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ThirdPotato β Character Balance Meme
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Published: 2010-02-20 22:08:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 272319; Favourites: 9513; Downloads: 25512
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Description
Just a little meme for character balance, with some tips and hints. You can use this for a group of characters, or just a few single characters. Anyway, hope yall find the information helpful!Now comes in Excel sheet format! Check it out HERE
For the record, this is -not- a definitive chart on how to make a character. For that, see the link below. This is simply to see if a cast of 7 or less characters is well balanced according to some little thing I made up. Also, make sure to read ALL the notes as it mentions that a good cast does NOT consist of ALL well-balanced characters, but a balance of balanced and unbalanced. It is really only important that your main character is balanced. Yes, there are exceptions, this is a general meme for fun. If you want to take it seriously, again, see below.
For more character development things, please check out my epically long Character Profile Form here fyuvix.deviantart.com/art/Charβ¦
For tutorials on character development and writing, see the Reference folder of my gallery: fyuvix.deviantart.com/gallery/β¦ Check out this other great meme by pichu4850 here!
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Comments: 645
This and your Profile Form are so helpful! Thank you so much for making them!
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thanks so much n.n I'm so glad to hear
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I did it, I mainly got "0 Perfectly Balanced" and "1-5" Well Balanced" with one character getting "6-10 Strong Character" lol. Quite an interesting character sheet you have. it'll come in handy
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Awesome n.n Thanks!
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I filled it: [link] 
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I might odo this to kind of sort out my character's personalities
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This is super helpful! I always have problems with making up my characters traits so this is a good way to get really specific about their personalities.
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Thanks, glad to hear
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Hahahahaha, YOU BLOCKED ME?! Hid my comments?! Well aren't you a big Mr. Bravepants. You think people criticizing your horrid meme is too much to handle? Does having someone disagree with you make you wilt like a delicate flower? Does it hurt? It does, doesn't it. And all over a silly meme. So tell me then--how do you think it feels to be the unfortunate writer who takes this insipid meme, gets a bad result, and takes it to heart? And that wouldn't be so bad, provided that the author actually HAD bad characters--but chances are, someone with perfectly good characters has taken this meme, gotten a bad result, and felt badly about it. Maybe they scrapped the whole project as a result--or maybe they screwed their characters up trying to "perfect" them based on what your meme teaches.
In short, you ARE NOT A PUBLISHED AUTHOR. You have NO BUSINESS DISHING OUT ADVICE ON HOW TO MAKE A GOOD STORY WHEN YOU HAVE NO IDEA IF YOUR OWN STORIES ARE EVEN GOOD. And don't argue how your mom likes your stories. She was just being nice.
Oh and just to clarify, so you can tell the difference: this is an example of someone being HOSTILE. Those other comments you reacted so badly to were examples of people being QUESTIONING, STATING A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION, and SPEAKING UP FOR THEIR BELIEFS IN AS POLITE A MANNER AS POSSIBLE.
You are a rude, over-sensitive, petty little man, and your meme is a disgrace. I don't care what those poor naive souls who give you nice comments say. TAKE THIS MEME DOWN!
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Holy shit, I just read a bunch of OP's other posts in this thing and he totally flipped out at someone over nothing. I totally apologise, I actually believe your insane rant is legit and valid.
Sorry about that.
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"Your meme is a disgrace."
I want to get that on a t-shirt.
As for your comment...
I actually think this meme is pretty good. It's not stating that any character outside of the 'well balanced' range is bad, just that you should refrain from having too many of them because they can be boring. If that works for your story, then go with it. This is more for the preliminary planning stages of writing a simple amateur story. OP never said he was an experienced writer or any authority on the subject. So why are you so mad?
This isn't even under the tutorial section. It's just a meme created for fun; meant to give a tiny bit of absolutely simplistic guidance for someone writing a very specific style of story.
If your hypothetical situation happened and some author was willing to scrap their entire project based on this meme, then that person was probably as messed up as you are and shouldn't be releasing their insanity onto the public anyway.
Thank you, fyuvix, for protecting us. You are a gentleman and a scholar. And since you're a scholar, I'll be taking your advice literally and shall never stray from your teachings.
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So what, you leave up the comment where I lost my temper with your ass, but the ones that were actually well thought out critique you hide? I suppose that does make sense. Now you get to make me look like I was just being a jackass from the start.
Everything about you INFURIATES me.
I was also being hostile to make a point, which clearly flew waaaay over your head: the other commenters you berated for disagreeing with you WEREN'T BEING HOSTILE, EVEN THOUGH YOU ACTED LIKE THEY WERE. I thought perhaps you needed a lesson in what, exactly, hostile is.
Now let's watch as this comment magically goes *poof*, since it's not just a long stream of insults.
