(note irony in title)

Most of my characters vary in degrees to which they control their emotions. Some are hotblooded, others are only friendly in private, or quiet about everything except “insert their obsession here”. Two characters in particular came out as the opposite of their intent. My calm, bookish nurse, Mari, is also an alcoholic and exhibitionist. The quiet, skilled Older Brother character is so impulsive, I don’t see him ever following through The Plan in any story I make with him.

But now I’ve decided I will try my hand at a mysterious Emotionless Girl. She’s a secondary character, who will won’t have viewpoint chapters, just to spite readers. So, now I have to face the challenges of:

1) What can make a character “emotionless”?
2) What invokes mystery in a character?
3) How can I shape this girl to be different than the stock she’s carved from?

Okay, I’m being kicked out of my lab. I’ll be back later!

I like the use of scathing sarcasm and really dry wit, but delivered deadpan. An emotionless character won’t care what people think of her, and won’t care about hurting people’s feelings.

What level of ‘emotionless’ are you going for? there’s the high end of magically/chemically induced emotionlessness, where the character literally can’t feel emotions at all, then there’s the sociopathic angle, and then you’ve got ‘was hurt once and is afraid of opening up emotionally and /or exposing weakness’.

I like the third option most myself, because character actually does feel, but desperately hides it to avoid getting hurt. Heaps of potentil for character development there, especially once the weakness is exposed.

You could try for seriously lacking in social skills. There was this girl at my college last year- usually had a glower on her face, got offended by anything, lectured people, was self-righteous… but I got treated to a crying spell because her special pen (it records lectures because she’s severely dyslexic) broke. I also got treated to her musing to herself about why people dislike her. She didn’t seem to understand why… it was because she was mean, grumpy, rude, sarcastic, bitchy, etc. She followed me around for a while, I tried to socialise her, but it didn’t work because she pissed off all my friends (and me). Thankfully she transferred schools. Except for the crying spell, she was pretty damn near to be emotionless.

lol… Crying over her pen.

I’m wondering now. I could use the magically induced angle. I just wanted to try it out… I’ll call her Huang for now.

Actually, Huang comes from an empathetic race, so I have been experimenting on what emotions mean for her entire species. The most advanced society, Central, has a system in place that limits social empathy. People have more privacy when in large groups. (Such a nation doesn’t have cities, but more like central meeting places for herding nomads…. Wow, I guess that’s why the whole countryside is called Central. lol.)

So, in a nation where everyone’s emotions are on display, what is someone who shows nothing? Is she like a mute? Could I have a “scientific” in-story reason for why others can’t sense her reactions?

Yeah. Yay for “a wizard did it” fantasy. lol

Maybe she just accepts whatever’s going on and doesn’t get upset over much, in which case, might ‘passionless’ be a better description? She doesn’t seem to care about getting embarrassed, etc?

This is just my slant on things, though.

@ simian. That is really interesting. Any buzz words to look out for so I can Google that?

THANKS! (o_O )

If you say so, Willow. If you say so.