Thread: Writer in need of help, character design workshop.

The short story series I have been developing has a very unique and inhuman character who I have had to develop biologically, and I would like opinions on the biology I developed so as to make him more real and therefore more belivable.

I will start off with the aging/growing process:

This is a very slow species, but partly due to the multiple young born per birth, during the first three months of life the growth rate is the fastest, grownign from 3 feet tall and 100 lbs(avg) to 6-7 feet tall and 700lbs(avg) the death rate is quite high. This is caused by the stress put on the body to grow so fast in order to keep up with the much larger adults.

They are not weaned untill age fifteen, but within the first few years they are introduced to predigested, then solid food. The teeth dont erupt till about age ten.

They enter into puberty at age 30 (depending on the individule) and generally don't end it tull about age ninty, though they are considered adults once a female has her first fertile heat at around age 80, and the males tusks erupt at around age 80-85.

The reasoning for such a low growth and puberty rate is they age slowly, generally living between 800 to 1000 years of age. Barring, of course; injury, sickness, accidents, and cultural deaths.

Does this sound viable or should I adjust the growth rates?

Also feel free to add your own character designs to develop and work out.

I think the growth rate is a little too much for the first three months..100 lbs to 700 lbs is quiet a lot.

Might want to rethink the weaning age as well...weaning at 15 but teeth at 10...ouch!

Imagine for a moment nursing something your size. Most mother's wean their kids before about 3 or 4, and in the USA, far sooner a lot of the time. You are willing to put up with a lot more when they are tiny and helpless than when they are lifting your shirt themselves and at the grocery store to boot. And teeth, yeah, lol.
I agree that a slower growing time would make more sense and they could be equally in danger just because they are children for so long, naive. I don't know where they live but maybe there is danger there too?

Well You have to understand, they are three feet and 100lbs, to a mother who can be 15-16 feet and 6 tons or slightly more. They have to grow up so fast simply to keep up with massive parents. Add in there can be upwards of 6-8 born in one litter, if not more on the rare occasion. Now they generally have a high rate of birth defects, and those that survive birth have the defects kill them in the first three months. Though perhaps I should double the time, maybe six months?

How often do they procreate and how high is the death rate? A creature that lives as long as they do risks overpopulation. Meanwhile, with a litter that big and such fast growth you face another problem: How do the parents feed them all untill they begin to die off? Even after that, with maybe three left out of 8 in a litter, the amount of nutrients they need to consume to grow that fast is immense. I'm not saying this is a problem, only a thing that has been left unexplained.

The way I imagine it there would have to be a very low birthrate so that very few have their own offspring at any given time and other adults in the group can all chip in to help feed the offspring of another member, otherwise the strain on the parents would be incredible. Each offspring will have to consume enough to keep his body running and also to fuel his off the chart growth rate. It can work but I think a social structure, a pack or colony mentality so to say, is your best shot.

You don't mention whether this creature is supposed to have evolved or been developed on Earth or in a physical reality similar to Earth's, whether it's an alien or scientifically-created being, etc.

Otherwise, it's your creation so the only thing that should be stopping you is the limit of your imagination and creativity, and of course--most importantly--whether how your creatures are procreated, nurtured, or birthed, and how they grow, etc., are in any way pertinent to the narrative.

I started with the base of the glyptodont, the prehistoric mammalian tank, and I took it under ground and then added in my own differences. So some is writers leeway. But with the high litters the females have very large breasts as well as eight of them. the milk they produce is very high in fats and the other nutrients they need to grow. The pregnancy time is a thirty six month span, depending on the size of the litter. And the young death rate is very high due to many birth defects and the speed at which they grow in the beginning. Generally once they are grown and they go through schooling very few have survived. They make no concessions for mental and physical defects, partly due to the mental dedication to the family group or the herd. So they have a herding mentality, or more along the lines of how best can I help the clan. But another thing to mention is the fact that there is one male in every ten individuals. So generally a male will have anywhere from 9 to 15 wives. So there are plenty to care for and feed the young. I am loving the questions and comments, so please keep them coming. The more I explain, the better I can work out the details.

I'd consider researching various litter animals, like pigs, cats, dogs, etc. for purposes of initial birth rates and relative size to the mother. Then also consider other larger animals for growth rates, like horses and cows. Just because the creatures you've dreamed up aren't from earth doesn't mean it's not possible.

You initially said to understand a character you created, you had to understand the life cycle of his race. Was there a specific detail you hadn't previously understood? I ask because everyone has focused on the life cycle and no one has asked anything about the character.

