NaNoWriMo Character Brainstorm Vomit

Sometimes, when I have a hard time or am rushing through trying to establish characters in my mind in a sort of Fixed way, I do a big image search and try to set tonally what I want a character to feel like.

The Anti-Hero:

Physiology
1.      Sex Male
2.      Age 30ish
3.      Height Tall Weight Thin
4.      Color of hair: brown; eyes: brown; skin: tan
5.      Posture: Catlike
6.      Appearance: Calculatedly disheveled
7.      Defects: Catlike

Sociology
Class:  Upper
Occupation: Evil Overlord; Enchanted Forest, INC.
Education: Boarding School
Home life: Non-existant
Religion: Worships self
Race, nationality: Claims to be from nowhere
Place in community: Evil overlord/business owner
Political Affiliations: Big business
Amusements, hobbies: Being slightly malicious, bothering other people, magic tricks, grooming, stealing things

Psychology
Sex life, moral standards: A big fan of sex, but easily bored by partners (who are generally princesses, so can you blame him?)  Moral, in a sort of chaotic neutral self-interested way.  Like a cat.  Willing to be heroic for things he cares about, like his secretary.
Personal premise, ambition: Originally, to take over the magical world through creating corporations and unions.  Now, to hold it together and not let his own inability to focus on non-active things destroy it.
Frustrations, chief disappointments: Secretary will not sleep with him.  Easily bored.  Currently, witches strike.
Temperament: Catlike
Attitude towards life: Alternately bored, malicious, and giddy with hate
Complexes: Narcissist
Extrovert, introvert, ambivert: Parasitically extroverted
Abilities: Magic, being really attractive, being entertaining assuming one’s entertainment isn’t lessened by moral qualms
Qualities: Arrogant, talented, impulsive, emotional, difficult to get to sit still
I. Q. Astronomical

The Heroine:

Physiology
1.      Sex Female
2.      Age Very nearly 17
3.      Height: A bit short Weight: Solid
4.      Color of hair: A boring sort of reddish eyes: pale skin: freckled
5.      Posture: Depends on mood
6.      Appearance: Desperate attempt at sheveled despite peasant background and being outdoors a lot
7.      Defects: Stubborn, naive, is a teenage girl, snobby
8.      Heredity: Mother was maybe a witch, father is a farmer

Sociology
Class:  Peasant
Occupation: Farmer
Education: Self, lots of books
Home life: Father is sick, field hand is old, she does most of the farm work
Religion: Nominally whatever the local thing is, but not religious
Race, nationality: Plains
Place in community: Bit of an outcast
Political Affiliations: Doesn’t know what politics is
Amusements, hobbies: reading, trying unsuccessfully to do magic

Psychology
Sex life, moral standards: None, very high
Personal premise, ambition: Wants to become a witch to save her father and incidentally punish the idiots in her village who are total assholes to her. Later, to punish the witches and make them cure her dad. Also, to avoid marriage.
Frustrations, chief disappointments: Couldn’t leave to get an education because her father was sick, lost her mother at a young age, the stupidity of boys.
Temperament: Matter of fact, bossy, and easily irritated
Attitude towards life: Attempting to subdue it to her will
Complexes: A perhaps not totally merited sense of self-worth
Extrovert, introvert, ambivert: ambivert
Abilities: lifting heavy things, sticktoitiveness, fairly clever
Qualities:
I. Q. High, but not absurdly so

Additional: Touchy about her weight. She’s solid in the way of hardworking farm girls, which is to say not fat, but nothing like a waif.

The Princess:
Physiology
1.      Sex Female
2.      Age 20ish
3.      Height medium Weight slender
4.      Color of hair blondeish eyes blueish skin fairish
5.      Posture rigid
6.      Appearance: easily mistaken for a beautiful princess from long distances or when wearing a veil
7.      Defects: Big nose, horsey face, bad teeth, acne, terrible makeup
8.      Heredity: Kings and Queens (inbred, no doubt)

Sociology
Class:  Princess
Occupation: Princess
Education: Princess
Home life: Princess
Religion: Princess
Race, nationality: Regno di Fiore
Place in community: Princess
Political Affiliations: Princess (pro-monarchy)
Amusements, hobbies: Annoying yappy dog, makeup, pining, vanity, opining on things she doesn’t understand

