Hey y'all and welcome to Spare Room. I'm Karen Terry and today we're going to talk about using symbols to flesh out your characters. So before we get started, if you haven't watched it yet, go watch my writing with symbolism video where I talk about using symbolism and writing in general because today we're going to get into some of the characters stuff and it's going to make a lot more sense if you're familiar with the way I talk about symbolism in that video. So I'm going to link that up in the card and so go ahead and watch that and then come back to this video. So when we create a character for a roleplay, usually we set up some of the basics first and then we start playing them. But sometimes when we start playing a character, we realize that character begins to stagnate or they begin to go in a totally different direction than what we originally intended. So what I do sometimes to either kind of flesh out that character or to get them back on track the way that I originally wanted them to be, I'll start assigning them symbols. So the first one of these that I like to do, which isn't really a symbol, but it kind of sets the framework for what symbols I might assign later, is I'll assign my character traits. Now this is really popular to do in Aplis roleplays where really you're just making a short little blurb about your character and then you jump right into the roleplay. You don't have to do a whole application and it's not like a cannon roleplay where the characters already have fleshed out personalities and everything like that from their cannon. So essentially what I'll do then is do three positive traits and three negative traits and that kind of sets up the very basis of the personality of that character. Now doing just this with the traits doesn't help fully flesh out a character, but once you have those five basic things that I talked about in a previous video, like that up in a card as well in case you haven't watched that. But once you have those, assigning these traits can help you really hone in on the kind of personality type that you really want your character to have. So I'll pick generally three positive connotation adjectives and then three negative connotation adjectives. And this really helps when I'm doing my interactions to hone in on exactly how I want my character to interact with others that they're doing threads with. Now that we have that, we can start picking out specific symbols and there are so many things in our culture that have symbolic meaning. Gemstones for example have been used throughout human history to symbolize all kinds of things and they usually are used in a sort of metaphysical sense and have spiritual or healing properties. So assigning a gemstone to your character can really help you hone in on that spiritual or emotional core of the character. Flowers are another popular symbol. In the past we didn't just go to the grocery store and pick out a bouquet of flowers for somebody. Instead we grew them in our gardens or we went out into the woods to collect those flowers. So specific flowers and giving them to others had very specific meanings. What flowers you gave to a lover versus a friend or maybe to someone that was grieving were very different and it was appropriate to give specific flowers in those different situations. So picking a flower that symbolizes that character can help you hone in on what sorts of relationships are important to that character. Another way to think of your character symbolically is picking an animal for them. So if they were in the Harry Potter universe what would their patronus be? If maybe they were some sort of wear creature what would they transform into? Animals have a huge range of symbols tied to them and we love anthropomorphizing animals. So picking out an animal for your character can really help you hone in on what personality traits you want to emphasize in that character. Are they a crafty fox, a d'more cat or maybe a strong bear? The possibilities here are really endless. Colors also have symbolic meaning and color symbology is a crucial part of our cinematic language. The colors you see in a movie or a TV show are often very intentional. So picking a color for your character can often help define the overall mood you're going for with that character. Are there maybe a flimboint orange or maybe they're a tranquil blue or a wise purple? Think about both the positive and the negative connotations of a color when you're trying to hone in on a particular mood. Let's take green for example. Green is a color of nature and rebirth and newness we think about green grass or green trees or other plants. But green color grading in film is also a color that gives like an awkward sort of ambience because ambient lighting is never green. So think about the green color grading in the matrix for example. It makes everything feel awkward and artificial. It's also helpful to think about what element might represent your character. So when I'm thinking of this I usually think about like if they had magic powers like in Sailor Moon what sort of element might their powers be part of. The four elements we tend to use in the west are fire, water, earth, and air. But in the east like in China there's five elements and those elements are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. Also don't forget elemental forces that aren't in these groups such as electricity or spirit or light or darkness. Since elements usually have multiple overlapping connotations just like color this can help you set an overall mood for your character. In addition to these groups of symbols it can also be helpful to put your character through what I would call personality tests. And these are super fun to do for your character for the same reason that they're really fun to do for yourself. They tend to describe a person in a generally positive way. So it's nice to learn about yourself or your character is in that way. Maybe we could figure out their MBTI type. Are they an INFJ or an ESTP or one of the other 16 of the MBTI types? MBTI can help you pinpoint certain traits within that character such as what career might be good for them or how they interact in relationships. There's also of course the staple of role playing the dungeons and dragons alignment system. So we have two scales for that. We have lawful to evil and then we have chaotic to good. So we combine those two to get things like chaotic good or lawful evil or true neutral. Since this is used in dungeons and dragons it is a mainstay of role playing and it can help you pinpoint for your character how they might feel about certain political or economic or moral systems. Now the next one comes from one of my favorite franchises but it's picking your character's Hogwarts house. This is really useful for figuring out about how your character was as a child because houses are picked at age 11 and it's picked based on what your character values. So think about when your character was a child. Did they value bravery? Did they value learning, hard work, cleverness? This can really help you figure out the journey that your character is taken throughout their life thinking about what they valued at that age versus maybe what they value as an adult. And last but certainly not least and the one that I usually spend the most time on in this sort of realm is what is your character's sign. If you're like me, well you might not believe in horoscopes, you just can't pull yourself away from how fun they are. So I find it super interesting to look at them for my characters. And picking a sign for my character really helps me hone in on their personality and a holistic sense. So usually I'll pick out a sun sign, a moon sign and an ascendant sign for their characters and combine those to figure out the depth and nuance of their personality. In astrology, the ascendant sign symbolizes the personality that someone projects onto the wider world. The sun sign then is the person's overall personality and the moon sign is the person's inner personality and how they are feeling on the inside. Now that's super oversimplified but for the purposes of this video, that should give you an idea of how you can use astrological symbols to help define your character's personality. So when it comes to these personality types and symbols, are there any of them that you guys would like a deeper dive into maybe more specific surrounding astrological symbols or maybe a list of flower meanings or something like that? I can go deeper into any of these symbol types or personality quizzes or any of that but I'm curious about which ones you guys feel like would help you because the goal of course is to use this to build characters. So which ones do you feel like are most beneficial that you'd like more information on? Let me know down below. And remember to like if you like this video, comment down below with any questions that you have, subscribe for more videos, click that bell for notifications, all the links to my social media down in the doobly do. Thank you so much for watching and make it a great day.