Character 201: What is a Character?
Greetings and silesia! Actually, I could use a top out of that. Anyway, welcome! As all my beloved veteran readers know, Lady Verbosa, aka Anne, and I have made a huge series that keeps on growing about characters. But you know what we never answered in any of those? What the fizzling jazz wanking tsan is a character? Fear not, Anne is here to fix this oversight! GO!
What is a Character?
(Anne:) At first glance, it might be easy to assume you know what a character is. It’s the people in a story, right? Well, yes and no. There are characters who aren’t people, and some that aren’t even living entities. However, they do have some common elements. So I’m going to start with a broad definition, and then we’ll get more specific as we go.
A character is a distinct and self-contained cog with a certain level of agency that can, through its agency, affect the world around it, including other cogs and characters.
Let me walk through that along with my reasoning. I guess first of all, you’re probably wondering what the hell a cog is! Well, this is a term Vivian came up with and discusses in zhir post on Cogs. Basically, it’s any component that exists within a fictional universe or world. Pretty broad, but you can see how it fits here.
Distinct and Self-Contained
(Anne:) Looking past the cog issue, a character first needs to be distinct and self-contained. A character isn’t some nebulous thing (unless it’s distinct in its nebulousness).
(Vivian:) Or it is a micronebula species that is composed of individuals too! Scifi!
(Anne:) Exactly! It can be all sorts of things, but it’s something that could be named, even if it isn’t given a formal name in the story. Basically, if you pointed at it and said “That’s Bob,” then people might disagree, but they’d all agree that it’s something!
Agency
(Anne:) Second, it needs agency because characters aren’t passive parts of the scenery. Vivian has a great definition of agency for those who aren’t familiar with the term:
Agency is the ability to influence one’s own destiny/future.
This can be to a large degree or an incredibly small degree, but it has to be there.
(Vivian:) Not a perfect definition, but I like it. A side note from linguistics, where I took it, is that rivers are linguistically often considered to have more agency than a rock. Rodents more than insects, pigs more than rodents, and so on.
(Anne:) As you can see, agency is a scale, but in a story, not every rock and rodent is considered a character in the same way (and rocks probably aren’t considered characters at all).
This is why the “with a certain level of agency” is crucial here. The lower parts of the scale, that may, as Vivian wrote, be relevant linguistically, are unlikely to be of interest in storytelling. Where the level is drawn may depend on the story, the world of the story, and numerous other factors, but things below that level are not considered a character but more part of the scenery. And as you’ll see below, the setting can absolutely be a character in some stories! So the level really is story dependent, but bottom line, that agency has to impact the story in some way for it to be considered a character. I’ll talk in a bit about moral and narrative character types, but it needs to have both to fit the character category.
Now, sometimes a character might not be free to make choices or might have their agency taken away, but they have to be capable of agency.
(Vivian:) Agency is an unremovable property; constraints on agency due to physics, social expectations, threats, etc, do not negate the innate property.
Affecting the World
(Anne:) And finally, a character affects the world in a variety of ways, usually through interactions with other characters, but also with a variety of other worldbuilding cogs such as the culture or government and also writing cogs like themes and mood.
Again, Cogs
(Anne:) Once we’ve established what characters are, we have to start understanding them as cogs. One sort of secondary definition I like focuses on understanding characters through their agency:
Characters are defined by the choices they make.
This is a great way to understand characters. Again, characters aren’t totally passive things, and it’s the choices that they make that inform the audience about what they are (and being prevented from making a choice or refusing to make a choice is still a kind of choice). This is how we understand and interpret characters.
So we have our basic definition and a way to understand characters. Hooray! We’re done, right? …You realize I’m called Lady Verbosa for a reason, right? I wouldn’t let this post end without at least a few more thousand words! 😈 (Vivian: I am so proud of her learning jokes). It’s taken a while! But back to character! Let’s look at some common and uncommon types of characters and how they fit this definition, then examine some additional ways to understand and classify characters.
“People”
(Anne:) All right, first up is the easy category. It’s easy to think of people as characters, and generally when people say “character,” you think “person.” That’s because we all understand ourselves to have agency, and we understand that other people are like us in having that agency, so we view ourselves and them as characters able to make choices and influence the world around us.
