in the scenes of the story).

Great thoughts guys!

Wai: I think what you wrote are not so much alternate approaches as layers. It's not a matter of giving them a flaw OR putting them into an extraordinary situation, it's both, it's all of it, you know?

The thing about intensifying a situation for a bland hero is that it's still bland. In a painting you can use, say blue. And if you don't think it's enough you can use a more intense blue, which may be brilliant in its own right... but it would never replace the splash of yellow you could put in for contrast.

I think the key with the bland character is for the situations you put him in to actually force change. To break him. He's good and noble, but how does he act when he's broken and desperate? In that case we're just giving him a flaw later in the story, aren't we?


Tom: Yes, those character types are pretty fundamentally important. Actually, those aren't the only kind, but they all amount to the same thing: different and opposing points of view within the story. Kotiro is a typical "hero" meaning that she's protagonist and main character, but actually most "hero" characters embody the pursue and consider perspectives, with the classic antagonist embodying both avoid and reconsider. In my case, Kotiro is technically the antagonist because she's trying to stop the bad guy from achieving his goals (this is the same setup as James Bond, who is always the good guy/main character/antagonist trying to stop the bad guy/protagonist from achieving the story goal.

In any case, I treat Kotiro as the protagonist structurally anyway, because it's easier for me, but she and her adversary have reversed perspectives. She's a protagonist that embodies avoidance and reconsideration.

Still, all these perspectives are just cores to characters, they still need meat and pathos, I think.

Jack: Everything you wrote is good, but can you provide an example of an unforeseeable character who works well?

Good discussion guys!

Do I detect Dramatica terms?

Personally, I think villains are typically pursue characters, that's why the most universal trait of a villain is the 'nefarious plan'. You only see avoid villains if you go all the way back to myth where the villains tend to be cannibals or misers - people who are causing a problem by being and the do-er hero decides to go kill them.

I'm not personally into characters with tragic flaws, since I'm more of a comedy/romance fan, and less severe flaws are more appropriate to relatively cheerful stories which must end happily. I do like characters traits that are both a flaw and a strength in different contexts, so then I can talk about how to find a good balance. Examples of a flaw that is a strength: one character is very forceful; this is great when there's actually a villain to fight, but he's crap at making friends and being diplomatic. Another character wants to be friends with everyone and is generally well-liked, but because he doesn't have a forceful personality he tends to get pushed around by peer pressure and loose touch with what he himself wants. So these two characters represent opposite extremes that are both wrong, yet through their interaction the right answer of a more balanced approach can emerge.

Great examples sun. I think you're right, when I think about it there are a fair number of stories with pursuit villains.

And yes, I was talking dramatica theory when I responded to Tom 8)

Quote: In my case, Kotiro is technically the antagonist because she's trying to stop the bad guy from achieving his goals (this is the same setup as James Bond, who is always the good guy/main character/antagonist trying to stop the bad guy/protagonist from achieving the story goal.

Usually the protagonist remains the protagonist also if you give him a reactive goal.

Proactive goal: gain something.
Reactive goal: avoid something.

Quote: Jack: Everything you wrote is good, but can you provide an example of an unforeseeable character who works well?

Unpredictability.
A good character is one who make something you do not expect (not in every scene, but it's good if he sometimes do something the public didn't expect).
An example: Jack Bauer (of the serial TV "24"). He kills, a cold blood execution, a friend to respect a request of a terrorist. I didn't see that coming.

I want to add that usually the features of the character aren't enough. To make a compelling character it's better to handle him in the right way, giving him:
- Suffering: when a character suffers he gains sympathy.
- Familiary goals: if the character has a goal similar to the ones we have, we can identify with him better.
- Internal conflict: we all have internal conflict, if the character has it this make easier the identification with him.

And, every kind of feature can be a flaw in some situation. Creativity is the only limit.
Let's say the character is strong, smart, handsome and full of money and powerful.
Let's say that room with four people, all people unarmed except terrorist who has a pistol with only one bullet. He will kill the character stronger, smarter, more handsome etc.
Yes, the character will be really big. And he dies.

I like Dramatica, if you ever want to chat about how to do something with it or what something within the theory means, I'm game. About two weeks ago I was wondering to myself whether I had ever done anything Dramatica-related here on gamedev; I've written a couple of "how to use Dramatica" articles, but none of them were game-related so I don't think I posted them here. I'm not sure anyone would be interested though, Dramatica is rather unpopular at most of the writing forums I'm a member of. People here are computer geeks and might thus be less hostile to the idea of writers' aid software, but on the other hand anyone with a sense of good software design tends to have an allergic reaction to the 10-year-old amateur-made Dramatica software. At least there's supposed to be a new version out this year which should be cosmetically improved and compatible with Win7.

Yeah, dramatica has a bad rap among writers because people maybe have a concept that it writes for you, instead of just organizing your stuff and asking the right questions?

In any case, you're totally right, gamedev people probably wouldn't appreciate it very much. Part of that might be that story lines in games have different requirements, like branching. Even if a game is completely "on the rails" as it were, dramatica is a very heavy tool, and most game story lines are pretty light on real content. They are mostly just enough of a setting to justify the gameplay.

I also think you have to know enough about writing to realize that there IS a structure before you'd really understand the value of a tool like dramatica. I think many people who are writing indie games don't have that background knowledge.


In any case, I'm glad they are working on a new version. I actually didn't use the software for this project, just the theory. But we can still chat about it if you want 8)