“Character voice” is rather self-explanatory, simply being the unique way a character speaks or narrates. Every character has a voice, some may just stand out more than others, and part of becoming a better writer is learning to work with voices that are unlike your own. Here are some ways to get started on finding a character’s voice once you have a character concept in mind:
Look into their background. What’s their education level? Does the area they come from have any specific sayings? Speech patterns are influenced by a surprising amount of external or upbringing-related elements, especially when it comes to slang and some aspects of grammar, so learn to look beyond the “now” for finding voice.
Personality and mood affect voice. A laid-back person is unlikely to speak or narrate in a snippy tone, unless that subject matter is super important to them. Likewise, a critical person may judge other characters more than another narrator.
Everybody has quirks of speech. Can also be known as ‘verbal tics’, though ‘quirks of speech’ refer to general unique speech patterns as opposed to a specific sound.
Voice is more than just tone. It’s related to perspective and how the character comments on the things they notice. Two characters may see the same tree, but the artist may describe the tree with specific colors whereas a nature-lover may know the species and its stage of life. The information that’s given to the reader through the narrator is a form of voice.
Some techniques for teasing out potential voice are:
Interview your characters with a series of simple questions that get harder and harder. Get personal. See what comes out in how they respond.
Write a letter as if by their hand, about a subject they’re passionate about.
Try acting things out as if you were that character. Have imaginary conversations or test different tones spoken out loud to test the effects.
Create a scene, then test it witch each different character. What do they notice that’s different from others? What’s the order of things that they notice?
Throw each character into the exact same problem. How do they each handle it differently?
I’ve been kind of considering uploading my own action for awhile now, but always figured it wasn’t really worth it. However I’ve gotten a few asks lately asking how I edit, so I thought I’d put up an all-in-one
action that I pretty much use on most of my pictures.
This comes with two actions that I’ve made for vertical and horizontal pictures. It brightens, utilizes topaz, smooths the overall photo with the oil painting feature, resizes the image, and increases canvas size.
These changes are very slight, and should be used on photos that
already have a medium to high amount of lighting in them. If you’re
looking for a major change, these actions probably aren’t for you, but I
appreciate the default game’s colors and lighting, so this is what I
use.
Things to know:
I made these with (at
least) a 1920 x 1080 resolution in mind. If your monitor is smaller,
you may have to backtrack a few steps in the history. I have put the
resizing and canvas size at the very end of the process, so it only
requires a few clicks.
I almost always erase the oilify from the eyes and any other feature of my character’s face that I want to stand out.
This doesn’t sharpen for you. I sharpen manually in select places.
I use Photoshop CS6. This may not work as well for you with any other version.
Credit:
Special thanks to chisimiand rinniesims for lending their pictures to me. :3
So I recently got an ask about a tutorial I linked to a really long time ago which sort of talks about this but seems to not exist anymore so I decided to make one for you guys. In order to follow this tutorial, your cc must be in package format NOT sims3pack.
Note: The title for this is a bit misleading. This tutorial only works for things like makeup, face paint and contacts. Don’t try doing this with clothes unless you want to have some scary looking kids!
This tutorial can be used for other age groups and genders as well just follow the same steps for those ages/genders.
Note 2: You can use this tutorial to enable toddler male clothing to toddler female clothing or child male clothing to child female clothing/visa versa. This gender conversion only works with toddlers, children and babies because they share the same body mesh. Don’t do this gender conversion with other ages!
Anyway, open the custom content you want to enable for toddlers, or whatever other age group in S3pe. Here I’m using some makeup face markings as an example. After opening the file, click on the line with the tag “CASP”.
Towards the bottom of S3pe you should see a toolbar that looks something like this. Click on the button that says “Grid”.
After clicking the grid button a little box called “Data Grid” will pop up. Here is where we will make our changes.
Under the Data Type tab there is a tab called “AgeGender”. As you can see this tab contains a few different options under it. Here we can change the age options under age, the species (aka human, alien, vampire, dog etc.), Gender, and handedness…(whatever that is). For the sake of this tutorial I will only be changing the age group but the same steps go for any category here.