So why is it in quotes? Well, it includes humans, obviously, humanoid aliens, clearly, other species similar to humans like elves and even orcs, but it also includes anything with what Vivian calls “human stuffy stuff in the brain.” That means talking animals can be characters and go into the category of “people” even if they aren’t strictly what most people think of as people. Now, personally, I consider anything with that human brain stuff to be a person with no quotation marks, but a ton of people aren’t as inclusive. Since I want to make sure everyone gets included, I pulled out the quotation marks.
It should be clear how “people” are characters, but worth going through. We’re distinct and self-contained, even if a person is part of a hive-mind (in that case, the hive-mind operates as a “person”). We have agency (again, might be at the hive-mind level, and it might be restricted or denied), and we impact the world.
Now, not all “people” impact the story in the same way, so you have things like main characters and minor characters, which I’ll go into more detail about in a later post. You might even have a “person” who’s so incredibly minor that you could argue they’re not actually a character in the story. It’s a range, or a continuum, as Vivian would say. But overall, this is a pretty easy to spot category of characters.
Non-Sentient or Non-Sapient
(Anne:) “People” might be easy, but it gets harder once you step away. Now, I always get sentient and sapient mixed up, so I asked Vivian to describe them. Zhi defines–
(Vivian:) Let me do this 😎 Sapience and sentience are very tricky subjects and should be understood as scales, or the fancier term, continuums. Amoeba are, for example, entirely unsentient, while humans are entirely sentient. Lots of animals are in between, and same goes for sapience, but many more animals lack that.
So what are these bloody things? Let’s be honest, no one has any really good definition for it, so we will try our best for the discussion here, but understand that no matter what we use, it will be fundamentally inadequate to describe the actual thing we associate with it. Sentience is best understood as an internal understanding by the organism as an individual entity that is distinct from the surrounding, and that individuals of the same species are entirely different. Yes, it is difficult to test, but “primitive” animals react more than doing any actual thinking, showing they don’t have any understanding of anything. But let’s not go into the issue of seeing if a species has sentience and to what level; my head hurts just imagining doing it.
As for sapience, this one is even trickier, but one can understand it as “wisdom.” In this context, it can refer to a cognitive capability that involves both intelligence and other functions that allow one to take short cuts. If you are highly intelligent, you can figure things out. Octopi, for example, are very intelligent and capable of figuring out loads of stuff. But they have no shortcuts to do it because each generation dies before the next one. Humans have language to transfer knowledge and, through it, show greater wisdom than those before. Chimpanzees may not have a language like you humans, but they are fully capable of teaching others. Teaching is a form of cognitive shortcut; rather than figuring it out yourself, someone teaches you. Now, sapience is not simply “teaching” or the likes, but the combination of both being intelligent enough to figure things out and having the ability to pass it on to build on the knowledge base of the collective. This is one reason why solitary animals rarely show sapience but high levels of intelligence.
(Anne:) Wow, that was… a lot. And zhi calls me Lady Verbosa? But it’s all excellent information, and we’ll probably go into it more in a future post. I’ll add it to the list! As you can see from the examples, it’s very possible to have something like a chimpanzee be a character, but also something like an amoeba under the right circumstances. They just need to be able to make choices that impact the story in some way.
Since they aren’t necessarily thinking in sentient or sapient terms, depending on what the character is, they’re not always deliberately making the choice to influence the story. They need to have agency as linguistically defined, as in influencing one’s own destiny/future, often by pursuing survival, and it happens to impact the story. For example, a virus might be minding its own business multiplying and making “choices” to infect the greatest number of people because survival and replication are its driving needs and it exercises its agency to pursue them. Sadly for our protagonists (which I’ll define in a future post!), the virus happens to turn people into zombies. (Vivian: Something something, Osmosis Jones) In this case, there isn’t a conscious choice going on, just instinct, but you can absolutely talk about the virus as a character in the story.
And by the way, things in this category tend to get anthropomorphized because we tend to attribute more deliberation to their choices than actually exists. Cells, for example, can be anthropomorphized! Here’s one of my favorite shows, Cells at Work, and one that Vivian loves, Osmosis Jones. Are cells sentient or sapient? I mean, probably? Maybe? Kinda sorta? They have agency that’s hard to see, so we turn them into people to understand them better.
I guess long story short, you don’t need the deliberate thought processes of a fully sentient and fully sapient being in order to be a character. You just need agency of a sort that impacts the story.
