So if you can't write for Anne McCaffrey’s characters, how do you create your own fascinating and memorable personas? Character creation is a fine balance between trying to make your persona unique and unusual enough to stand out from the crowd, and trying to assure the reader that your persona is still a real and believable character.

Let's walk through the basics. There are five things you need to come up with to create a persona for IoP:

1. Your character's name
2. Your character's social status, aka age/craft/rank/location etc.
3. Your character's physical appearance.
4. Your character's personality.
5. Your character's life story.

1. Name

A cleverly chosen, unique but easily remembered name fitting your character's status and personality will increase the chances that this name and character will stick in your reader's memory. Use the right names, and your characters will gain depth and resonance. An ill-chosen name on the other hand can cause your readers to laugh out loud about how ridiculous it is, groan in despair or even stop reading. There are many ways to go about choosing the perfect name for your persona. Earth names outside the English-speaking world are often good places to start. With very little adjustment, you can have a unique name that stands out. Combining different elements from earth names can provide you with some interesting results. Scanning the phonebook for surnames, or even going online to look at some random name generators can give you lots of ideas for naming your persona.

Avoid names that are too close to your own real life name (see ‘Mary Sue’ personas described below), or names which are too long or confusing. Adjusting the mythological names of Celtic and Mesopotamian deities might be fun, but do you really want a dragon named Azitawaddath?

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2. Social Status

Please keep in mind that not everyone can have a goldrider or be the Weyrleader. If you're just starting out as a member of the club, you won't be able to get a high ranking persona right away; you'll have to start small like everyone else did. If you're indeed creating a persona for a high ranking spot, you have to be doubly thorough and careful coming up with a unique but believable character. Ranker applications often follow their own set of rules, depending on the personalities of existing rankers and how much competition exists for the spot.

You might want to avoid creating a persona type that is around a lot already so your persona doesn't blend into the done-to-death crowd. Some persona types are very popular, such as female green riders, Harpercraft apprentices and Healercraft journeyfolk. To get more people interested in your persona, it can be helpful to steer clear of such overused character types and decide to do something else. There are plenty of other crafts on Pern, why not pick one that hasn't been written to death already, like the Tannercraft or Vintnercraft? Just make sure you pick something about which you have at least a modicum of knowledge (or at least know where to find research resources for the craft), or your wanna-be-crafter might end up doing implausible things. What you pick in the end will also depend on how much you wish to copost. For example, healers are often asked for when people get injured, which happens a lot at the Weyr.

When you decide on an age, keep in mind that your persona will age rather slowly (about one turn for every three real life years). Whatever you choose, you're going to be stuck with it for a while, so choose the age-range you want to be writing in wisely. This also means if you're planning on making your persona a Wingleader sometime in the future, don't start writing a candidate! If you want a Master, don't start with an apprentice! It will take decades of writing until he's old enough for the job. Some people get tired and use the "fast-forward" button by telling the webbies to age their personas by five turns. But that only serves to make your characters less believable in the eyes of the readers. Create an older, more experienced persona instead. You don't have to start with a candidate if what you want is a dragonrider. Just create a dragonrider persona and have him or her transfer to one of the club locations. That way you don't have to wait for Impression and Weyrling training to pass.

Stick with believable age/rank combinations and check your club's age requirements for personas of certain ranks. For example, in IoP your persona has to be at least 13 to be a candidate for Impression, at least 16 to become a journeyman, etc. Avoid making your persona a high achiever, being a Master or Wingleader already at age 19.

Another thing you will have to decide is where your persona is going to reside. If you like writing by yourself with lots of freedom to describe your persona's daily life and surroundings, you might want to choose a quiet location with few other writers. If you depend heavily on coposters writing with you, you might want to choose one of the more populated areas with more strict schedules regulating your persona's life and interaction with others.

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3. Physical Appearance

Try to make your character unique, but stick with the physically possible and Pern canon. This means, no orange eyes or purple hair, no pointed ears, no humans capable of breathing under water and so on. Use only naturally occurring hair colors and combine them with the natural eye colors and skin tones that would go with them. If you don't, people might start groaning rather than finding your character's looks intriguing.

Remember that Pern's population is a mix of Asian, African, and Caucasian people. There are dark-skinned, frizzy, black-haired people of African origin, dark-skinned, straight black-haired people of Indian origin, people with fair skin, slanted eyes, and the famous shiny black hair of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese origin, and all sorts of mixed-ethnicities. If you look on a worldwide basis, the vast majority of people on Earth have black hair and brown eyes. The darker colors are usually dominant over the lighter ones. The majority of Pernese follow the same pattern. Exceptions are possible, of course, and are often the result of limited gene pools being isolated over a long time. The early settlers actually were a quite limited gene pool, and means of travel being limited on Pern sometimes means isolated remote holds.

