So, in the last post, I spoke about location in setting, where things take place. Today, I'm going to talk about the second aspect of setting, which is character.
Whether you're writing a story or running a game, you need characters for the heroes to interact with. Sometimes those characters will be villagers and farmers, sometimes they'll be allies, sometimes they'll be enemies. But regardless, they have to be defined as people, individuals who have their own lives outside of whatever their interaction with the heroes might be.
Now, this doesn't mean that they have to be fully-realized people with eighty pages of backstory to explain their motivations. In fact, that would be pointless; the story (or game) is about the heroes, not the people they run into along the way.
No, it just means that you have to give them some sort of reason to be wherever they are. The knights are riding through the countryside and come upon a farming village? Great! There are a bunch of farmers and villagers to talk to. The first farmer might be a pious, deeply religious man who sees the knights as great protectors of the faith and will treat them with the utmost respect, offering them his meager hospitality if they need it (and even if they don't). But his neighbor is a bitter old man who lost his wife and children in an accident ten years ago, and has no one to take over the farm from him when he dies. He's lost his faith in God, and wants nothing to do with the knights, who he sees as having an unfair advantage over him solely because of their noble birth.
Meanwhile, the miller is anxious that the knights are there to seduce his innocent daughter, and the village priest has a job for the knights to do on behalf of the Church. Oh, and the bartender at the inn? He's a retired soldier himself, who gave up army life when he was badly wounded. But it was one of the members of the knightly order who got him to safety, and he treats all the knights as long-lost brothers.
That's five people with five different personalities and motives; I came up with them on the spot with just a couple of minutes of brainstorming. Distinguishing them in the story (or game) won't be difficult, as long as you remember who's talking any what they want.
Character isn't difficult to come up with, and don't worry about clichés. Clichés are a good way to get a handle on characters, a sort-of shorthand way of identifying them. Not all characters should be based on such clichés, but having them crop up now and again is perfectly fine.
Alright, so after personality, what else makes characters stand out? Physical description, certainly. The pious farmer might be tall and strong, while the bitter old man is short and stunted from his years of back-breaking labor. The miller is a strong man, almost as strong as the local blacksmith, while the priest is young and vigorous, his hair tonsured and his robes kept spotlessly clean. The bartender has a noticeable limp and a bad right arm, but his boisterous laugh and good spirits make people forget about his past injuries. Again, quick brainstorming to give these people some simple identifying marks.
Of course, some characters need no more than a couple of sentences to describe them, if that; they're background, unimportant save for perhaps a quick cameo appearance in the tale being told. Others, however, need a bit more than that; they are the characters that drive the narration, who give the heroes a reason to be heroes. And it doesn't always have to be the expected characters, either. That bitter old man? Turns out he's under a witch's curse from having insulted her in his younger years, and now he has lost hope that the curse can ever be broken. But maybe the knights have the wherewithal to help him, if they can somehow learn of the curse...
Meanwhile, the priest with a mission for the Church just needs the knights to carry a message to the abbey a few miles away and return with the reply. Why the knights instead of a standard message-bearer? Well, the bandits are especially bad this year...
Characters drive plot; without them, there's really nothing to do, or at least no way to find out what needs to be done. Having characters that stand out from the crowd is the key to creating a good setting, which in turn will make for a better story, one that stands a better chance of people actually wanting to read it.
Next time, I'll talk about the third part of setting: Time and its effects.
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