Setting
(Anne:) Speaking of getting anthropomorphized, let’s talk setting as character!
(Vivian:) Genius Loci is the technical term for settings or locations that can be characters.
(Anne:) When talking about setting as a character, I always think of haunted houses, where the mood and atmosphere makes it seem like the house itself is acting against the protagonist. Often, if the house is conscious/haunted, it actually is! So let’s look at our definition.
This is the category that can seem to be quite indistinct or non-self-contained, but it can still be named, giving it just enough definition. For example, you might have a fog as a character. The fog physically is indistinct, but in terms of its role in the story, it can be named. It might be a grouping of things (I’ll talk about groups in a second), and it might be something like a river that’s large and ever-changing. But while it seems vague, if it can be named or identified, it can potentially be a character. Note: you can also have an emptiness or absence be a character!
When you want to set up setting as a character, notice the physical descriptions, the emotion and personality of the setting, all the little things that distinguish it from other things. Setting can change over time and show the same type of arc that other characters undergo, though generally in a different way. You want your setting to be a living thing, not just be a passive background
Okay, so we’ve got that first part. Now we get to agency… and here’s where it gets tricky. Does a river have agency? Does a house? It really depends on the story. In some stories, no. The various elements of setting aren’t making choices that impact the story. In others? Yeah, they do.
As I said above with haunted houses, sometimes an element of setting actually will have sentience or sapience (or something like that), and it’ll show up as active events working for or against the protagonists. The Overlook Hotel in the Shining worked to bring the characters to the various inhabitants and exacerbated the growing fear and insanity lacing through every scene. The setting is perceived to have intelligence, basically, just like a person. That’s actually where “genius loci” comes from: the Roman belief that locations had guardian spirits. With haunted houses (or hotels), they really do have a guardian spirit! And it’s usually pretty pissed off and just waiting for more victi–uh, visitors! But it’s not always this clear cut.
Sometimes an element of setting will seem to have agency even though it’s pretty much incapable of making choices to further its destiny/future. A house that isn’t possessed, for example, can’t really choose things. Linguistically, it’s at a much lower level than even a river. But in the story, it can loom large and influence actions and events in the world. In reality, it’s not capable of agency, but in your story? It’s a real, living, breathing thing that has agency! This might be added by the author, but that becomes the reality of the world. Just like magic doesn’t exist in reality but does in some stories, a tree might not make choices in reality, but in a story, it might sprout from the grief-stricken eyes of a young girl, and later, when she’s a young woman denied a trip to the prince’s ball, it might drop a gown or two as she sings to it. (Yeah, the original Cinderella has a tree and birds, not a fairy godmother!) See, setting isn’t alway evil and malicious!
So I guess let’s explain when setting is or isn’t a character, since that explains better than my meanderings. If it’s just broad elements of setting, it isn’t really character. It has to be distinct and nameable. And it has to be actively making choices, whether due to a “real” element like a spirit possessing it or because the author imbues it with spirit and personality. It also has to last the entire story.
Weather, for example, might impact the tone and mood of scenes in a few scenes in the story. Is it a character? Well, if it’s always changing and never used in the same way, then it isn’t distinct and self-contained. Wind? Nameable. Storms? Potentially, sure! But just… weather? It’s definitely possible, but you the author will have to do slightly more work. If it’s entirely passive and only influences mood and not the action of the story, probably not. If it seems active, that’s often enough. But if it's just occasional and there are instances of weather that don’t show the elements of character, then it can’t really be a character. If you have storms that consistently impact the story in similar ways, that might be considered a character. But if you have weather that’s sometimes sunny and only used as background info, sometimes stormy, maybe that makes the protagonist take shelter, and maybe sometimes it’s gloomy and ominous… Well, it’s probably too nebulous, doesn’t show consistent purpose or personality aka agency, and isn’t always influencing the story. So no, it probably wouldn’t be a character in that case.
I guess this is all to say that setting isn’t usually a character, but it absolutely can be if done right. It just takes a bit of effort on the author’s part to make sure it fits the definition.
Groups
(Anne:) There are two ways a group can work. First, it can be a bunch of individuals who fit in the “person” category who work together to form a group character. Second, it can be a group of things, but those things on their own aren’t characters, only in combination. The latter can often be considered as one of the above categories since it tends to only have agency in one dimension, that of being a group. It might be considered a “person” because it has intelligence, it might be in the nonsentient/nonsapient category, or it might be part of setting, but I’m going to say it’s not really a group. So what is a group?
