Ideas to help build your characters :)

Creating and developing realistic characters is hard (at least for me it is) so I thought it would be kinda cool if we had a place to share websites/reasorces/tactics we use to help develop our characters! Heres some of mine:

• I always use this website https://www.familyecho.com/# to help make family trees, I looooove making family trees and this website has always worked pretty well for my as you can write lot's of basic info down then link your more detailed character creations, I also just really like the way it clearly lays out the tree

• This isn't specific for character creation but I'm a huge fan of using https://workflowy.com to help map out my ideas, I don't really know how to describe it so just check it out :)

• Idk if anyone else does this but I love making pintrest boards that kind of show the whole aesthetic of my character, I've found it really helpful to just look at for some Inso

• Similar to making a pintrest board but also making music playlists for you characters is super helpful. Whether its a playlist you think describes them or a playlist you think they'd listen to, I love making them and listening to them while working on my character

• My final suggestion is kind of a random one but try taking quizzes as your character. I'm a theatre kid and this technique has always been really helpful for figuring out more about my character in acting, so I tried it with writing too. It can be like a simple buzzfeed quiz or like a professional personality test, but for me any of them are really helpful

That's all that I can think of right now, feel free to add more :)

You my good sir are a god send with the first one

I am sure to find this all helpful!! Thanks!

Oh, I use familyecho to make family trees too. It's helpful when you're mapping character relationships out, but you don't have enough info on some of them to make character sheets.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ogrx6d9oohf6D42G44j1A I've found this channel to be hilarious and also useful, particularly when he says, "here's a complex, unconventional, and interesting idea!" And then proceeds to tell you it's stupid because sarcastic humor is the base of the channel. (The channel is named Terrible Writing Advice, and it has lots of stuff on genre fiction and character development and love triangles and stuff.)
"Why have a love triangle when you can have a love dodecahedron?"

(I love that channel)

(Some of the ideas are so unironically good too - like having a damsel in distress overthrow a villain, take over his plan, and become the villain herself, leaving a moral dilemma for the heroes who were supposed to save her - like, that's golden)

(I want a book or RPG like that)

https://www.youtube.com/user/RedEyesTakeWarning Oh yeah, also Overly Sarcastic Productions, particularly their series, 'Trope Talks' (though the history vids are very insightful and entertaining, and can also count as period research if that relates to your writing)

http://www.nymbler.com/ I forgot about this site! It's a site that you can use to find names and their meanings, and they tailor the names to your preferences as you like or reject names. I found some interesting names there that I ended up using.

Pro tip for finding dystopian names:
write down some ordinary names (I like to Google lists of the most popular baby names from different years), stuff your mouth with Oreos or some sort of food, and read the names out loud.
For example, I got 'Eeya' from 'Mia' and 'Alit' from 'Alice.'