It's not just the life cycle really. I first developed him as nothing more than a chat room character, and in my desire to make him more real; thus more fun to play out, I had to develop many things. Culture, religeon, langauge, biology, all just to get the proper mindset and day to day habits and small body langauge. This is but one of the many many things that I have developed. I am simply trying to get a better feel for him so that the more I write the more I have to explain his unique quirks, habits and histories to the reader.

well, life cycle to any intelligent person/creature/beast/etc. is so innate to that race that it's really pointless. Consider a parent or teacher talking sex ed with kids/teens. It could be embarrassing for some. The same might be said for your character. Raising a child wouldn't be, and neither would discussions with buddies about any sexual encounters, necessarily, but there could be details the character is too embarrassed to talk about to anyone, or like few people, he may not have any hangups about it at all.

Of course, like you say, that's only one small portion of the whole.

I think it is less pointless in this case, mostly due to the low survival rate for the young, and the fact that it is the male children that are the fewest. Partly the reasoning behind this is the fact that part of a males inherant value, e.g. social rank, relies upon how many male children he sires. There are other factors don't get me wrong, but that is a big one. And the females have a similar one in that how many healthy young they birth, and in how many of the young survive. And with this unique birth rate, and life cycle, comes a few differences between them and a human. One they are much more family oriented than we are, more protective of what they have despite the rough; and some humans would say abusive (being stronger and more physically oriented they tend to get into physical fights alot. Most of the time it is in good clean fun), ways they deal with each other. Two, because of the very long life span they percieve time differently, were a month to a few years is considered a medium span to a long span of time, they view things as decades and longer in a similar fashion. As I worked on him I began to realize that if you change one small thing, like diet or something similar, you quite literally affect the whole of the person and their race.

Actually, Lions have games of strength in a similar way to the physical fun you've described. So, that's not so out there.

And I do see your point. It doesn't have to be an exact science, nothing ever is when it comes to the life cycle of anything, except maybe insects.
There is one thing that might make a difference, for the better for that race though: technology. What is their technological level? Can it increase the chances of survival for newborns? If a fantasy setting, what about healing magics? Both are viable possibilities for change for the race. Of course, I am getting ahead of myself. There may not be anything that can be done.

For the technological aspect they wont use it to save their young. The reasoning is, is in their distant past they had the perfect utopia humans dream of. No war, conflict, disease, no death aside from natural age. Though the couldn't see it at the time, they also had no cultural advances, no motzarts, piccasso's, no Steven Kings. Culturally they were dead as there was no conflict to spur them on. Also they ended up so reliant on drugs and cures to deal with diseases that when the plagues hit them it devastated them. The problem with the plagues was that it wasn't a series, one after another; but rather twelve all at once. And they even had similar symptoms, so with all their advanced science they might've been curing one, when it was another. The result only three million out of ten billion survived. So they decided to go another route (after much trial and error). Now the most they do is engineer resistances to disease in the young and ensure no massice deaths due to plague happen. In their minds they are physically, religeously, mentally, and culturally healthier for it all. They quite literally apply survival of the fittest into every day life.

Cool - history about the race as a whole. Multiple diseases wiping them out in droves, and the effort to survive that onslaught to preserve the species.

Again, I'm going to go with parallels to understand. The diseases could be like Small Pox or even Anthrax to us. Are the diseases dead or are the survivors simply immune to those specific diseases? If immunity is the answer, that could be another reason why some of the young die. They're born without that particular trait. It's not highly likely, but possible.

On the other hand, engineering resistances to diseases in their young is a technological assist to help increase the survivability of their young. Unless you mean they do it for the fetuses while the mother still carries them?

They engeneer the resistances in vitro, er..., during the pregnancy. And that is the only time. Past that they wont do much. As for the diseases being dead, yes and no. They pop up here and there, but because of their resitance efforts and generations of having them, they arn't as serious as they once were. But genetic variation does play a role there so it isn't guaranteed. But one of the reasons the young die, is most have some sort of birth defect, holes in the heart, deformities, mental deformities. Now many of them with the deformities can survive, but they rarely survive the schooling because this is a race that makes no concessions for disabilities. Either you work past and rise above them to improve the clan/culture as a whole, or you don't and you are held back by it. They have the mentality of that you must be able to care for yourself and others without aid. We humans would see them as cruel and harsh, they see it as why should I help you if you can't/wont help yourself first? As a side note, this mentality has developed a strange punishment system and view on cybernetics. They have the capacity for cyber, but avoid it as much as possible.