#please take with many grains of salg

[canonical-transformation]

hi! i adore all of ur fics but especially seven prayers to seven archons it's definitely my favourite genshin fanfic ever asdjfk as someone who's attempting to do something similar but for reverse 1999, could u please give some tips on characterization?? thank you!!

Thank you so much! Characterisation is something I spend a lot of time on and take a lot of pride in, and I am immensely proud of fics like Seven Prayers and Lynette in Repose and (spoilers!) the final act of No Bird an Island. I don't have a formal process for how I do characterisation but my recommendation is focusing on character voice.

Not voice as in "how do they talk"?, but voice as in "how do they think"?. (I tend to write from within their POV.)

What mental habits come so naturally to the character that they don't notice it half the time? (Perhaps Sonetto filters everything through "what would Vertin do?". Perhaps Lisa Minci measures every decision by how much time she spends standing. Perhaps Kaeya is constantly evaluating "am I safe with these people?".)

What's their baggage? What do their thoughts constantly drift back to despite their best efforts? (Is Kazuha haunted by his "failure" to save Tomo? Is Ningguang haunted by her painful childhood?)

What do they value?

What do they think common sense is?

This isn't the whole picture for characterisation. At best it's, like, 30% of it. But it's a good foundation to start from, because it tells you a lot about how they think, how they talk, how they decide.

Reading in-game dialogue or writing from that character helps a lot. Ditto listening to voice acting — although for R1999 the EN VAs often sound like Elder Scrolls NPCs (derogatory) so I'm not sure they're given much extra insight to work with.

If @fishareglorious ever releases their damned website then that will surely be a good resource :3