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Yeah its just a meme. For the full monty, see the link mentioned in the artist's comments.
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*throws finished meme at you* 
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this is pretty good. most of my characters are well balanced, my main is perfectly balanced. however I think there could be a few more traits, or maybe make one with a more extensive list because I had some in the back of my mind for my characters that weren't there.
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Thanks; for a more extensive form, there's a link to a 16 page long one
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oh sorry XD didnt see that!
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Can we use this to compare characters from other books to see who is most kind? and who is most temper-mental?
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[link]
er i kinda linked to this on your other character Profile Form deviation by accident because it both of the pages were open and i didnt notice. Sorry. I felt i should link to it here though... again. sorry ^ ^;;
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your meme's are quite helpful 
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This is really cool. I'd use this to make a game if I was good enough with Python.
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I hope you odn't mind if I did it! It is here! =3
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What's your stance on character development in a very long story?
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I'm sorry you'll have to be more specific. What about character development in a long story?
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Sorry, I wrote that kind of quick. What's your stance on how often character development should occur in a long story (probably several volumes) with
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Well character development is always a long process. There's not so much an amount of development per pages amount. As you write the character will begin to develop themselves. Each conflict, each setback develops the character. Every chance they get to interact with another character or event will develop them.
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(Sorry, don't know what happened there.) -with an overall balanced group?
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This is a good meme...for a flexible skeleton when beginning to create a character.
Key word here is flexibility.
I feel like you shouldn't be telling people that main characters (or any, for that matter) can't be in the extremes.
The more balanced a character is, the more "normal" he is generally. In many instances, balance in a characer helps, but it's really not a necessity. There are always, always, always exceptions. But beginning young writers won't know that.
Frankly, having a bunch of main characters that are nice and neatly "balanced" can be boring to read about. Having a group of unbalanced characters can make a story all the more interesting. In fact, if anything, the negative traits and quirks in many cases should outweigh the good traits.
I say, as long as you don't go into mary-sue/gary-stu territory and avoid cliches, it's all a matter of opinion on the author's part and the circumstance of the individual story. Writing is a form of art.
Restrictions like that should not be put on a character without some sort of disclaimer.
I can understand where you're coming from in that bottom box. But you just shouldn't write it so definitively. It's overgeneralizing. Many young/greenhorn writers looking for advice will not give themselves wiggle room just because of the way you (or another person making a similar litmus test) said something. And it's because they don't know any better. If they take this test and find out their character isn't balanced or is "weak," they probably won't even think about the legitimacy of it. They'll take your word, even though their character could very well be a perfectly interesting and flawed guy to read about. Just because he isn't "balanced" doesn't make him too "weak" or "strong" a character.
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Yeah, except "balanced" doesn't mean a good-guy character with no flaw. People are completely reading this wrong. A balanced CAST means that there are well balanced characters with few extremes. If everyone in the cast was a super-powerful-all-knowing-non-flawed character, then it IS bad story writing. While yes, you CAN have extreme main characters, the point of this is to make sure that you're -cast- isn't 100% extreme-characters, nor is it 60% extreme characters. "Negative traits and quirks in many cases should outweigh the good traits." Again, "balanced" doesn't mean "goodguy." It applies to both negative and good traits. Most of the time my cast is more negative traits than good because I agree, too much of a goody-goody, and there's no room for development, however if every character on the cast is an extremely weak character, then there isn't balance because there's no supporting character to interact with. Each character in a story stands to support another in some way, shape or form. Their personalities will affect how the others interact. Balancing the cast, means that you have characters that each affect one another in different ways. The less variety in character types you have, the less change and development you'll have.
"Restrictions like that should not be put on a character without some sort of disclaimer." A disclaimer? Really? Man, if anyone's got a problem with the meme, they don't have to fill it out. XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I don't feel like I should have to hold their hand and tell them everything will be okay if they don't want to do the meme. I'm not a professor (yet lol), nor am I someone in some fancy writing league that's laying down the law of writing, dictating how everyone has to do their work. It's a suggestion, and moreover. It's an internet meme. It's for fun. If people want to take something seriously---
OH wait, what do you know. My artist's comments already HAVE a disclaimer if you didn't bother to read, it says: "Okay for the record, this is -not- a definitive chart on how to make a character. For that, see the link below. This is simply to see if a cast of 7 or less characters is well balanced. Also, make sure to read ALL the notes as it mentions that a good cast does NOT consist of ALL well-balanced characters, but a balance of balanced and unbalanced. It is really only important that your main character is balanced. Yes, there are exceptions, this is a general meme for fun. If you want to take it seriously, again, see below."
To which I link to a more seriously-taken form on character development. I feel like I've wasted my breath.
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