Psychology
Sex life, moral standards: Not til marriage, whatever her father/future husband says
Personal premise, ambition: To get married
Frustrations, chief disappointments: She’s not married for some reason
Temperament: Ditzy but sweet
Attitude towards life: Positive
Complexes: Seemingly unaware of her looks
Extrovert, introvert, ambivert: Extrovert
Abilities: None yet discovered
Qualities:
I. Q. Not very high…

The Secretary:
Physiology
1.      Sex Female
2.      Age 20s
3.      Height medium Weight slender
4.      Color of hair regularly changes in a rainbow assortment/bald eyes black skin fairish
5.      Posture rigid
6.      Appearance: Bad ass bitch in a bright colors on black sort of way
7.      Defects: Pretty hardcore
8.      Heredity: Secretly a princess

Sociology
Class:  Servant
Occupation: Secretary
Education: Private tutors
Home life: Involves drinking, partying and dragons
Religion: HAHahahahano
Race, nationality: Amalfia
Place in community: Secretary, scary person, badass
Political Affiliations: Pro-union
Amusements, hobbies: drinking, hitting people, getting tattoos, getting piercings, drawing, impeccable manners, embroidery (seriously)

Psychology
Sex life, moral standards: Unknown, but won’t sleep with her boss
Personal premise, ambition: To turn Amalfia into a democracy when her father dies, to avoid getting pregnant until that point
Frustrations, chief disappointments: Her family is awful, her boss is usually an idiot, she could run the company better than him
Temperament: Stern
Attitude towards life: Stern
Complexes: Self-loathing, family loathing, sort of loathing in general
Extrovert, introvert, ambivert: Introvert who drinks to become an extrovert
Abilities: Change hair colors, doesn’t seem to notice pain, can ignore brutally stupid things, apparently never bored, excellent needlepoint
Qualities:
I. Q. Pretty high

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NaNoWriMo Character Brainstorm Vomit
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4 thoughts on “NaNoWriMo Character Brainstorm Vomit

  1. 1

    Those characters sound pretty interesting. I’ve got a story I’m considering rebooting, a historical fiction about the Albigensian crusade. Perhaps I’ll draw up something like this to help me get a better handle on my characters.

    1. 1.1

      It can be fun, I just really like a lot of the images I found, regardless of their purpose. The dude pictures are all, obviously, super hot. I found this picture of Carrie Fisher which is exactly what Hermione looks like in my head. And I found pictures of ickle young Helen Mirren.

      And then, the last pictures for the princess and secy are like exactly how I was thinking of the characters, except I didn’t even know it until I saw those pictures and was like “Yes!”

  2. 2

    I totally think the secretary should have a Sapsorrow-like background — ran away from home, became the scraggliest thing in the area as cover, but just happens to have commissioned three beautiful dresses for her wedding day before she ran away, which she has in storage or something.

    1. 2.1

      I think Sapsorrow is based on DonkeySkin, which is the version of that fairy tale that I’m super familiar with. It’s definitely an interesting thought, though I wonder how to turn the dresses into a comic piece.

      The vague plot is that the heroine goes on a quest to become a witch to save her father from his terminal cough; the anti-hero who runs the evil corporation is also fighting the witches, who are on strike and attempting a hostile takeover.

      He kidnaps the princess as a negotiation piece for the witches, who need a princess to complete some spell (the one that will get them 51% of the stock shares), but then refuses to give her to them when negotiations go badly; the secretary is kidnapped in an attempt to force him to trade for the princess, no one realizing that secretary is secretly a princess.

      Meanwhile the witches have rejected and mocked the heroine because she is completely terrible at magic but she has been given a list of ingredients by one of the apparently nice witches that she has to collect to make a potion for her father. They’ve also enchanted her a doll so it can bring her to them when she’s got them all. In reality, these are just ingredients the witches need for their spell, and letting her bring them to them is easier than getting them themselves.

      She goes to anti-hero in an attempt to get one of the ingredients and since she has the doll that will track the witches, the anti-hero goes with her. And of course tries to steal the doll, but he can’t make it work for him.

      And then stuff happens (???)

      PROFIT

      I’m really good at the whole first and third act thing, it’s the second act that’s always like “I dunno, stuff happens so that I can get to the climax…” I imagine there’s room in there somewhere for Sapsorrow, but I dunno how yet.

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