#basically anything except roleplay which demands that kind of fine detail bc maybe you ARE ordering from restaurants

[cctinsleybaxter]

Artists who admit to not knowing small details about their characters and worldbuilding have inadvertently given better advice than any character design post on social media tbh. as fun as it is to come up with what your guys would order from a restaurant or the contents of their backpack or their favorite color I've run into very few people who can leave that stuff in a story (or even leave it offscreen as paratext) without it being distracting and poorly written because it's rarely in service of the narrative. a lot of that is def just down to personal taste, but it feels more like designing characters for a TTRPG

#this goes for books comics screenplays whatever #basically anything except roleplay which demands that kind of fine detail bc maybe you ARE ordering from restaurants #as always you can run into the opposite problem too where your characters are empty vessels #but being online and having tried my own hand at a story as a teenager this feels like the more common roadblock #lighthouse is actually a great example of my ideal balance- the characters are deeply human; it feels like the finer details exist somewher #but they're not text- it's clear no one was thinking about their first memory or favorite dog breed #the focus is on structure and image #you can have it all! #books #films