[Writing] Character Consistency & Identity~!

Hey y’all,

The full Script of Paizuri University Chapter 2 is now available!

Today I want to talk about character consistency and identity in storytelling. 

It’s been a big part of rewriting Paizuri University, and is always something I feel like I’m trying to puzzle through and resolve with every character.

Part of me knows why it’s important, but I don’t think I’ve ever explained it “out loud” before. My hope is that by trying to explain it, I can put it into words and maybe uncover details about what I’m doing, improve it, and be informative at the same time.

If you have any thoughts as you read through, feel free to share them in the comments. They’re always welcome.

Character consistency is important to think about, since it’s something that helps ground your character’s identity in a person’s mind. But it’s not just visual consistency, which is one aspect that helps with that, it’s also about consistency with their personality and traits.

I think the personality you show can help inform the visuals of the character, whether you end up creating actual visuals or not, someone else is going to in one way or another.

The personality you give your character is by far more important then visual. Stories can be told without visuals, letting the readers create the character in their minds that aligns with how you’ve presented the character in a story.

It can influence their appearance, what they say, how they act, and why, leading to the little subtle details that deepen, or re-enforce, a character’s identity. But it can also influence and imply a lot about their backstory in an indirect and unspoken way.

When working with other writers in the past, I feel like a lot try to figure this out all upfront, before they’ve started. Giving themselves a mountain to climb before they’ve chosen a direction to go in. But that isn’t always the way. Sometimes the solution is to dig into the mountain and give meaning to what you uncover, as you find it.

For example, when working with Summer over the years, her identity has narrowed to a specific personality that’s hard to imagine her outside of. 

At the surface, her aggressive entrepreneurial demeanour and plucky can-do attitude influences her approach to life and the type of language she uses, like when she’s overconfident or calls people “jerks”. But underneath that, is a story of how she was raised by a single mother navigating corporate responsibilities.

On my first writing of Summer, I never wrote her with a mother in mind. The backstory had only emerged as a result of giving her one, which in turn made her surface level motivations clear, but also pointed to a major influence in her life to create a deeper underlying motivation behind it.

These traits help in creating a consistent personality that makes up Summer’s identity and how she acts in the Paizuri World. 

Sometimes you just need to come up with an idea for a character, give them a voice in your head with a certain amount of personality, start writing and then iterate on them. Making observations and reflecting on them over time. 

Seeing the mountain will come later. 🗻💦

I can still fall into these traps myself, but learning to get out of them takes a good amount of persistence. 

In recent years, I’ve also played too many games with inconsistent characters with forced personalities that break a character’s identity (or the entire story), making it impossible to stay immersed in a game or story. Which is a big no no.

Have you ever experienced that? What character broke your immersion? And who’s a character that kept you immersed in a game or story? 

Let me know in the comments.

~ Zuri Sama ~