Discussion What kills your interest in a character?

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Hey y'all, I had this thought pop in my head recently while I was looking through your character list. I had lots of good ideas for characters, made only a handful of posts for them, and haven't posted with them since.

I'm not sure if I just lost interest, the character's story/idea sucked, or I just forgot I made them. These happen most of the time.

So I'm curious to see what y'all have to say. What kills a character for you, or what makes you not want to write the, anymore? Also, are you more likely to delete a character, or just let them sit in your alt list till the end of time?

 

[Bright4]

So from my past experience, it comes from having an idea and no way to go about it.

 

[Teyla Sal-Soren]

Not having solid direction for a chatacter/no ending in mind. Not understanding their motives clearly enough. Lack of time to get a new concept off the ground.

Those are the main ones, for me personally.

I also usually delete the characters I am not using, unless I think they might be interesting enough to eventually come back to.

Cut away the dead branches, so new ideas can grow. XP

 

[Bright4]

Sometimes I've had really fun ideas that I've had to axe off due to lack of time or having my partner drop off. It happens. Honestly, it's nice to just experiment and try new ideas.

 

[Unblessed]

Here are a few reasons why new characters have been created by me in the past:

• I watch something and think that I would love to write a character like so and so on that thing I saw.
• I write with someone new that becomes an instant friendly acquaintance and we want to have our own story together so a character is created to meet that desire.
• I find a piece of art, or a face that I think is perfect for a character but doesn't work with anything I have going...so what else to do, make a new character.
• I find one personality trait that I will think make a well rounded character, it usually doesn't.

This is more in the past for me now, I have kinda calmed down? I think...

Reasons why they don't take off are as follows:

• The idea was not something that was long term going to keep my attention.
• The idea was so much out of my comfort zone that it took a lot of effort to maintain and never flowed naturally, so as a result dropped off when I was not feeling the muse sing as it often does.
• The person I was writing with had one of the above two issues and couldn't maintain, so my reason to write the character disappeard.

Solution?
Write NPCs. Because, what is a PC but an NPC you took the time to make an account for and a bio? Then if the NPC is really someone you love writing, make a sub, to make them a protected citizen then if they keep coming up as a recurring character in your main characters plots? Make them an account and bio them up! I often enjoy writing the silly NPCs mor than the PCs in my thread, but it is the PCs over arcing story that keeps me coming back.

 

[Arctus Silmar]

Hey y'all, I had this thought pop in my head recently while I was looking through your character list. I had lots of good ideas for characters, made only a handful of posts for them, and haven't posted with them since.

I'm not sure if I just lost interest, the character's story/idea sucked, or I just forgot I made them. These happen most of the time.

So I'm curious to see what y'all have to say. What kills a character for you, or what makes you not want to write the, anymore? Also, are you more likely to delete a character, or just let them sit in your alt list till the end of time?

Well Okke, in my experience there's a few reasons I might lose interest in a character. The first and most common in my roleplaying history is lack of interest from others. This might seem.... pretty obvious but if no one wants to even give a character a chance then I am much more likely to consider the idea behind them flawed in some capacity. Now I might try to rework them into a similar idea, but this sort of 'trip at the starting line' definitely ends my interest.

Second most common after that is, funnily enough, more on myself than the character or my writing partners. I don't plan the entire story of my characters, but I do get inspired for certain bigger plot points for them to have. I think about them over and over, going over very detail of these certain 'scenes' until for whatever reason I just kinda..... stop. I don't consider the scene canon to the character if it never happens, but I think it's something between me being too eager for the scene in the moment and not having the patience to set it up or I become so satisfied with my own imaginary telling of the scene I don't feel the need to write it out anymore. Though after typing this I realize that second reason sounds a lot more weird than when I say it to myself. xD

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

I have had similar experiences to others who have answered, but I have a couple weird stories I'd like to share. I apologize ahead of time if this post is rambling and incoherent, it is almost 5 AM and I should be asleep.

