Funny thing that Sims game. It came in handy after all. And you thought I was just wasting my life away, another generation x slacker. WRONG!!! Try again.
I am taking a novel writing class and yesterday we went over character development. Now everyone has his or her own theories about what makes a strong character. And to be honest, no one really knows which authors use which methods, or any method at all. But lets say for example they do. The instructor explained character motivation as the driving force, and asked us to look at life as a game. Every time you do something it either adds points to your life score, bringing you closer to your ultimate goal, takes away points bringing your further from the goal, or do nothing either way. So we had to come up with a list of motivations…and guess what. The list was the same as the Aspirations for the SIMS2 game. And it is a perfect example of what we were discussing. Each character has one driving force, and all of their actions, their desires and their fears, revolve around that force. It also takes into account personality type, which guess what, was the second thing we talked about. Character development is on of my favorite things ever. I could spend hours creating characters, in fact I have a ton of characters who have never entered a story or novel. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I love analyzing their motivations, determining what they fear and why. Maybe I should have been a shrink. Maybe that is all a writer is, a shrink with a god complex. But that’s ok. I can handle it. Peace out.
