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| Tips & Advice Share your tips, tricks and advice. |
12-03-2007, 06:09 PM
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#1
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Member
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Birthdays and Zodiac
I've really enjoyed reading this site the past few days and felt like I've been taking more than I'm giving. So I wanted to share the best writing tip I've ever received.
Give your characters a birthday and make their base personalities those of their zodiac sign. Now, it doesn't matter if you believe in astrology or not. What it does is enables you to keep a firm concrete base of who your character is. The zodiac contains all the main elements of basic personalities spread to 12 different groups. This can help you especially if you're character heavy, to keep your characters very distinct from one another.
Sometimes, if I know I want a character to be a certain trait, I'll look up what zodiac sign has the trait I'm looking for and assign him/her a zodiac sign based off of that. It helps with opposites too. Every zodiac sign has an opposite and you can easily form your main character's foil to the opposite zodiac sign.
But yeah, thought I'd share. I know it helps me keep my characters very consistent and separate from the others that they interact with.
Happy writing!
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12-03-2007, 06:29 PM
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#2
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Ink Slinger
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: AmbientArtists
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Posts: 3,866
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Zodiac signs are so basic. It's better if you include the persons elemental information as well.
__________________
My hopeful book:
Crap! Haven't posted it anywhere yet, darn!
"Only tyranny cloaks itself in shadows. The light of justice can not be hidden."    
www.theoddvillepress.com
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12-04-2007, 07:48 AM
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#3
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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 288
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That could actually work quite well in terms of sticking to a set path and may work with periphery characters however, for primary characters you may want them more sophisticated than a zodiac description.
Nevertheless a good idea.
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12-04-2007, 10:35 AM
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#4
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Member
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Well yes, you would always want to build more on that. It's just a good start for the basic form of a character.
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12-04-2007, 10:42 AM
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#5
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Wordsmith
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: South-east UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,844
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ilasir Maroa
Zodiac signs are so basic. It's better if you include the persons elemental information as well.
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Don't forget their biorhythms and dna profile as well. |
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12-04-2007, 08:08 PM
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#6
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Ink Slinger
Join Date: Jun 2007
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Ok, now that's going too far Mike... 
__________________
My hopeful book:
Crap! Haven't posted it anywhere yet, darn!
"Only tyranny cloaks itself in shadows. The light of justice can not be hidden."
www.theoddvillepress.com
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12-04-2007, 09:54 PM
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#7
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Member
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike C
Don't forget their biorhythms and dna profile as well.
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What kind of tip is that? Everyone knows to write down their character's dna profile before doing anything else. Amateur.  |
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12-04-2007, 10:06 PM
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#8
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: America.
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,055
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If you're going to use Zodiac signs for personalities, do it properly. There's your sun sign, your moon, your rising sign, and one random thing for all the planets. Hell, let's throw numerology in there as well. See? Now your 'great advice,' just seems like bullshit. Which, you know, it is.
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12-05-2007, 02:15 AM
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#9
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Ink Slinger
Join Date: Jun 2007
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I think somebody might be a negative fire, with perhaps some positive water in there... 
__________________
My hopeful book:
Crap! Haven't posted it anywhere yet, darn!
"Only tyranny cloaks itself in shadows. The light of justice can not be hidden."
www.theoddvillepress.com
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12-05-2007, 05:43 AM
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#10
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: England
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,391
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Or maybe uranus is just badly maligned......
__________________
You attempt to pull four story lines together in two-thousand words and nearly pull it off - Eggo
We rarely buy unsolicited manuscripts, but my editor and I thought that this was a superior piece of fiction - Sunday Express magazine
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12-05-2007, 09:31 AM
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#11
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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 288
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Quote:
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Or maybe uranus is just badly maligned......
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hahaha |
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12-05-2007, 03:23 PM
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#12
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Member
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SevenWritez
If you're going to use Zodiac signs for personalities, do it properly. There's your sun sign, your moon, your rising sign, and one random thing for all the planets. Hell, let's throw numerology in there as well. See? Now your 'great advice,' just seems like bullshit. Which, you know, it is.
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I never said I believed in astrology. All I was saying was that it was a helpful way to give solid bases to characters for people that are character heavy and have problems with keeping their characters from blending together. But I'm guessing you don't have much in the way of reading comprehension or you would have seen that in the first post. |
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12-06-2007, 12:05 AM
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#13
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Ink Slinger
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: AmbientArtists
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Or maybe he just doesn't agree. People have their own opinions. Don't take things too seriously. If it works for you, good. If it helps out even one other person, good. If not, at least you tried.
__________________
My hopeful book:
Crap! Haven't posted it anywhere yet, darn!
"Only tyranny cloaks itself in shadows. The light of justice can not be hidden."
www.theoddvillepress.com
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12-08-2007, 01:20 AM
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#14
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Scribe
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 63
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Heh, I did numerology for my main characters' names. It was actually really accurate, which was disturbing.
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"To celebrate I might sit in a different chair tonight."
- MST3K
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