this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Worldbuilding

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Utilizing tropes/stock character types/archetypes effectively without being corny? (hexbear.net)
submitted 7 months ago by LocalOaf@hexbear.net to c/worldbuilding@hexbear.net
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Developing a couple drafts for a creative project that's been simmering in the back of my mind for years and it's very much a pretty standard genre fare in military sci-fi with characters that are in a specops fireteam doing wetwork operator shit fightin' evil aliens that want to wipe out humanity

posad astronaut-1

The more I flesh out the plot and characters in my head, the more I feel like I'm relying on trope-y plots and character types, and was wondering if anyone has advice on how to write characters that fulfill the role of a stock character type in that kind of story that still have some depth and personality that isn't just "the no nonsense leader," "wiseass with a heart of gold" "gentle giant" "stoic man of few words with a tragic past" "bad bitch that's got something to prove" "antsy pessimist that's worried the Intel's off and the op's gonna go sideways" etc

I'm working on names and personalities and character designs and they're starting to feel like they're starting to come together and I have a sense of their interpersonal dynamics, but I keep feeling like it's starting to get too derivative or predictable and feel like the beats for bringing out some characterization naturally with incidental dialogue as the plot unfolds or little character details or moments seem too shoehorned and was wondering if any writers have some tips for how to add some of that color to a script that feels natural to the genre and momentum of a story without being like "and NOW I'll add some depth to character x before we move on"

Thanks in advance

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[–] Speaker@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Tropes are not faulty world-building, they're the bones of the fiction. Tropes explain the edges of the world and guide readers into the interesting bit where your story takes place.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is why shonen fiction exists and why the authors of the latter don't have to explain the social dynamics of the good-hearted hero and his angsty friend who's always training to beat him in a fight. You just get it because it is a story as old as stories, so they can spend 40 pages explaining the mechanics of ki or whatever.

The character archetypes you describe are pervasive because they're real, and they offer readers a way to bootstrap a connection to your work by analogy with people they've known or characters they've enjoyed in other fiction.

This isn't to say you should just pulp out and write by numbers, of course (unless you want to). Tropes, played straight or subverted, are a tool to manage the expectations of your audience and show-don't-tell your way into having enough room to tell the story without having to write Tolkienesque appendices to flesh out every goopy space elf in the galaxy.

Real people have long stretches of time where small variations of the same damn thing happen over and over, but fictional people don't unless they're in a time travel story. Personal growth is a journey; character growth is a brochure.

My only recommendation is that you try to avoid building depth through dialogue. Conflict, action, and revelation are your friends. Dialogue is where you tell the reader facts about the world, and only rarely where characters are fleshed out. The interaction between the characters and the facts of the world is the world.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

GOOD reply, tyvm catgirl-salute

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What kind of future human society are these specops operators coming from?

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Halo universe, UNSC Beta-5 unit under ONI Section 3, a fireteam of Spartan-IIIs doing raids on Covenant HVTs deep into Covenant controlled space in an ONI stealth prowler

Augmented human supersoldiers in power armor

Halo's UNSC is basically space-NATO nato-cool astronaut-1

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Spartans are basically raised as government owned soldiers from birth/childhood, right? How does that kind of child abuse and brainwashing interact with their milsf archetypes?

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

S-IIs were kidnapped and trained from 6 years old

S-IIIs are older orphans from glassed human planets basically given an offer they couldn't refuse to get vengeance on the Covenant for their families and home worlds

S-IVs are normal people that were exceptional soldiers like ODSTs and Delta operators that got augmented and MJOLNIR armor post-Covenant War after the UNSC worked out some of the augmentation complications of the IIs and IIIs

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Clearly there's a lot of Halo lore I didn't pick up only playing Halo 1 and 2.

So your characters have some variation in how much actual human childhood they had before being orphaned and put in the halo guy making machine. You can use that to complicate the characters and their relationships with each other and with UNSC command.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Clearly there's a lot of Halo lore I didn't pick up only playing Halo 1 and 2.

I'm obviously a huge nerd for it, but the old novels by Eric Nylund are legitimately pretty good fun little milsci novels. The first one actually released before the first game came out and built a ton of the lore for the future of the franchise. Halo 1 is actually kinda sparse with the later world building details of the universe, a lot of it really came from Nylund and Joe Staten's writing for Halo 2 and 3. It's kinda like how A New Hope doesn't really give you a lot of details about the Star Wars universe by itself and a lot of it came from ESB and ROTJ.

So your characters have some variation in how much actual human childhood they had before being orphaned and put in the halo guy making machine. You can use that to complicate the characters and their relationships with each other and with UNSC command.

