Thread: A character workshop.

[Arkandel]

So I had this idea for a workshop thread for new concepts. It has a very simple format which I hope we can use, although if you want to create a different template then please by all means, go right ahead.

The original format: A quote, poem, tagline or phrase trying to encapsulate the character's theme. What are they about? What is their tragedy, their triumph or their place in life? It doesn't need to be inspirational or even feel-good; it should be workable for a hero's journey, a coward's lament or a rogue's spite. Anything!

Then others can propose their own or they can take something any of us put together and reimagine it. What concept could you run based on the same foundation? Two people can be inspired in completely different ways after all.

For example here's my take:

I made my song a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies

From heel to throat;

But the fools caught it,

Wore it in the world's eyes

As though they'd wrought it.

Song, let them take it

For there's more enterprise

In walking naked.

( W. B. Yeats, A Coat )

I'm imagining a fallen Tony Stark type - an Elon Musk whose enterprise was ripped from him by the accountants who now own and run what he built. In his late thirties, his best ideas spent now and what fame he has left nipping at his heels, ridiculed for the heights he had once conquered but he's struggling to keep himself together and not care about it... even when it's rubbed in his face.

He still hopes but doesn't know that he has the fire in him. What if the pool is too shallow or his success too random? His next project could be all the proof the world needs (assuming anyone is left watching - is even that only in his head?) to assume it was only luck the first time around, too, so that there is fear each time he dips his hands into the work again, and resents anyone trying to convince him to try once more.

There is room in there to plot for figures to come back from his past; litigators eager to see if the patents they own could take anything he still has, journalists interested in writing a come-back story for him, old colleagues wanting to reconnect, crazy fans, younger versions of him wanting to be inspired.

Wanna buy in?

[Goldfish]

I wanted to start a thread like this but I didn't have an angle. This is a good angle.

I'll be back. Soon...and probably often.

[Arkandel]

I really thought this thread would catch on! Shows what I know.

[Ninjakitten]

@arkandel I think this idea is neat, but it takes a lot of thought/time/mental energy to participate in,and right now I don't have it to spare. (But I hate when I have a neat idea and it doesn't get traction, so I'm sorry about that!)