(Vivian:) A group is when there are too many for BLEEP
(Anne:) …Uh, yes… Well, um, in addition to that, I’m defining a group as a unified character made up of individuals who have different goals and personalities. This is different from a hivemind, by the way, because hiveminds have a unified goal and personality, so they fit better as a “person” (but the next section goes into more depth). With a group as I’m defining it, intergroup conflict is part of the personality of the group.
It’s pretty common in stories to have a group of protagonists, or to have a protagonist who interacts regularly with a group of major characters. I always think of video games when dealing with groups: it’s your party, where one, some, or all of the characters are playable, and they travel together and fight together. Or a party in Dungeons and Dragons where you adventure with the rest of your group. Basically, it’s a well-established concept, and groups have a character of their own that can work separately from the individuals who make it up.
Now obviously, the individuals who make up the party have a huge influence on the group character. And there are stories where the individuals remain primary and the group never really coalesces into its own character. But sometimes, if the combination of individuals is right, you get a new entity grown from the individual units but independent as well.
A group needs to be distinct because it needs to have set individuals within it. Now, notice that I’ve been saying individuals, not characters. A group can be made up of things that might not qualify due to their insignificance to the story. For example, you might have a crowd as a group, or a troop of soldiers. The individuals within that have distinction and agency, but wouldn’t influence the story on their own. It’s only together that they have that ability. With groups like this, you usually want to limit their ability to influence the story. People have written stories about groups like this, sure, but it’s not usually what writers are going for. So basically, while a group of things can become a character, that character should be a minor character in most stories.
Okay, now the fun distinct group: your protagonists! This group is a self-contained unit of a set (and usually small) number of characters who work together to accomplish story goals. Distinct, self-contained part of the definition satisfied!
Next, we get agency! This is one big difference between groups that are characters and those that aren’t. It’s possible to have a well-defined group, but it’s driven by individual agency. However, you can also get a real group character going if you give the group as a whole the ability to deal with conflict, and you imbue the group as a whole with personality through descriptions of physical aspects (how the individuals interact physically with each other), emotional aspects (how they relate), and thematic or mood-based elements (how the group’s choices reinforce a theme or create a mood). Individual needs and goals are subsumed by the group’s, and you can get individuals compromising on things or acting in ways they might not act on their own because it furthers the group’s destiny/future. And of course, the group needs to impact the story in some way.
Now, Vivian jokingly argues that you can’t have a group of protagonists in YA (young adult fiction). Vivian, want to give a brief rant that I can then refute? 😉
(Vivian:) blah blah blah YA people gotta feel special blah blah blah ego blah blah blah I AM NOT OLD!
(Anne:) Well said, my dear brister! It is true that YA caters to individualism, but there are some great examples of teams and groups in that age category. Like… uh… Okay, drawing a blank, maybe you have a point, but I swear they exist!
Anyway, that’s groups! When they have their own agency that can override or even contradict the individuals within it, and when they’re clearly defined, then they can become a character that influences your story in unique and interesting ways.
Hiveminds
(Anne:) You may be thinking to yourself, “Didn’t Anne already cover this under “people”? Isn’t this one reason there are quotation marks?” And yes, you’re right. The hivemind can be considered a “person” in terms of their agency and impact on the world and story. The reason it gets its own section is that people tend to do the same thing over and over again with hiveminds, and there’s so much possibility! I’ll let Vivian take over with some ideas!
(Vivian:) You give your sister a voice on your own blog, and you think she’d use it to say something, but noooo!!!!
But yes, hiveminds are often severely underutilized and heavily homogenous. They are all the same with very little variation. They essentially either boil down to a queen (WHY!? WHY DID STAR TREK DO THIS AND THEN EVERYONE ELSE!?) or a whole with some will but any agency or intelligence to interact with it is non-existent. In either case, the individual is completely destroyed. Which is fine for some stories, but it is so BORING! You can do more!
