Beginner's Guide/Character

This page is to serve as a guide for creating a character here on Hunting Ground; whether that be a kitsune, demon, or other characters that can be used in your stories. Again this is just a guide for creating character pages, and by no means is set to restrict your creative freedom. However, to maintain a sense of unity within the wiki, and to ease the reader’s mind in finding the information they need to know on a page, we suggest that users follow this page set up when making their character.

Before we dive into each section, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the list of Useful Templates so that you understand how to add them to your page, and the purpose they serve. You may also want to check out the initial Beginner's Guide on how to make a page, so you know which templates are required on a page.

## Introduction

Although this section does not get its own heading on the character page, it is still very important. This introduction is the basic outline of a character, and gives the reader an overview of what they will find if they keep reading. To start, you will write the character's name in bold, followed by the kanji and italicized romanji in parenthesis. After that, this intro can be simple and can include the character’s name, alias, occupation, and place of work; as well as any other details you wish to add. This can be things like: how he got his alias, a brief summary of his goal in life, or a quick look into his personality. Now this is just an introduction, so I would keep it less than 300 words if you can, or else you risk losing the reader because they will skip over such a wall of text.

## Appearance

Well this part seems pretty simple right? You are just laying down the physical appearance of what your character looks like, starting with the basic body descriptions: height, build, face shape, eye color, hair color, unique features like tattoos or scars, etc. Then you add in description of the clothes they wear, such as the difference between their work clothes and their casual clothes. That’ll get you the basic stuff you need for an appearance section, but you can always expand to give the reader a greater look at the character and who they are.

Try and think of how their lifestyle will affect their appearance. Is their profession or hobby something that would reflect on something such as their muscle mass? Or perhaps they had strict parents who conditioned them to carry themselves a certain way when they walk? All of these are things to consider when describing how they look and interact with their environment. This can even translate over to clothing as well. What your character wears will paint a certain picture in the mind of the reader about who they are. Perhaps give your character a special memento, like a ring or a token, that can be incorporated into their appearance and allow you to describe the significance of such object to give more depth into your character’s persona.

## Personality

In my opinion, personalities are one of the most important part of any character. They are what give the character its soul when you are writing. Describing your character’s personality in the basic sense can be done by answering questions such as: What do they like? What do they dislike? How do they act with other people? What are their goals? But sometimes it may be easier to delve deeper and give a more well-rounded character, by explaining things like how their history impacted their personality today. An example being that, maybe they lost their parents at a young age so they act out in a need for attention by breaking rules every day. Or perhaps their friend ratted them out to the cops and got them locked up, and so now they don’t trust anyone. Their history can have a big impact on how their personality has changed, so that’s something to keep in mind. You may also want to tie their personality into their appearance as well. If you have someone who dresses in bright, provocative clothing, they probably are a very boisterous and eccentric person. Or if they dress as a monk, they may be more level headed and passive.

## History

Though you may not have noticed, a character’s history is probably one of the strongest pillars that hold up who your character is. You have to understand where your character comes from, or you’ll never understand why they acts the way they do, or even how they ended up in your story in the first place. Start by establishing when and where they were born, and make note of any big outside events that may have been going on that could have affected their life. Perhaps your character was born in the midst of a war, and that’s how they lost their father and decided to go on a quest for vengeance. Or maybe they were raised in a very prestigious, and sheltered lifestyle, so they can be a bit snooty with how they got everything served on a silver platter to them. Thinking of things like how they got their education, and any major events that they experienced before adulthood, will help determine where your character is going in the future. Your history doesn’t have to be complete at the start, and can always be revised and added to as you come up with ideas on who you want your character to be, and what in his history has shaped them to be that way.

## Skills and Abilities

This sections is completely optional where you can really describe the strengths of your character. Now, many people will separate their abilities and their skills into two subheadings within the section, to allow for easier reading and classification. For skills this can be things such as swordsmanship, marksmanship, speed, strength, durability, physiological enhancements, and intelligence. To list a skill, you will often see it done as a new paragraph with the skills name in bold, followed by the kanji and italicized romanji in parenthesis, then a colon, and a description of the skill. They will then list any subskills of that ability below it with bullet points. An example would appear like so:

**Expert Swordsmanship** (エキスパートソードマンシップ *Ekisupātosōdomans*): ......

* **Iaijutsu** (居合術 *Iaijutsu*): .....

Abilities follow the same principle in the fact that you will have the ability in bold, followed by the kanji and italicized romanji in parenthesis, then a colon, and a description of the ability. Though with abilities they will generally have pages of their own, and so you are asked to link the name of the ability to the page. Abilities also come with a variety of techniques that you can list underneath with bullet points. If there are a large number of techniques for one ability, you may want to consider giving that ability its own subheading, so you can easily reach it through the table of contents.

If you wish to use the techniques and description of an ability that already has a page on the wiki, **make sure you ask the owner of that page for permission before you use it**. You are not limited to the techniques that the author however, as you can make techniques of your own to improve your character’s versatility. A tip for creating a technique’s description that I have followed is by answering the questions: What is the technique? How does the character perform the technique? Does the technique take a lot of energy or time to use? What effects on the person/terrain does the technique cause? And are re there any variants of the technique that would yield different/greater results? Those are just basic questions to get you thinking of how to describe a technique, but don’t forget the most important part, picking out an awesome name to go with it!

## Trivia

This can be any random facts you have about the character, or any author’s notes you would like to mention. This section is entirely up to your imagination!

## Additional Sections You Could Add

Now that you have the basic page laid out, you can go back and add additional sections to help further expand on your character’s persona or their abilities. Some of the most frequent sections that people may add is an “Equipment” section to help spell out the wide array of weaponry and gadgets that a character may have, so they can have a few options to use when they are fighting against another character in a roleplay. Another frequent addition is the “Relationships” section. This can be used to display any unique relationship your character has with others found on the wiki. This can be relationships such as “wife/husband”, “boyfriend/girlfriend”, “teacher”, “boss”, “subordinate”, “rival”, and a variety of other titles. They will typically show the character’s name as a subheading, and then have a short paragraph beneath it to show how the two characters interact.