Lanterntale critique place

duballl • 21 May 2022 at 7:10 AM

Critique my characters lore here, I need to get better at making character lore and writing gigantic paragraphs

secreteggent • 21 May 2022 at 9:57 PM

@duball Where would I be able to find the information about your characters?

duballl • 22 May 2022 at 10:07 AM

just go on my profile and go to the “apart of lanterntale” list and click on creature with backgrounds, most of the creatures who have backgrounds have some sort of information on their lore on them

secreteggent • 22 May 2022 at 11:51 AM

@duball So I'm not entirely sure what your goal is with creating the lore, so I'm not sure how helpful my critique will be. Is the goal just to create personalities for the creatures you chose? When you referred to your creatures as characters I had assumed that you were planning on using them in a story. It doesn't look like that's the case, so I have to ask: what sort of critique are you looking for? Pointers on their personality? Backstory? I'm mostly asking so I can better give you helpful advice.

That being said, I don't think you're off to a bad start. Most of the profiles are pretty bare bones, so there's not much I can say about them. All of the characters are pretty flat, and I've found the best way to round them out is to give them motivations and backstory that drives said motivation. I recognize that you have a lot of creatures that you want to incorporate into Laterntale so I understand that developing all of the characters will take time. If there is any specific characters you would want me to talk about, let me know, because as I mentioned, there are a lot.
I will also say that it would probably help to develop the relationships between more of the creatures to make your lore feel more interconnected. As of right now most the creatures feel really disconnected from each other which in turn makes what you've written feel like a basic character profile. Again, I'm not sure what your goal is with creating the lore, so the disconnectedness may not be something you're concerned with if you just wanted to give more personality to the creatures in Lanterntale.

duballl • 22 May 2022 at 12:31 PM

I made this lore so that I could give my cove a bit of personality, also, maybe talk about Valentina, Tassii and godi’s relationship, and roezy

Oh and, I want advice on how to make them better and more interesting

secreteggent • 22 May 2022 at 4:06 PM

Ok, so it's definitely much more of a casual thing. When I make characters I tend to get really invested in the creation process, so the suggestions I offer later in this post can be disregarded if you don't feel the need to invest so much thought in each and every character.

There's not really much that I can say about Valentina as is. You solely have a list of traits, and all of them do work for a character. That's the biggest thing I can critique about her. There's just not enough information.
It does sound like you're not happy with what you have for her- that you want her to be more nuanced and that you either don't know how to accomplish that or want to change her entirely.

From Valentina's profile I didn't really draw the conclusion that she was a high school mean girl. Superficial? Yes. A mean girl? Ehhh... like yes, she is rude, but also it's stated she can be incredibly selfless. I just don't think I know enough about her and how she treats others to come to the conclusion that she is a mean girl. I'll also say that I didn't really pick up the idea that she was someone who wanted/sought out attention, but that could also be on me misconstruing what you meant about her being self-promoting.

You touch upon a lawsuit that cost you 500,000 EC because of Valentina, but don't have any details as to why. I thought it was an interesting piece of information, but the lack of details about the circumstances meant that it didn't tell me anything about her.

Regarding the mean girl cliche (circling back to that because it sounds like that was what you were going for) you can still make her more nuanced but still have that sort of personality if you give her a reason to be that way. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to develop her character and personality more: Why does she act like that? Is it because of her upbringing? Did she used to be kind, but then had an experience that changed her? Or is it just a facade she puts up (because she can be selfless), and if so why does she do that?

Like I said in my last post, having a backstory that drives their motives, actions, and personality really fleshes out a character and gives one (as both a writer and reader) a much deeper understanding of them. If you wanted to run any ideas you had for you characters by me, feel free to DM me at any time.

duballl • 23 May 2022 at 4:35 AM

I made Valentina into that cliche because of the whole “most beautiful” thing in cyprinus’ archive entry, I’ve also changed her personality and story slightly by now