So, first story: I was dealing with a writer I was unfamiliar with, but we seemed to hit it off immediately. We were writing constantly over the course of about two weeks, and in that brief period of time I realized that this person, while well-meaning, thought they knew what was best for my character. At first I was receptive to their suggestions OOC, but when we would actually write IC, I noticed they would make it so I basically had no choice but to go along with what they wanted. As a result, my character was changed in ways I did not like. I stopped writing with this person, but the damage had been done. Trying to reverse the changes only led to further changes, and at that point I gave up on the character. Well, I retired her, actually - wrote that she settled down, got her dream job, and had a family. She still appears as an NPC every now and then, so it isn't as if this experience totally ruined her for me.

This second story is something I've actually experienced more than once, but this particular instance is the one that stands out to me the most. It's when another writer's character dislikes yours so intensely that the story cannot progress, and the back and forth of insults, refusals, rejections, "the reason why you suck" speeches, and general degradation sours your opinion of your character to the point where you almost hate them.

So, the story: I am good friends with this one writer OOC, but we have not written together much. One of the reasons I'm hesitant to write with him now, is because I picked up on the fact that his characters were often... well, to put it bluntly, his characters tended to act like little arseholes toward mine. He writes primarily villains, and that very well, but in this case his character was not supposed to be a villain, it was just a random spacer. Anyway, this one particular thread we did was our characters meeting when they both responded to a distress signal. Over the course of the thread, his guy made my guy look like an idiot every chance he got (including manipulating the situation, i.e. they stumble upon a door that has no obvious means of opening it, my guy cuts through it with his lightsaber, then his guy goes "I could've just sliced it to unlock it, you didn't have to do that, idiot!" when there was no mention of there even being a lock mechanism, just a sealed door), refused to cooperate, ignored my guy's offers to help him, complained about how he did things during the mission (without offering an alternative beforehand, just whining about it after the fact), and generally acted like a complete prick. It got to the point where the thread was abandoned because we literally could not make progress with the storyline anymore.

It was an incredibly frustrating experience, especially because I knew this guy and considered him a friend - but my mentality of "if we're friends, why can't our characters be friends?" was a mistake. I should not have expected that, and I probably should have cut things off as soon as I began to get frustrated, rather than trying to fix it. There's no shame in leaving a thread unfinished for any reason, and doggedly pursuing some kind of marginally satisfying ending for a story that already sucks is unlikely to get you anywhere. But then so is allowing something to get to you so much that you abandon your character, so... moral of the story, I guess, is to stand up for yourself. RP writing isn't like writing fanfiction, it's a game and people are going to compete. Just keep that in mind and be aware of the motives and goals of your fellow writers. If what you want clashes with what they want, you probably shouldn't be writing together. This doesn't reflect poorly on either of you as people, it's just the rules of the game.

 

[Elpsis Kerrigan]

Write NPCs. Because, what is a PC but an NPC you took the time to make an account for and a bio? Then if the NPC is really someone you love writing, make a sub, to make them a protected citizen then if they keep coming up as a recurring character in your main characters plots? Make them an account and bio them up! I often enjoy writing the silly NPCs mor than the PCs in my thread, but it is the PCs over arcing story that keeps me coming back.

I do this quite a lot. Really, the only practical difference is in PvP, and I use PCs for that. Sometimes with the NPCs being written as doing some fighting in the background (e.g. Elpsis' posse, all of them Codex subbed and with their own distinct stories beyond being her offsiders, got their own mini story during the Annihilation and the recent Ziost invasion). Elpsis got a lof of dev by interacting with her squad. More interesting than just having faceless, interchangeable mooks.

Two of my PCs, Vaena Askari and Darth Libertas, started as NPCs who eventually got promoted. I have a bunch of PCs who've been gathering dust on the shelf, sadly, so my general approach now is to start a new char as an NPC and see how they work out (and only to make an NPC after said char has been used a bit as a side-character in a thread...because otherwise I'd keep making them).

Elpsis' NPC clone, Kyriaki, has her own solo thread (a very long and still ongoing one) and somehow ended up with her own Factory subs. She's probably gotten more development than several of my PCs.

 

[Veino Garn]

As someone who once had 21 characters and now down to five, I have had lots of practice with getting rid of characters.

