For When I Miss A Week Or Two

          On occasion, I don’t upload an article for the week. The explanation varies between being sick or losing the original document. But in reality, sometimes you just have no idea what to write. Readers may have noticed some weeks have no articles posted. Most often, it’s because I didn’t write anything. 

          This isn’t a case of me being lazy. It’s merely a condition in which I find a topic to discuss that I don’t think about often enough nor research enough to write something worth reading (also known as “procrastination”). It happens to the best of us, really. Every so often you need a break. Missing a scheduled task harms your consistency, but recovers your thoughts.

Think of an artist who draws every single day for a year. They keep up a daily routine in which they draw a sketch that takes between thirty minutes to an hour to do, then post it online or share it through other means. Then one day, there’s nothing. No sketch of the day today. What gives? Maybe something came up that took precedence over the daily sketch. A week later, still no drawings. Did they give up? Are they done drawing? On the eighth day, you see a post. The author explains their situation and why they haven’t been drawing lately. At least they were able to communicate to their audience. But in some cases, there’s no communication. Only silence.

          I’m not stopping my writing or anything; I don’t have an article up because I had too many other tasks to do and couldn’t get around to it. Either that or despite the list of topics to discuss I couldn’t come up with anything to say about them. That’s one of the reasons I’m trying a monthly analysis where I look at a game, analyze it, then talk about it. What makes the game work, where it falls short, and why readers should play it or at least learn from it. It gives me time to really look at the game in my free time and see if there’s anything worth looking at. If there is, expect a long read at the end of the month. If there isn’t, that article may be brief.

          I do apologize if you look forward to these on a weekly basis and I unexpectedly have nothing. I can’t exactly prepare for weeks where I have no ideas. They show up out of nowhere! Still, I try to be consistent like the artist who can draw a picture a day for a year. Reality is, some days you can’t make yourself work. It’s fine to take a break and relax. During that time, more ideas come flowing in and now we’ve got something to work with.

Thank you all for reading my stuff thus far. I doubt I’ll be quitting anytime soon. Still, if anything happens you’ll be the first to know.

Character Development

          Creating characters is an art form unto itself. Some characters stay in our memories long after we’ve read about their lives. Others are forgotten minutes after they’re introduced. What about a character makes them more likeable to the audience? What makes us hate what they do? Are characters molded by the story or is it the other way around? The first question you should really ask is, “What is this character going to be used for?” Once you answer that, you can start creating the character in full. For the sake of this guide, let’s say this character will be used for a written story.

Whenever you need a character or two for a story, it helps to have an idea of what they’re going to do. Are they a protagonist or antagonist? What story revolves around them? How do they fit in and affect the world around them? Characters need enough detail to convince readers that they’re real. So how do you go about making a character? Do you need to focus on what they look like? At first, no. You have no idea what that character will look like because there’s nothing to define them yet. Before anything else, a character must be fleshed out. I use many things to make a character: personality indicators, moral systems, decision-making, and a loads of questions.

          Who is this person? Why do they exist in this world? What have they done and what will they do? How would others describe them? These are common questions to ask when doing characterization. First thing I do is refer to two personality charts: Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. I pick one of the sixteen personality types from Myers-Briggs and use that as a template for how my character behaves. I may end up with an introvert who is highly reclusive, or I could have a very social person with a bad habit of talking about themselves too much. It’s a good idea to study each type and learn how they think and feel. However, this is just a template; Myers-Briggs is a starting point, but is by no means a perfect description of your character. 

          Secondly, I look at the Enneagram for additional personality traits. The Enneagram has nine different personality types and is more focused on how a person reacts to the world around them. It also factors in changes in mood and how some people’s personalities mix with other types. Combining this with Myers-Briggs can give you a solid foundation for your character. But like Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram is not the final word. 

