Character Draft- Freya Miller

Started by Freya 'Tail' Fairwing, November 02, 2013, 02:29:40 PM

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Freya 'Tail' Fairwing

Hello. I've written out a draft of my character, a female artist, and want to share this draft here. I'm expecting there to be some mistakes, so any suggestions for improvements would be great. I've basically made a female version of myself.

Freya Miller (Tail)

Childhood Backstory: Downtrodden girl

She was born into a small, poor family. She was bullied relentlessly during her childhood, being beaten and abused, rarely making friends. She took interest to the working of guns and studied them, learning from books and occasionally, with actual guns.

Adult Backstory: Art student

She discovered her talent for art and began to teach herself how to draw and paint. After years of practice, she was able to enrol into a successful art university and take her skills further. She sought art industry work after graduating with good grades.

Skill Offsets:

Traits:

Untrusting: -2 social

Delicate: Incapable: mining, -2 construction, -1 cooking, -1 growing

Childhood:

+2 shooting

Adulthood:

+8 artistic
+2 crafting
+1 medicine

Final skills w/. offsets:

Construction: 1
Growing: 2
Research: 3
Mining: N/A
Shooting: 5
Melee: 3
Social: 1
Cooking: 2
Medicine: 4
Artistic: 11
Crafting: 5


Tynan

Aside from the usual minor writing issues, this looks pretty good!

Do note that traits don't work this way; you can't define your traits (and they're not even really in the game at the moment). You could easily move those skill offsets and work disables into your backstories though.

Suggested rewrites
She was bullied relentlessly during her childhood, being beaten and abused, rarely making friends.
->She was bullied relentlessly, beaten often, and rarely made friends. (the childhood part is already implied since this is a childhood description).

She took interest to the working of guns and studied them, learning from books and occasionally, with actual guns.
->As she grew up she developed an interest in guns. She usually studied from books, but occasionally managed to get some practice time with the real thing.

I also suggest you start sentence 1 with the name; starting three sentences in a row with "she" gets repetitious.

Cool nickname by the way. Though it does remind me of Sonic the Hedgehog :P
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Freya 'Tail' Fairwing

Thanks! Tail was initially going to be her last name, with Tatter as a nickname but I couldn't find any instances of Tail being an actual last name.

With those edits in mind, I'll redraft her:

Freya Miller (Tail)

Childhood Backstory: Downtrodden girl

Freya was born into a small, poor family. She was bullied relentlessly, being beaten, rarely making friends. As she grew up she developed an interest in guns. She usually studied from books, but occasionally managed to get some practice time with the real thing.

Adult Backstory: Art student

Freya discovered her talent for art and began to teach herself how to draw and paint. After years of practice, she was able to enrol into a successful art university and take her skills further. Freya sought art industry work after graduating with good grades.

Skill Offsets:

Childhood:

-2 social
+2 shooting

Adulthood:

Incapable: mining
-2 construction
-1 cooking
-1 growing
+8 artistic
+2 crafting
+1 medicine

Final skills w/. offsets:

Construction: 1
Growing: 2
Research: 3
Mining: N/A
Shooting: 5
Melee: 3
Social: 1
Cooking: 2
Medicine: 4
Artistic: 11
Crafting: 5

Where do we ultimately submit these backstories?

Tynan

I've got a web wizard dude working on a webform system to put them in.

You'd still need a couple minor writing corrections; the word "being" isn't correct in that context in sentence 2 and there are a few unnecessary adjectives, like "successful". It's odd to describe a university as "successful".

Actually, looking at this again, there may be an issue with how you divided the backstories. It seems the first sentence of the adulthood is really part of the childhood. I wonder if you could separate them better, so that each could be read on its own and make sense (that's how people will see them in-game).
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Freya 'Tail' Fairwing

#4
Okay, here's the next pass. Again, this takes into mind your suggestions. I restructured the childhood and adulthood biographies, and added a new little bit to keep the adulthood biography from being too sparse.

Freya Miller (Tail)

Childhood Backstory: Downtrodden girl

Freya was born into a small, poor family. She was bullied relentlessly, beaten and hated. As she grew up she developed an interest in guns. She usually studied from books, but occasionally managed to get some practice time with the real thing. Freya later discovered a talent for art and began to teach herself how to draw and paint.

Adult Backstory: Art student

After years of practice, Freya was able to enrol into an art university and take her skills further. She sought art industry work after graduating with good grades. She made some progress with private commissions, managing to make a fairly decent living from her art.

Skill Offsets:

Childhood:

-2 social
+2 shooting

Adulthood:

Incapable: mining
-2 construction
-1 cooking
-1 growing
+8 artistic
+2 crafting
+1 medicine

Final skills w/. offsets:

Construction: 1
Growing: 2
Research: 3
Mining: N/A
Shooting: 5
Melee: 3
Social: 1
Cooking: 2
Medicine: 4
Artistic: 11
Crafting: 5