It helps to check a few persona charts to see if anything already occurs with a high frequency. If many personas have red hair, make one that doesn't. (Actually, the fiery redhead with the sparkling green eyes, and the fiery temper is probably the most overused persona cliché in Pern fanfiction.) If many personas are diminutive in size, make one that's big. Try to be different, whatever that is for your club and location, but without turning human genetics upside down.

Give your persona a unique identifying mark. Maybe your persona has an extremely long and pointy nose? A tattoo? A missing finger? A long scar running all the way down her leg? Dragonriders seldom come without battle scars. Does your persona have a typical hairstyle? Be careful with extremely long hair on dragonriders. Can you imagine how much of a pain it would be to stuff all that hair underneath the riding helmet?

Don't forget that the body isn't everything; people aren't running around naked. Does your persona have a unique style of clothing? What are your persona's favorite colors to wear? Does she have a piece of jewelry that she is never seen without? A favorite weapon, telling everyone not to meddle with your tough guy?

If someone would observe your persona in a crowd of people, would there be anything that would draw attention? Any annoying or endearing quirks or habits your persona might be seen displaying? Does s/he move gracefully like a dancer? Is s/he often seen smiling, or frowning?

Looks aren't everything. What does your persona's voice sound like? This is an important piece of information for harpers, but also nice to know for other persona types. Does s/he speak with an accent that could tell other people immediately which part of Pern s/he is from? Does s/he speak in a loud, commanding voice or in a timid whisper? If your persona is a healer, how do his or her hands feel to a patient? These little things help set your persona description apart from most others as many writers only describe the standard hair-eye-skin color/height/weight scheme of their personas, but tend to forget about the other little things that make people different.

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4. Personality

Here we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of persona creation as the personality will make or break your character's believability and suitability as story fodder. The persona roster on the web page is just the first place where you give an outline of your persona's personality. The main part of introducing your persona to the readers, and fleshing out his/her personality will happen in the posts you write. Personas sometimes tend to change their personality over time once you start writing. Don't be afraid to update your persona chart if that happens, otherwise coposters looking up your persona's description might get confused!

One thing to avoid is creating an all-too-perfect character. Perfect people are not only implausible, but also boring. That wonderful and gorgeous persona who is good at everything and liked by everyone isn't going to win fans. The most well-liked and popular characters are usually those who are less than perfect, always in trouble and who can only improve.

As with looks, there are a few personality types that have been overused, and which might set your readers to groaning. These include:

1. the wide-eyed holdbred lass or lad overwhelmed by the honor of being Searched
2. the sweet and innocent beauty fearfully awaiting her dragon's first mating flight
3. the moody, broody loner with his dragon as his only friend

You'll see those around a lot. If you want to create a unique persona, you might want to try creating a different breed of human.

Try to be consistent in your persona's personality description. Avoid contradictions as they will make him/her unbelievable. For example, an extremely shy persona who is always the life of the party doesn't really ring true. Someone with an honest personality shouldn't turn intoa chronic liar in the next sentence. If your thoughtful, laid-back persona frequently turns impulsive and violent, this will only serve to confuse the readers.

So where do you get ideas for interesting characters? How do you come up with a believable description for your persona's personality? Here are some ways I've used or seen others using for coming up with characters and the advantages and disadvantages I see with them:

1. Base your persona on yourself

Many new writers create a character based on themselves. This type of character is commonly known as a 'Mary Sue' in fanfiction circles, and Pern clubs are crowded with them. I hazard the guess that about 95% of all Pern fanfiction writers start out writing for a 'Mary Sue'. It is the closest you can get to roleplaying "who I would want to be and what I would do if I lived on Pern".

A character based on yourself is the easiest to start out with. To write a believable persona, you have to know your character very well and be able to think like that character and figure out what they would feel or do in certain situation. This is very easy to do if the character is based on yourself; simply write what you would think, do or feel yourself. On the other hand, this might expose your inner self to your readers and leave you very vulnerable, especially if someone sends you constructive criticism on your writing. It will be just too easy to misunderstand that critique as an attack on yourself, because you put too much of yourself into your beloved character.

However, be aware that countless pages with fanfiction writing tips on the web will tell you how utterly boring these characters are for the readers. And let's face it, most of us are pretty normal people living pretty normal lives without much excitement. So simply transferring this to Pern doesn't make for exciting stories to tell, especially if many other people do the same thing. Add to it that many Mary Sues are of the stunningly perfect type and that their writers are overly protective of them, and things get even worse. The fact that many of these characters almost never receive feedback and either leave again or become NPCs (non-playing characters) after a short while is testament to the lack of creativity and story possibilities they offer.

If you choose to insert yourself (or a character you would like to be) into Pern, please be aware that many readers will skip over your posts unless you throw your rather boring alter ego into a really exciting story plot, and finding an exciting story for this type of character can be hard.