Let me take an example from my universe: Colligimus (placeholder name, gonna be changed). To explain how Colligimus works, I need to explain how the human brain works. You might be under the delusion that truth is what matters to the brain because you feel truth matters to you; NAAAHHH!!! The brain does not care about truth because it makes its own truth! The Number 1 thing the brain cares about is, in fact, consistency. (Anne: A brain after my own heart!) As long as beliefs and everything are consistent, no matter how wrong, the brain is happy! Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon because that shows there is an inconsistency that the brain hates, and that is why it absolutely hates it and avoids it!
I could run for ages on how the brain works with this and other things, but that would take ages. So what is Colligimus? It is a biological super organism that can mutate other organisms and make them join up in the collective that makes up the hivemind. The big thing is that as the mutations and changes occur in a newly infected person–or creature, they ain’t picky! Anyway, as the changes occur, you don’t feel forced like you’re doing things against your will. It slowly rewrites how your reward system and brain work so you maintain your free will and memories and ability to make choices; your reward system is, however, hijacked, so obeying the hivemind that exists in the back of your head and communicates with you gives huge boosts of pleasure.
I won’t go into how the communication works, but it is not telepathy or technology but purely biological. The hivemind, the “entity” that is the hivemind, exists as an entity between all people who are connected. It is not in any singular individual, it is not a specific collective but the sum total of all and their experiences and works in small parts in all brains connected. So killing any individual or small group has no effect; maybe a few memories or bits of knowledge are lost, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s irrelevant.
A fun thing I have here is that if the communication is severed between pockets of individuals, a hivemind entity remains in the local cluster that thinks it is the sum total as it always was, and when it connects up with the rest, or another, or any combination possible, it suffers from the same cognitive manufacturings of reasons that never existed just to maintain in its hivemind a narrative that it accepts as valid and avoid dissonance. So you can strike a deal with a small fraction that is separated and that the part has all intention of keeping, but when it joins the rest and it turns out the rest wouldn’t make that deal, the whole tells itself that it lied because of made up reasons X, Y, and Z, because it concludes that the deal could never be done, so it has to make up reasons.
Now, why did I say this here? There are so many cognitive things that a normal brain does that a hivemind could also do, and MORE that makes them more interesting, less predictable, and, even if “united,” it can be incomprehensible for ordinary people as we have one brain with all the neurons… It has all its “neurons” (aka people) moving about and thus can splinter off and join back up, etc etc.
(Anne:) Okay, you’re seriously giving me a run for my money on wordiness, Vivian! Gotta make up for it, but there’s not too much I can add to this. The hivemind as a character is categorized as a “person,” sure, but you can explore the limits and oddities of what actually makes a “person,” and it’s definitely worth exploring! Can you just have a queen and say that resistance is futile? Yeah. But can you do other, crazy, interesting things? Please do! And it all counts as a character.
Archetypes vs Tropes vs Clichés, Briefly
(Anne:) I’m going to write a whole blogpost about the differences between these, but for now, I’ll attempt to be brief. But if you are lost on the differences, keep an eye on the blog for when it’s published!
In some ways, these three things are quite different, but in other ways, there’s considerable overlap. Let’s look at some definitions first. Always a good place to start! I’ve gathered these definitions from across the internet, by the way.
Archetype: the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are based; a type that fits fundamental human motifs.
Trope: a theme or device that reflects pre-existing genre archetypes; a necessary story element or pattern determined by genre.
Cliché: a trite or overused expression, idea, plot, character, situation, phrase; something that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse.
Notice how they build from each other. The archetype is the fundamental element, the original model. Archetypes are broad categories and while they do dictate certain aspects of the cog they’re related to, such as character type, there’s room for a huge array of different approaches. Archetypes are inescapable and generally help your writing and the story.
A trope grows from that and is an archetype that fits within and defines a certain genre. If you want to write in a certain genre, then these are also inescapable, and they’re also usually helpful. A trope will be narrower than an archetype, but still allow a lot of flexibility as long as certain genre rules are followed.
When you have a specific instance of a trope and narrow it down, and when that specific instance gets used and reused until it loses all flavor, you have a cliche. These are incredibly narrow, allowing very little variation, and are characterized by their overuse.
For example, let’s start with a character cliche and work backwards. In a lot of media that involves technology, there’s a nerdy tech person with semi-autistic traits (Vivian: as a diagnosed autistic person, I want to say this term's inclusion is entirely on me.). While most aren’t actually autistic, they often have trouble communicating with others and their passionate interest in technology seems to be based on autistic traits. They have an extremely good understanding of technology and can do things that seem impossible and are very advanced for their world. When things look dire, they usually come in to save the day with some elaborate feat of technology.
