Just going to spineshatter my way in here before elusive leaping back out. (Unless something else catches my eye, of course lol)
As a writey-person who enjoys writing writey things a big part of every little narrative is world-building. Or, if you want, "My world is the river and my characters are all the stones in said river." If writing a story is all about flow (get the references yet?) where continuity is king then the characters in the story should fit or at least be shaped by the river in some way.
Is this a hard and fast rule? Nah, not really. Everyday in our own society you have people who try to break the mold and in fact 'progress' by many of its myriad forms is born of people mold-breaking in many ways. What does this ultimately mean for myself when I engage in writey-fun-times? Well let's take FF14 for example. When I first made my main character I had to do things like establish backstory, consider personality etc etc, the usual stuff. However one of the exercises I engage in -regularly- is to actively deny "This is the story I want to tell" or "This is the tale of unique person in a drab world" and so on and instead plot out the -reaction- of the people around that character.
For example, does the character appear differently than the overwhelming majority of people and what are the reactions of those people upon seeing the character? Do I have to regularly break up the flow of the story to explain that "Yes once again for the one-hundredth time, he's a white-haired-red-eyed-betailed-and-behorned gentleman with a propensity for carrying a sword that's the same size he is and so on and so forth. "Drawing weird looks" is one thing and yeah it's an obvious attention-catch device for said character. But one must at all times consider the realistic reactions of real people to absurd/shocking/distressing exterior stimuli. Not everyone is going to stand about pointing and staring. Depending on how over the top said character is or how divergent they are can lead to conflicts and no I'm not just talking about the initial 'beat up the bar drunks to establish that this is a character that is not to be messed with' trope.
tl;dr is your character a boulder in a stream that diverts the flow of the river around them or are they allowing the flow of the story to take them from the beginning, middle, and end?
As a writey-person who enjoys writing writey things a big part of every little narrative is world-building. Or, if you want, "My world is the river and my characters are all the stones in said river." If writing a story is all about flow (get the references yet?) where continuity is king then the characters in the story should fit or at least be shaped by the river in some way.
Is this a hard and fast rule? Nah, not really. Everyday in our own society you have people who try to break the mold and in fact 'progress' by many of its myriad forms is born of people mold-breaking in many ways. What does this ultimately mean for myself when I engage in writey-fun-times? Well let's take FF14 for example. When I first made my main character I had to do things like establish backstory, consider personality etc etc, the usual stuff. However one of the exercises I engage in -regularly- is to actively deny "This is the story I want to tell" or "This is the tale of unique person in a drab world" and so on and instead plot out the -reaction- of the people around that character.
For example, does the character appear differently than the overwhelming majority of people and what are the reactions of those people upon seeing the character? Do I have to regularly break up the flow of the story to explain that "Yes once again for the one-hundredth time, he's a white-haired-red-eyed-betailed-and-behorned gentleman with a propensity for carrying a sword that's the same size he is and so on and so forth. "Drawing weird looks" is one thing and yeah it's an obvious attention-catch device for said character. But one must at all times consider the realistic reactions of real people to absurd/shocking/distressing exterior stimuli. Not everyone is going to stand about pointing and staring. Depending on how over the top said character is or how divergent they are can lead to conflicts and no I'm not just talking about the initial 'beat up the bar drunks to establish that this is a character that is not to be messed with' trope.
tl;dr is your character a boulder in a stream that diverts the flow of the river around them or are they allowing the flow of the story to take them from the beginning, middle, and end?