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2. Base your persona on a real life person you know

This is another easy way to come up with a character. The advantages are that you can base your character on someone you think is more interesting than you are. Knowing this person helps you instantly know your character, and how your persona might react in certain situations. This helps to create a sense of real personality behind your persona and avoids falling into the cliché trap. Characters based on real life people appear much more real than characters made up from clichés who often end up two-dimensional. If you base a character on a living person, you might want to avoid telling that person about it, especially if that character acts goofy or in an unpleasant manner. Not everyone takes kindly to being written about that way. Make sure you change the character enough so that it is no longer obvious who he or she was based on.

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3. Base your persona on a fictional or historical person

This has a significantly higher success rate in creating a character with story potential than taking real life people. Why? Because any fictional person is already a character made up for telling a story! Any historical figure was interesting enough to make it into the history books! Some characters are tied to a certain type of story (e.g. Romeo and Juliet), others are 'recyclable' for many types of stories. Good examples are the characters of series, either in book form or TV/movies. For example, if you like mysteries, how about writing for a Sherlock Holmes type character on Pern? Or a Miss Marple, if you don't like the rather cold demeanor of Holmes? You need someone adventurous to captain a ship? How about a James Kirk type character? A Jack Sparrow? Or even a Captain Ahab? You like a sexy combination of adventure, comedy and goofy nerdiness? How about basing your character on Evelyn from The Mummy or Lois Lane from the Superman movies? Or Egon from the Ghostbusters? Maybe you're a scientist at heart with an artistic streak and would love to write for the Pernese version of Leonardo Da Vinci? Want to write for a Lord Holder's love interest? How about basing your character on Sissi, Empress of Austria? Or Lady Di? Interested in writing for an orphaned kid who is annoying the Thread out of her adult caretakers? How about a Pippi Longstocking type of child? A Tom Sawyer? The possibilities are endless.

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4. Base your persona on a cliché or stereotype

If you're basing your persona on a stereotype, be aware that s/he starts out as a flat and boring cardboard character. You'll want to add more depth to flesh him/her out to make an interesting persona. It's just too easy to guess what the "daring hero" or "evil villain" stereotypes will do in a situation. Your main characters should be more complex and less predictable, unless you're attempting to write a fairy tale or a cartoonish story.

Clichés can be lots of fun though in comedy. Stereotypes with an unexpected twist can be even funnier. These cardboard characters suggest to the reader that they know what this persona will do or not do, which offers the element of surprise to the writer. Just think about the tough guy with the killer glaze in his eyes who is scared to death when he sees a spider and the little girl who squishes it for him so he can come down from the table. Or the dimglow drudge who saves the day by 'accidentally' having a bright idea. Or the big rude brute who starts crying whenever someone tells a love story and goes picking flowers for his mom in his free time.

Many NPCs are stereotype personas. They are often created as background characters and part of the scenery. The fat, jolly cook doesn't need to have a complex personality if all he does is fix your persona dinner. Using a stereotype in this case has the advantage that you don't need to explain too much to your readers about this character. If not used for comedy or as unimportant background characters, clichés often get boring for the reader as well as the writer. Try to give your PCs a little bit more substance and complexity.

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5. Base your persona on horoscopes

One trick I like to come up with a personality description is to borrow from astrological texts. Horoscopes are a true treasure chest for premade personality descriptions, even if you don't believe in any of it. If the standard Western horoscope is too stereotypic for your tastes, try some others like Chinese, Celtic or Indian. Or search for the combined astrological sign plus ascendant horoscopes. There are 12 x 12 = 144 of them out there. Depending on the book you look at, horoscope descriptions might differ significantly. In other words, there's enough material out there to pick one or combine them into something that would make an interesting personality for writing. While searching those descriptions, you might also uncover personality traits you (and others) haven't yet thought about that might help making your character different from all others.

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5. Life Story

As with the character descriptions, there are a few things that have been done to death in persona life stories, and a few others that don't seem to make sense in a world like Pern. These include:

1. High ranking parents: Mother and father are Masters or Lord Holders or at least a bronzerider and a goldrider.
2. Single children: Pern doesn't have birth control as we know it, there's a high chance your character has at least some siblings or half-siblings.
3. Orphans left to fend for themselves: Pern is a communal society, any abandoned or orphaned kid would be quickly fostered.
4. Young rebels and runaways: Pern is a very rank-oriented society, young people achieve respect by playing by the rules, not by going against them.
5. Child abuse, rape, painful tragedies: Melodrama overload!
6. Amnesia victims: Lots of characters are already running around who don't remember anything about their past.
7. "Tour de Pern" before ending up at the present location: Means of traveling are quite limited on Pern. The chance that your persona has been almost all over the planet is very slim, especially if your persona is young and not a dragonrider.
8. Impression from the stands: One of the most overused story types. Avoid this and have your character go through the normal process of being Searched and Impressing on the Hatching Sands.

In the end, your character's life story doesn't matter all that much. What people will read are your posts, showing your character acting in accordance to his or her personality in present day Pern time.

Above all, remember to be creative and have fun. That’s what IoP is all about.

Clear Skies and Happy Writing!

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Written by Annkatrin R. (Edited by Keith G.)
Last updated: 09/16/2004