There are many aspects of personality and character development to consider when doing characterization. What kind of moral values do they have? Are they good or evil? Do they obey the law or could they not care less about the rules? For this, I refer to the Dungeons and Dragons Alignment System. It’s a simple chart for dictating actions a character is likely to take. Someone who is Lawful Good is virtually a saint and can do no wrong. Conversely, a Chaotic Evil person will defy the law and commit the most heinous of crimes against humanity. The Alignment System is meant to be an indication of moral tendency. Not every villain will remain evil, but not every hero can stay in the light. This is where choice becomes a primary factor in character development.

Along the character’s journey through their story they will encounter decisions. It could be as simple as deciding which road to take or as complicated as what profession to pursue. Each choice changes the character’s narrative and affects the rest of their life. Maybe your hero fights a bear and breaks its arm, but two years later the same bear comes back with cybernetic implants and severely injures the hero. Now the hero has to recover physically and mentally to overcome the obstacle that is a missing set of legs and a phobia of ursines. Choice doesn’t just affect the characters, but the writer as well.

Writers ultimately make the decisions for their characters. If a character acts a certain way, the writer wrote those traits in. If they dress in unusual attire, the writer made that choice. That’s why it’s important to really ask yourself why to make these choices. If you want to make a turncoat character, when is the best time for them to switch sides? You shouldn’t build up a character that the audience loves only to have them pick a side the audience can’t root for. Imagine having a best friend that stabs you in the back after years of knowing you; you would hate that person for what they’ve done. In this case, you hate both the character and the writer for the betrayal. Keeping all of this in mind, we can now move on to the biography. 

Where does this character come from? What are their origins? How tall are they? Age? Weight? Gender? Sexuality? There’s lots of questions to answer, but the audience doesn’t have to know all of those details. It’s best to build up a character with enough info to pull in interest, then add more info over time. Some info only you the creator will know. Don’t pour all of the data about your character onto the audience. They need context. “Why do the readers need to know this hero’s fears?” “When is the best time to introduce this idea?” “How much will the audience know about this character when they are introduced?” “When will they learn more?” “What are facts about the character that only I will know for the sake of developing them?” You don’t have to answer these all right away. Like the personality indicators mentioned before, the questions serve as a template to define your character.

 

Knowing how to write characters is essential to storytelling. They drive the narrative forward with their developments, dialogue, actions, and thoughts. These guidelines also apply to writing characters for film and animation as well as games. Yet despite the advice I’ve written, these are only the basics of building a person. Characters will change over time as they become more developed. Events will occur that change this person’s worldview, they will grow after going through some personal experience, someone will hurt them badly and the character has to find a way to overcome this struggle. This guide is a way to get started, but only you will ultimately write your character the way you want to.

February Analysis: Braid

          Braid is a time-base puzzle platformer created by Jonathan Blow. It has this strange mix of narrative and gameplay. Braid shows clear inspirations from Super Mario Bros. with tropes such as the male protagonist saving a princess, enemies you can jump on to defeat, and even a friendly character stating “Your princess is in another castle.” However, this game isn’t trying to be a classic platformer; it stands on its own. The inclusion of Mario-esque elements are likely jabs at those kinds of tropes. 

          Players start off on the edge of a bridge. The game prompts them with controls for movement. For now, moving right is your only option as there is nothing to the left of our protagonist Tim. When you move far enough to the right, you enter a house with a room that lights up. There are other rooms, but they don’t light up yet. Upon entering the single door in the room, Tim ventures into World 2. Shouldn’t this be World 1? Why would the game begin with World 2 as its first? 

          Inside the room we see clouds and a blue sky. It appears lofty and dreamlike. We can also see green books on pedestals that can be read if the player walks up to them. These books are in every one of these kinds of rooms and they hold most of the game’s narrative. The rest of the narrative can be found in the puzzles themselves, though it isn’t easy to pick up on.

