As I said in my Q&A thread, I am now creating a thread for character fractalling. This is a system that can deeply develop characters in your stories, but can look overwhelming with all of the steps. So, here, we’re going to take the character fractalling system and look at it step-by-step, making it much less overwhelming. I have several characters I would like to take through this system, but I’m only going to begin with one, my main character Victoria. However, if you come in late to this thread and we’re farther along in the process than you’d like, I’ll pull in another one of my characters and start at the beginning with you. This thread is for anyone and everyone wanting to go through the Character Fractalling System. We’ll start with the first stage, first step:

• 'Who' Stage
This is the first and most foundational of all the stages. This is where you create an abstract character to work with. You are mainly creating the material with which to create a character, if you will. If you have a general idea of your character, no idea at all, or even if you already have a well developed character, then this step needs to be your first step (which pretty much exhausts the possibilities, hence our placement of it at the beginning). At the end you will have an abstract, summarial view of what the character is going to look like after you are done with the fractalling. But expect this to change: this and all other steps are subject to revision from later steps!

o Who is your character as described in one sentence?
Write one sentence giving an overview or summary of your character. This is generally pretty hard to do (and that is good), but it is very helpful. It will not cover everything in the character by no means. It will simply give you a snapshot view of the character. Do not include anything about what the character looks like! That is not what this is for. Wait patiently for that.

Victoria is a strong, independent girl who has a goal and sets herself to accomplish it, but inside she is weak and struggling, not knowing whether to continue with her Christian faith or not.

Now your turn! Introduce one or several of your characters into this thread and get them started into this system.

Thanks Nemo! It's great you broken down that big scary character fractalling post!

Are you still doing this? Because I'll join if you are.

Is there a place to see all the character fractal steps? *found - see note below*

Edited to note that, yes, I originally missed the obvious, but have now found the original character fractal thread.

YES! I am still doing this thread! Although I may switch my character to a new Historical Fiction character I have. I've just been waiting for someone to join this thread! Thank you so much!

This is a great idea, Nemo! And I wish I could join you as I fractulate my other MC, Grace. But since Grace is for NaNo, I'm on a deadline so I can't join in.

Azlyn - Yeah, mine are for nano too, but since I have my plot set, I decided I had some time to develop my characters a bit more.

Here's my MC

Fennella is a young, naive, wood nymph who is sometimes too friendly and sometimes too optimistic.

2. Who is your character as described by several key words?
Take several key words from the sentence in the last step. Now think of some other words that might help describe your character abstractly. Is he more like Lightning, or more like an Ember?

Foal, waning coal, sapling, strength, weakling, masked, confused, wind, ripples.

Naive, friendly, optimistic, malleable, carried by the breezes, shallow roots, fragile

(I tried to keep the metaphors wood-related)

Considering the speed you guys are going, I might be able to join in for the second stage. I am pretty much finished the first, so we shall see!

And Heavenly, if you are doing NaNo you should check out this thread.

Oooh! Yay Chitty Chitty! I'm glad you probably can join us!

Me too! I might not be able to go through the whole process with you guys, but I can do some!

*Sighs* I feel really bad about how back and forth I've been about this. I still have a lot of prep work to do for NaNo, and only 12 days left to do it. So I'm going to have to back out of joining you guys. I'm really sorry. I do hope that if Bang Bang does another character, I might be able to join her and whoever else might be doing it after NaNo. But until then, you guys have fun fractulating without me.

I'm sorry for not advancing this thread. I got busy and forgot and felt like I couldn't create a paragraph. Since I am especially busy this week, I'm going to go ahead and post the next step, and complete it most likely in the next couple of weeks. I'll still work to advance the thread, however.

3. Who is your character as described in one paragraph?
Take your key words and expand them into a paragraph of several sentences. Remember that this is not primarily a description of your character's appearance, but his persona, his inner self. You can also put some of his history in here, if they are vital to his existence and explaining him.

*comes in bearing cupcakes for story time*

I've had my eye on this thread for awhile, and was quite saddened when it died. However, while I was wandering about my life a few weeks ago, I suddenly had a thought for reviving this thread. I contacted Captain; she liked the idea, and gave the go-ahead for me to post here.

So, what's different now?

We're going to be splitting up into teams. Since we only have a few people working on this right now I think two teams will be enough, but hopefully we will have enough add-ons to make more teams later. Each team will have a leader who will keep everyone else in their team poked and prodded to work on their fractals, and will be available to help the other team members if they have a question. Captain Nemo will be the leader of team one, and I (Suiauthon, in case you didn't know ) will be the leader of team two.

Because some of us are working on a character who belongs to a different genre than fantasy, and trying to coordinate this across three forums would be way to difficult, we'll be moving to gdocs in the HW folder. Before we do that though, I'd like to get a headcount of everyone who still wants to do this.

I think that's everything... Did I forget anything, Captain?

Don't think you left out anything, Sui! Thanks so much.

I'm going to do this.

I'm glad to help.


Awesome!

I'll wait a few days before vigorously poking people who were working on this earlier.

I want to join again! I just got carried away with nano and Christmas. Let me know which group I belong to and how to "report in".

I'm glad you found this. (*is lazy and now has one less person to PM*)

I shall work on PMing right now. Once I get a response, we can move into phase 2.

Here and ready! All I have to do is decide which character to use! *Thinks* Ok, I think I know. Just give me instructions! And if everyone else is ahead of me, I can just catch up.

I need to fractal the MC (and only character) for my next novel, so sure!

Good! I have also managed to rope Andrew into doing this.

*likes that the list of people doing this are growing*

The PM giving access to the gdoc is finally sent! Once we (the planners) have the first round of people settled in and we have a better idea of how to run this (yes, you first rounders are all guinea pigs ) I shall archive this thread and make a new one for other people that want to join in.

*speaks in squeaky guinea pig voice* Good! Great work!

Hey everyone! I'm archiving this thread because, GUESS WHAT? We have our new system up and running! Check it out!