The two main reasons I get rid of characters is because they’re very faction driven or I simply didn’t enjoy writing them. Some types of characters really only thrive in factions and when those factions dissipate, there’s really not much to do with the character and poof! Away they eventually go.

The other is because I never really had a fully developed concept for the character that made it hard for them to flourish, or because I simply couldn’t find their right perspective that I enjoyed. It’s why I never got more than 10 posts in my several attempts to write a Sith or darker criminal type. (Rebel smuggler I can do, but not hired muscle for a cartel) And so eventually, they also go poof!

Abother reason is because I have too many characters with overlapping archetypes. At one point, I had two Mandalorian/Republic/Alliance commando types. Difference was one was a sniper/scout and the other was more of a close-up brawler and original ARC trooper. (Surprisingly appropriate since this was long before they showed up in the new Battlefront) And as a result, they overlapped too much in threads and interest in either of them faded.

Eventually, I just had too many sub accounts cluttering up that menu. It was additional mental stressors I didn’t need or want and I pruned them down in stages to only having a quarter of them left- the ones I know I’ll do stuff with.

 

[Cyran Vaas]

For me honestly one of the biggest things is feeling like the character has too much going on. Like they feel bloated with crap. It can hard to be interested in a character I write when it feels like they've seen and done it all you know. Something I like to do with my characters to prevent this is specialize them. Like Cyran here is specifically a bounty hunter. Not an assassin, not really a mercenary, just a humble bounty hunter.

Another thing that can kill my interest in a character is kind of like a burn out. Like getting all this fun muse for things you wanna do with the character and not really being able to express it very well in chaos. Mostly because you don't have any threads that you can really work a new idea into very well. So you kind of loose interest before you can really do anything with the ideas.

Something I like to do to make me more interested in a character of mine is work on graphics and image edits for them. Now that might not really work for everyone but for me working on a cool photoshop idea for your character can almost breath new life into them. Maybe give them a neat aesthetic. For example I like to go with this Outrun/Synthwave aesthetic for Cyran in his graphics. Also it keeps me practicing with image editing and I gradually learn new tricks and methods to make better and easier edits which is fulfilling to me in it's own way.

 

[Tefka]

OOC Stuff.

If I'm writing with you and I feel that demon on your shoulder growling, like your actions are formed from a OOC motivation to either roleplay for or against me as a writer and an Administrator, I'm going to bail. This is why OOC headnods of "hey lets do something" are important, even though I prefer the organic interaction.

Also in this category lies the heavy burden of having to administrate the website, and all the positive and negative connotations that come with that. This is why you'll often see, over the years, staff members rping with each other in private threads - it's pretty normal because they don't have those clouds overhanging their interactions. I think Chaos has gotten a lot better about this over the years, though, as fewer issues have risen from it.

Lack of interactions.

I'm not a solo rp'er. I create RP for others, and they for me. I feed off those interactions, that energy. I like to get hyped, and I like to hype.

I know we have some people who can solo rp here, aka "writing", lol. It's not for me. I am a fast typer, an even faster thinker, but a very slow reader. I like to take my time with people, and chill, and vibe.

 

[Quartz_Soldier]

My characters sometimes just stop cooperating and are so combative that I can't write for them at all and they lock themselves in their rooms in my head like petulant teenagers.

Or threads get dropped or IRL happens that stagnate everything.

 

[Fatty]

So for me, interest and actual use are two totally different things. I am always interested in my own characters, otherwise, why would I have created them in the first place?

Unfortunately for me, sometimes my taste in characters can be a bit too... eccentric and niche to be of any real use. For a writer that absolutely thrives on cooperate story telling, what this means realistically is that the less niche and interesting my character is the more use it will actually see, as those are the types of characters that are easiest to interact with.

For example, almost every single one of my alien characters have eventually gone by the wayside not because I lost interest in them, but because the work required to have them interact with other characters of other writers is often a cost greater than what I end up getting out of it.

Meanwhile three of my human characters share together a few thousand posts, dwarfing the many hundreds for all my other subaccounts combined.

