Character Development
Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2018 2:35 pm
The two major ways to write a good story are character-driven and plot-driven. Plot-driven stories work through a sequence of goals. This is difficult to enforce in a world as open and dynamic as LT's promises to be. However, character-driven stories start with characters and let the story write itself. In this way, LT's model seems perfectly suited to a character-driven story: the system starts in an initial condition and events play out from it. LT also already has (or plans to have) characters making decisions based on character traits.
But the main thing that makes character-driven stories work is still missing: character development. As far as I know, characters get their traits from their parent colony at "birth." The traits are then immutable. However, as many writers know, "flat" characters like this are best used sparingly, especially when they're the foci of the story. Dynamic characters are generally preferred. The faction and relationship systems present in LT help with this, but they're not enough to support a decent character-driven story on their own. For this, we need the character traits themselves to be mutable.
Since the goal is generally to create characters which are believable and realistic, we may find useful insight by looking at the things which make real people change. Large personality changes come from large events—traumas and epiphanies—while small changes over long periods of time can come about from occupations or company. Idealistic characters might be worn down by their nine-to-five job. A military leader might watch his homeworld burn and become pacifistic. Events would be woven into the world and, more importantly, its people.
But the main thing that makes character-driven stories work is still missing: character development. As far as I know, characters get their traits from their parent colony at "birth." The traits are then immutable. However, as many writers know, "flat" characters like this are best used sparingly, especially when they're the foci of the story. Dynamic characters are generally preferred. The faction and relationship systems present in LT help with this, but they're not enough to support a decent character-driven story on their own. For this, we need the character traits themselves to be mutable.
Since the goal is generally to create characters which are believable and realistic, we may find useful insight by looking at the things which make real people change. Large personality changes come from large events—traumas and epiphanies—while small changes over long periods of time can come about from occupations or company. Idealistic characters might be worn down by their nine-to-five job. A military leader might watch his homeworld burn and become pacifistic. Events would be woven into the world and, more importantly, its people.