Braid’s levels consist of time based puzzles to solve. The main mechanic is Rewind, a power that lets Tim go back in time to a previous state. Whenever Tim falls into a spike pit or touches an enemy, he dies. The game doesn’t end, but stops. The player can get right back into the action by Rewinding time and trying again. They can even adjust the speed at which they go backwards. Alternate mechanics include green, sparkly platforms which make Tim or other affected objects immune to Rewind, creating shadows of the player, and slowing time to a near halt. One world has players affect time by moving forward or backwards. The world only moves when Tim moves (like a precursor to Superhot). What’s intriguing about these mechanics is they tie in with the narrative surrounding Tim.

Every World has a series of books that Tim can read. The passages inside of them hint at what kind of mechanics are in play in the World. World 6, for example, has books that talk about Tim’s ring. One of the lines from the books says “It makes people slow to approach.” This implies that the ring slows down time and that is the very mechanic that becomes prominent in World 6.

In order to progress, Tim needs to collect jigsaw pieces to make portraits. When the portraits are complete, new Worlds open up. You can technically bypass any puzzle by going through the next door, but you don’t make any progress until you collect these jigsaw pieces. One portrait has a part that serves as a platform when moved around. It becomes essential to obtaining another jigsaw piece. The portraits themselves convey a high class style of living. Possibly it’s something Tim wants, but doesn’t have. In a way, he comes off as pretentious. The whole game has this high class aesthetic to it. Even the soundtrack with its classical style of music adds to this. The only place that doesn’t really fit into this aesthetic is the hub world where players start their journey. The house looks ordinary. Spacious, but ordinary.

The mechanics of the game hint at a narrative about Tim. Look at the shadow puzzles, for example. The whole idea of this mechanic is that Tim moves and performs an action, then goes back in time to do another action whilst his shadow does what he did before. There are moments in which Tim has to sacrifice his past self in order to progress through the level and take the puzzle piece. The player has to think of what they need to do in the present to make the future easier to handle. If they mess up, then the new present can’t reach a solution to the puzzle due to a lack of cooperation from the past’s shadow of Tim.

Tim’s goal is to find this princess, but why? Why specifically this person? Does she even know Tim? At the end of the game he finds her, but something doesn’t seem right. Why would the sinister knight release his captive? Why does the princess run so oddly? When players reach the end, they see exactly what’s wrong. As time winds back, it is revealed Tim is the villain. He had relentlessly pursued this princess to the point of stalking. He chases after her despite rejection. She is saved by the knight who carries her to safety and players are left to think about what this all means.

          I almost feel like Tim made up his relationship with the princess in his head. To quote one of the books in game: “He made many mistakes during the time they spent together… Memories of their relationship have become muddled, replaced wholesale…”. If they had a meaningful relationship, wouldn’t Tim have many good memories of it? He only seems to remember the time she turned away from him. And what of these mistakes of his? In the books it states that Tim reversed his mistakes and kept the princess safe from harm. He also writes for her. How does he know what she thinks? Is Tim just idolizing this girl and forming the perfect idea of what she should be rather than what she is? He’s also selfish with the princess. To quote again: “Her benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life’s achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn.” Tim still wants to be himself and not change. Being yourself isn’t bad, but in Tim’s case he wants to pursue something that may require him to get rid of his partner. He doesn’t consider her say in the matter at all. 

As for the writing, it looks as if written by an adolescent. This is not to say the writer of the game is terrible, but if it’s meant to be Tim’s own thoughts then it makes sense that the books have these kinds of words in them. The books themselves seem to jump from various times in Tim’s life such as childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.

In the epilogue, Tim learns his lesson. He worked so hard to find a castle and a princess, but he went about it the wrong way. He couldn’t just find a castle and force someone to join him. Tim realizes he has to work at it, slowly building up a castle from a small base. 

          Braid is a game that has many interpretations on how it’s meant to be seen and played. There’s no definite way to experience it. Some theories lean towards Tim dealing with a breakup, others to the atomic bomb, and even with Tim dealing with growing up with an idealized fantasy that was far from reality. It’s a complicated game with surprising depth. It requires the player to think about everything they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Why Tim is here and why his world is the way it is. Playing through without thinking about what the mechanics are conveying to you is not the way to go about it. To play for competency is missing the point.