The only exception to that rule has been Zambrano the Hutt, which had many unique factors going for him and still stands as my one and only full complete story here on the site. Which is also probably why my recent attempts to revive some semblance of what the character was have unanimously failed, despite the coolness factor of the concept I came up with. Best to leave closed books closed, especially when a complete one is so rare to come by.

TL;DR: I have very niche taste in characters, and that makes it difficult for the cooperative story telling that I crave. Also, don't try and replicate exceptions to your own writing, what worked then won't necessarily work again.

 

[Jsc]

50% Faction idea didn't work out.
25% Threads died, writers disappeared.
20% I got bored, wrote myself into a hole.
5% Drama or PvP ate them.

 

[Aloy Vizsla]

I guess this is as good a place as any to announce that I'm shelving Aloy... I'm going to start by explaining the reasons I typically shelve a character and then explain why I'm shelving Aloy specifically;

To delete or not to delete:
I used to leave them sitting for months or years even. But lately I've been deleting them out of frustration.

Reasons for deleting or shelving commonly include;

• They didn't have a drive that kept them going or gave them purpose
  (My fault\bad writing. I've only recently gotten better about this)
• The faction I made them for falls apart and\or they became too dependent on their faction for story
• Factions seem to shun them
  (As a mandalorian writer, I've gotten weird vibes from almost every non-mandalorian faction I've attempted to join while writing a mandalorian. It's a curse. And I know it's not just me personally, Because I have been welcomed into the same or other factions with non-mandalorian characters and even grown somewhat popular in a few mandalorian factions)
• Drama. Fking drama.
• I become a staff member or DM and my character effectively loses agency, Becoming an NPC quest giver(This happens to 80% of my characters across multiple roleplaying sites and I'm honestly losing my sh-t over it now)

Shelving Aloy:
It's kind of painful to say this honestly, But I am shelving Aloy in the near-ish future. Not deleting though. She has a loving wife whom I love to write with, A daughter to raise and a little faction to lead.
She's going to become a defacto NPC and quest giver. A catalyst of plot if you will.
The reason for this is that I made changes to her for the good of a dying faction, And anyone who's familiar with my history on the site atm knows that I tried to save it when it wasn't worth saving. I tried to give this faction(Which I did not own but staffed for) a personality and an engaging storyline for it's writer base.
Because of this, I quickly got burnt out while DMing back to back, And Aloy lost agency, Becoming effectively little more than a quest giver. And because of what I like to call "forced character development", She went from being a fun and witty gunslinger to a bland and depth-less military commander. Her personality could be summed up at the time as "Officer that does officer things".
Her story became intimately intertwined with that faction's own story and without, Writing her feels empty now. I've tried to change her back to the way she was but for some reason, Writing her has become a chore.
I wrote up a daughter of her's with everything I've learned in the past three years of writing on this site(2 of which were with Aloy) and she captures the same muse I had when I first started. She is fun to write and keeps me coming back to chaos, While Aloy does not and I actively put off writing her these days.

Aloy still has a story to finish however. I promised myself that Aloy would be the first character who's story I "finish" before shelving, And I am to keep it. I know that a roleplay's story is never truly "finished" in the traditional sense, But I'm getting closer to completing Aloy's life goal, And I think that's as close as it gets.
Force willing, She'll defeat her rival, Claim the legendary weapon she's been trying to keep out of said rival's hands, And then retire to raise her child and live happily ever after with her wife and be content knowing that she made something of herself when everyone told her she'd die alone in a ditch.


So, Force willing, Her daughter's story will be much more engaging, Less reliant on a single faction and yet draw in enough other writers to make it fun. And, You know, Be done in a way that I don't have to DM every single roleplay I enter, That'd be a nice change of pace.
So if you took the time to read all that, Thanks for checking it out and wish me luck!

 

[Hailyn]

I don't typically lose interest in every character I shelve, usually I just want to change things up and come back to them at a later date (like this character, who has been shelved and brought back at least 3 times since I made her), but every so often I completely lose interest in a character. Usually they don't ever make it beyond the 30 day mark and I delete the subaccount to forget they ever existed but there's a few characters that lived long enough in my roster for there to be an underlying reason that isn't "this was a bad idea" (which is what those sub-30 day characters typically end up being shelved for).