(Vivian:) We may discuss the level of autism, but Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my fave characters in this category.
(Anne:) This type of character is pretty specific, and you can probably think of several characters who fit this cliche. Now, having a character with these traits can work, but this particular combination is done so often it’s a cliche. This character would fill the trope of a technology wizard, but that would include all sorts of characters who are good at using technology, not just the awkward, obsessed ones.
Stepping back further, this character fits the archetype of Scholar because the character assists the main character and story through brains rather than brawn. However, this category includes all sorts of characters, including main characters who fit this characteristic of intelligence as their main strength. But just because you have a character whose strength is intelligence, it doesn’t mean that they’re automatically good at technology, since that’s specific to certain genres, and it certainly doesn’t mean they always have the traits that resemble autism, which is a combination that at this point is a cliche.
Basically, archetypes are the broadest category, and every character fits an archetype in some way (or multiple archetypes). WIthin an archetype, there are the tropes, based on the genre. And within the tropes, if you get too specific in a way that’s overused, you end up with a cliche.
(Vivian:) I will say however, this is by far one of my most favorite kinds of characters. I wonder if it is because I am autistic? Nah, coincidence!
Moral vs Narrative Types
(Anne:) In Vivian’s post on corruption, zhi introduces the idea of morality characters and narrative characters. I love this distinction, and I’ve adjusted and expanded on it with my own knowledge of writing and character development. I’m going to write specific posts for each of these character types, but I’ll give an overview here since it’s an important part of your characters.
Alas, Vivian’s ideas are always in need of improvements! 😜
I’ll talk about moral character types first, because they fit neatly with the discussion of archetypes! Moral character types are the ways in which your character is defined by morality. That seems like circular reasoning there, but it’s all based on definitions. Your character will have a moral character type and a narrative character type, but we’re focusing on morality first.
Common moral character types are heroes, villains, tricksters, morally gray characters, orange-blue characters, etc. Most heroes have moral aims and usually have moral means to get there, though there are exceptions. Most villains have either immoral aims, or moral aims but immoral ways to get there. Again, exceptions exist. Tricksters seek to deceive others, usually through immoral means or to achieve immoral aims, but the morality is usually key in understanding them. And so on.
Next, the narrative character type focuses on, you guessed it, narrative! What is narrative? Basically, it’s the story. This type looks at how the character interacts with various story elements such as point of view, conflict, dramatic structure, character development, etc. etc.
Common narrative character types include the point of view character, protagonists, antagonists, side characters in all their wondrous assortment, and so on. There’s sometimes overlap with these; for example, the point of view character could be in any of the other listed categories here. It’s just the perspective from which a story is told. Protagonists move the conflict towards its resolution, antagonists either prevent the forward motion or set forth forward motion of their own that contradicts the protagonist’s motion, and side characters can do all sorts of things depending on their specific purpose.
All characters have a moral and also a narrative type. That’s one thing that makes them characters with an agency significant enough to count. The way that moral and narrative character types combine in the story reveals a lot about the story and also the creator. They create the overall themes of the story and show the way that the world of the story operates. Is the protagonist a hero, representing what is widely considered good morality (in their world at least)? Is the point of view character a villain, showing sympathy for the opposing side and a desire to showcase their perspective? What kind of side characters are there, and what is their morality? All of these things come into play in making the world a living, vibrant backdrop for the story and giving the audience a glimpse into the creator’s vision.
Summa Summarum
(Anne:) In sum, characters are an essential element of any story, a cog that is required for the machine of story to take place. However, these characters don’t need to be human or even humanoid for the story to take place. I’m reminded of the timeline in Everything Everywhere All at Once **spoiler ahead** when the two protagonists are rocks. Despite this, they’re self-contained and defined characters with agency, even the ability to roll if they’re determined enough. **end spoiler**
Pay attention to your characters and make sure to develop them well, and check out the rest of the character series here on the blog for more information on how to make the most of your characters and give them the kind of fully developed lives, personalities, and backgrounds they deserve!
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Anne Winchell and Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as definitions and character types are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. We encourage you to use our information! However, specific ideas such as Colligimus and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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