So under AgeGender I’m going to open up the “Age” dropdown.
Here we can see all the ages from baby to Elder. Next to them we have the words either true or false which indicate if the makeup is enabled or not for that age group. “True” obviously means that the item is enabled for that age group and “false” means that it isn’t.
This makeup was already enabled for toddlers but for the sake of the tutorial let us say that it was not. So like the baby age group, it would say false next to the toddler age group. Simply click on the area that contains the word false and a drop down menu will appear giving you either the true or false option. Since we are trying to enable it for this age group we will click “true”.
After making our changes look for a button called “commit” at the bottom of this window. This will save the changes we have just made and close the popup window.
Now that we made the changes all we have to do is save the new package. So under file you can press “save” to overwrite the old package file. Now you’re done! You can close the program and go enjoy your toddler enabled makeup!
Personality is the most important thing about your character.
So, whenever I see character sheets, most people just put a little paragraph for that section. If you’re struggling and don’t know what your character should say or do, what decisions they should make, I guarantee you that this is the problem.
You know your character’s name, age, race, sexuality, height, weight, eye color, hair color, their parents’ and siblings’ names. But these are not the things that truly matter about them.
Traits:
pick traits that don’t
necessarily go together. For example, someone who is controlling,
aggressive and vain can also be generous, sensitive and
soft-spoken. Characters need to have at least one flaw that really impacts how they interact with others. Positive traits can work as flaws, too. It is advised that you pick at least ten traits
people are complex, full of contradictions, and please forgive me if this makes anyone uncomfortable, but even bullies can be “nice” people. Anyone can be a “bad” person, even someone who is polite, kind, helpful or timid can also be narcissistic, annoying, inconsiderate and a liar. People are not just “evil” or “good”
Beliefs:
ideas or thoughts that your
character has or thinks about the world, society, others or
themselves, even without proof or evidence, or which may or may not be true. Beliefs can contradict
their values, motives, self-image, etc. For example, the belief that they are an awesome and responsible person when their traits are lazy, irresponsible and shallow. Their self-image and any beliefs they have about themselves may or may not be similar/the same. They might have a poor self-image, but still believe they’re better than everybody else
Values:
what your character thinks is
important. Usually influenced by beliefs, their self-image, their
history, etc. Some values may contradict their beliefs, wants,
traits, or even other values. For example, your character may value being respect, but one of their traits is disrespectful. It is advised you
list at least two values, and know which one they value more. For example, your character values justice and family. Their sister tells them she just stole $200 from her teacher’s wallet. Do they tell on her, or do they let her keep the money: justice, or family? Either way, your character probably has some negative feelings, guilt, anger, etc., over betraying their other value
Motives:
what your character wants. It
can be abstract or something tangible. For example, wanting to be adored or wanting that job to pay for their father’s medication.
Motives can contradict their beliefs, traits, values, behavior, or
even other motives. For example, your character may want to be a good
person, but their traits are selfish, manipulative, and narcissistic.
Motives can be long term or short term. Everyone has wants, whether they realize it or not. You can write “they don’t know what they want,” but you should know. It is advised that you
list at least one abstract want
Recurring Feelings:
feelings that they have
throughout most of their life. If you put them down as a trait, it is
likely they are also recurring feelings. For example, depressed,
lonely, happy, etc.
Self Image:
what the character thinks of
themselves: their self-esteem. Some character are proud of themselves, others are
ashamed of themselves, etc. They may think they are not good enough,
or think they are the smartest person in the world. Their self-image
can contradict their beliefs, traits, values, behavior, motives, etc.