Honestly it's usually because the people or person I was writing with either a) make it clear they're done writing with me, for whatever reason; b) left the site or went on an extended LOA for so long that I stopped writing the character and didn't feel like going back to them; or c) made interacting with them awkward to the point that I'd rather just avoid them altogether, at least for more than a couple minutes conversation here or there out of RP - which is probably not their fault, I am a weird person and get uncomfortable about pretty mundane things.

 

[Huxy]

1. Lack of a Character's Personality
For me, whenever I create a character, I typically start with an idea of some sort, or a foundation to work off of. Now that could be something like me wanting to use a certain face claim, maybe there is some art of a character that I really want to use, or simply an idea popping up because I saw a movie recently. It can be anything truly, and the ideas themselves always seem like a good idea in my head.

For instance, a little while back... well probably a year or two years ago when I was active, I wanted to write a character similar to Thanos. I liked the physicality of the character, the way he seemed to demand attention just by his presence on screen and I loved the idea of a character thinking that they were the "chosen one." I thought it was an interesting concept so like I do when I come up with ideas, I make some photo edits and signatures and experiment as I write up bullet point ideas.

Though, all of this work really didn't lead anywhere. I had the "outline" of the character, but when I wanted to write him, it led nowhere. I just couldn't get myself to write him. Looking back now, I think I know why I didn't get anywhere with this idea. I simply did not think about how this character would interact with other people, I completely neglected (in my opinion) the most important parts of building up the idea of a character.

2. Lack of an Actual Idea
I tend to create characters on a whim. Sometimes it works, but other times it leads to absolutely nowhere. For example, the character I have written with most on the site, Varian, came from the idea of "a farm boy who looks like Sebastian Stan." But other times, it just does not work. Whenever I have a piece of art that I found for a character, I just try to wing it.

I found this really nice piece of art of a slender-man-type creature that reminded me of cosmic horror and Lovecraft, so I tried to go with it and go make something. I wrote a codex submission for the character and then when that was approved, I went to write the character itself. Specifically, I tried writing the bio.

This failed miserably, and I quickly scrapped the concept. Sure I had a great piece of art that I had found while browsing through both Pinterest and Artstation. But I had no idea to back up that image, I had no foundation for a character and no concept about who they were. Was this an intergalactic comedian, an interstellar traveler, or a science experiment gone wrong? I had no idea. I didn't put in any time or effort to come up with an idea for him.

3. Overhyped & Lack of Character Interaction
When I finally do come across a character who I have a personality and an idea for, I almost always become instantly fixed on that character. I imagine what they could be, where they will end up eventually over the course of multiple characters arcs, and who they truly are as a person. It may be a little weird, but I make up little "canon" interactions that have not happened yet. These interactions would be crucial to the character's evolution and growth, so I cannot wait to get them to that part. I become "hyped" about where they will get to and, when this happens, I lose sight of who the character is. I lose motivation to write them because I have come up with all of these interactions that I can not wait for... which causes me to simply lose any drive to write them.

I can't explain it. I don't know why this happens, but it simply does.

Lack of interest from other writers can also hamper my interest in a character, if not downright lead to them getting deleted. The most prominent example of this to me was my character, Kaine. He was a tall and imposing figure who could turn into a wolf. He came from a world of tribal hunters and he wanted to learn about the Galaxy and become stronger. The endgame for this character was going to be him going back to his homeworld and becoming the ruler through discovery in his lineage, linking him to past ruler. This would lead to the industrialization of his home and the betterment of his people.

I absolutely loved this character and the multiple character arcs I had planned for him.

I got into a faction with him and I was getting some faction interaction with him, but I kept on getting just a lack of enthusiasm and interest from people. This seemingly simple "lack of interest" made me lose interest in my character as well. Nobody seemed that interested in writing with me so I didn't see much point in continuing the character. I simply retired and eventually deleted the character altogether.