Thanks, that's helpful. I want to make some tension between them and the UNSC's brass and protocol (especially ONI, who are space-cia)

Halo special interest dumping srySpartan-Is (called Project Orion officially? idk) are just dudes who were good soldiers and got sooped up with experimental steroids basically but aren't quite supersoldiers like the later Spartans. Sargeant Johnson from the first 3 games is an S-I but it's only mentioned in the books

John Halo the Master Chief (and Blue Team, his since 6 years old siblings essentially that are important characters in the extended universe and books but only show up in the games in Halo 5 which kinda sucked) are Spartan-IIs

Spartan-IIIs are in Halo: Reach as the members of Noble Team (except Jorge, who's a S-II, and an absolute unit and a big "gentle giant" trope character. Also his name's pronounced "George" but spelled Jorge? And he's like, ethnically ambiguously British I guess but speaks Hungarian fluently too? Idk)

Spartan-IVs are the NPC ally Spartans in 4, the player character for 4's multiplayer and Spartan Ops (cool idea, poor execution and writing) and 5's Fireteam Osiris in campaign

also the master chiefs suit jacks him off automatically so he's volcel volcel-kamala

~not~ ~really~ ~but~ ~that's~ ~funny~

the-more-you-know

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Special interest dumping is cool to do.

I read a site which calls itself "halopedia" a little bit and found some more tension points. It claims the Spartan program up through S-II was originally started to fight against human insurrectionists rather than the Covenant, and also that the S-III Spartans were intended to be cheap disposable shock troops sent on suicide missions. Also, this is my own speculation but it seems likely that the planets the Covenant attacked first, and therefore the planets the S-III Spartans would be drawn from, would be the same ones which had been hotbeds of the insurrectionists, both probably tending to be the furthest out colonies. So maybe some of the ones who had been orphaned when they were older would remember their parents' broad black brimmers so to speak.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

There are also human space comrades (Koslovics) comrades and human space fash (Frieden) pigmask-off who fought a major war with each other prior to Earth getting a unified (lib? socdem? never really expanded on) government prior to humans gaining FTL tech and colonizing near-Earth exoplanets (and the moon and Mars)

Idk if the Koslovics and Frieden made it to far off colonies (they and their conflict are incredibly tertiary background lore) but that's also a potential angle for some plot points with the UNSC and United Rebel Front (human separatists who want the colony worlds to be independent of Earth and the UNSC, even after the Covenant discovered and starting wiping out humanity. No united human front even when there's genocidal aliens I guess.)

The URF briefly come up in Halo: Reach when your player character (Noble 6) and Jun (Noble 4, the team's sniper/spotter/designated marksman) run into rebels with a stash of stolen UNSC weapons and team up to protect their homes and fight the Covenant together (temporarily)

(Rebel) "We've got caches of weapons and supplies all throughout this valley"

(Jun) "You know this stuff is stolen, right?"

(Rebel) "What, you're gonna arrest me?"

(Jun) "No... I'm gonna steal it back. >:) "

michael-laugh

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wow, it's Halo canon that the UNSC got its start crushing communists on Mars, how about that.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Like I said, it's space-NATO lmao

ONI were probably doing Years of Lead shit arming the Frieden too but that's speculation

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When you're the one writing the fanfic speculation becomes canon

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh shit I just got a great idea to incorporate a canon character that's only mentioned indirectly by the main canon stuff in a really cool way that nerds that know who it is will be like leo-point

This is coming together well, I gotta get a design doc together and make a first pass spec script

It's weird, I love Halo but think most of it is disappointing for more than a decade and I could do better as a major nerdy fan, and who knows, maybe I will! sicko-lea

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think some of the best fanfics come from loving but also kind of hating the source material

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The Halo company is not happy with me—that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.

trump-anguish

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] snowflake@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

advice on how to write characters that fulfill the role of a stock character type in that kind of story that still have some depth and personality that isn't just "the no nonsense leader," "wiseass with a heart of gold" "gentle giant" "stoic man of few words with a tragic past" "bad bitch that's got something to prove" "antsy pessimist that's worried the Intel's off and the op's gonna go sideways" etc

Use real life. The pain and suffering in your soul from disappointment or rejection or hatred or ambition. Your characters have that too.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

plus they kill aliens and doesn't afraid of anything

(thanks haha. I have my characters and story outline figured out, now I'm trying to get a feel for the characters dynamics with each other and a feel for dialogue. Writing good dialogue feels difficult to me, this is probably gonna take multiple drafts and rewrites)

[–] snowflake@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Worldbuilding

Characters

Dialogue

Three totally different things that require totally different kinds of thinking. The same rules don't apply across them.

[–] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

I'm prone to being mean to myself for feeling inadequate at creative projects but I guess going 2/3 so far would be pretty good if this were baseball lol