For example, if their self-image is poor, they can still be a
cheerful or optimistic person. If they have a positive self-image,
they can still be a depressed or negative person. How they picture themselves may or may not be true: maybe they think they’re a horrible person, when they are, in fact, very considerate, helpful, kind, generous, patient, etc. They still have flaws, but flaws don’t necessarily make you a terrible person
Behavior:
how the character’s traits,
values, beliefs, self-image, etc., are outwardly displayed: how they
act. For example, two characters may have the trait “angry” but
they all probably express it differently. One character may be quiet
and want to be left alone when they are angry, the other could
become verbally aggressive. If your character is a liar, do they pause before lying, or do they suddenly speak very carefully when they normally don’t? Someone who is inconsiderate may have issues with boundaries or eat the last piece of pizza in the fridge when they knew it wasn’t theirs. Behavior is extremely important and it is advised you think long and hard about your character’s actions and what exactly it shows about them
Demeanor:
their general mood and
disposition. Maybe they’re usually quiet, cheerful, moody, or
irritable, etc.
Posture:
a secondary part of your character’s personality: not as important as everything else. It is advised you fill this out after. Posture is how the character carries themselves. For example, perhaps they swing their arms and keep their shoulders back while they walk, which seems to be the posture of a confident person, so when they sit, their legs are probably open. Another character may slump and have their arms folded when they’re sitting, and when they’re walking, perhaps they drag their feet and look at the ground
Speech Pattern:
a secondary part of your character’s personality: not as important as everything else. It is advised you fill this out after. Speech patterns can be words that your character uses frequently, if they speak clearly, what sort of grammar they use, if they have a wide vocabulary, a small vocabulary, if it’s sophisticated, crude, stammering, repeating themselves, etc. I personally don’t have a very wide vocabulary, if you could tell
Hobbies:
a secondary part of your
character’s personality: not as important as everything else. It is
advised you fill this out after. Hobbies can include things like
drawing, writing, playing an instrument, collecting rocks, collecting
tea cups, etc.
Quirks:
a secondary part of your
character’s personality, not as important as everything else. It is
advised you fill this out after. Quirks are behaviors that are unique
to your character. For example, I personally always put my socks on
inside out and check the ceiling for spiders a few times a day
Likes:
a secondary part of your
character’s personality, not as important as everything else. It is
advised you fill this out after. Likes and dislikes are usually connected to
the rest of their personality, but not necessarily. For example, if your character likes
to do other people’s homework, maybe it’s because they want to be appreciated
Dislikes:
a secondary part of your
character’s personality, not as important as everything else. It is
advised you fill this out after. Likes and dislikes can also
contradict the rest of their personality. For example, maybe one of
your character’s traits is dishonest, but they dislike liars
History:
your character’s past that has
key events that influence and shape their beliefs, values, behavior,
wants, self-image, etc. Events written down should imply or explain
why they are the way they are. For example, if
your character is distrustful, maybe they were lied to a lot by their
parents when they were a child. Maybe they were in a relationship for
twenty years and found out their partner was cheating on them the
whole time. If their motive/want is to have positive attention, maybe their parents just didn’t
praise them enough and focused too much on the negative
On Mental and Physical Disabilities or Illnesses
if your character experienced a trauma, it needs to have an affect on your character. Maybe they became more angry or impatient or critical of others. Maybe their beliefs on people changed to become “even bullies can be ‘nice’ people: anyone can be a ‘bad’ person”
people are not their illness or disability: it should not be their defining trait. I have health anxiety, but I’m still idealistic, lazy, considerate, impatient and occasionally spiteful; I still want to become an author; I still believe that people are generally good; I still value doing what make me feel comfortable; I still have a positive self-image; I’m still a person. You should fill out your character’s personality at least half-way before you even touch on the possibility of your character having a disability or illness
Generally everything about your character should connect, but hey, even twins that grew up in the same exact household have different personalities; they value different things, have different beliefs. Maybe one of them watched a movie that had a huge impact on them.
Not everything needs to be explained. Someone can be picky or fussy ever since they were little for no reason at all. Someone can be a negative person even if they grew up in a happy home.
I believe this is a thought out layout for making well-rounded OCs, antagonists and protagonists, whether they’re being created for a roleplay or for a book. This layout is also helpful for studying Canon Characters if you’re looking to accurately roleplay as them or write them in fanfiction or whatever.
I’m really excited to post this, so hopefully I didn’t miss anything important…
If you have any questions, feel free to send a message.
backstreetsims 