TO CHORANDO

tO CHORANDO

Checklist of character traits prone to inconsistency:

Heyo, quick one today. It’s great to give a lot of detail to character traits and personality quirks, but they aren’t real people, you’ve made them up, and thus, might not have a perfect memory for how you’ve described them, or drawn them in the past.

So before you post or publish, do yourself a favor and make sure the following are consistent throughout your story, if applicable:

If they’re left or right handed, or ambidextrous.

Which side their hair parts on.

Which side their scars are on (especially facial scars).

Which eye has the patch or is just missing, and how much or little the character fiddles with it.

Missing glasses and how prone a character is to forgetting them or anal about cleaning them. Glasses are always dirty (do they clean them with a proper cloth or the edge of their shirt?).

Which side broken, missing, or bandaged fingers are on.

If they’re wearing a cast, how it inhibits their mobility.

If they have a leg or foot injury, how severely they limp.

If their clothing takes damage, when/how they replace it or repair it, and whether or not they’re wandering around town accidentally covered in blood or grease or all-purpose flour.

Which injuries they sustain that should still be bothering them, like pulled shoulders, bruises, shin splints, paper cuts, sun burns, cramps, carpal tunnel, arthritis, tinnitus, road rash, and stubbed toes or pinched fingers.

Which side of their body buttons, rings, bracelets, pins, brooches, badges, or name tags are on.

If they’re wearing gloves or mittens, when they take them off or how their mobility is impacted by them.

How mobility changes if their fingernails are short and stubby or long, or artificial, like typing, eating, and grabbing objects.

If they have a wheelchair, how they transition out of it, into it, and move within it, like getting dressed or putting on shoes, or lifting themselves up into cars and back down—and how public spaces do and don’t accommodate them.

If they have prosthetics, how they maintain them, how they might sound different than someone else—prosthetic feet for runners won’t sound the same as sneakers.

If they need crutches, a walker, a scooter, or a cane, and how the world accommodates them.

If they're colorblind, how it impacts their day to day and descriptions compared to other narrators.

Jewelry often jingles. Pandora bracelets are loud af especially if they’re on your dominant hand when you try to write on a desk. Charm necklaces jingle if you bounce and some earrings can jingle when you shake your head.

Where tattoos are and if they take measures to hide them and how.

An aside about characters with tattoos (from experience):

If they’re new, they still hurt for at least a week depending on the level of detail.

Tattoos are basically mega sunburns and fresh ink should either be covered from the sun or, once it’s healed enough that the skin isn’t broken, heavily sun-screened to preserve coloration. Newer ink is very noticeable in sunlight, just like a healing sunburn.

Black ink tends to turn a bit green over time and sharp details blur. Tattoos are beholden to the skin they’re on, and how it stretches or sags.

Tattoos stink, as plasma and other fluids build up under the wrap (that can either be straight plastic wrap or a dermal cover akin to the stuff used for burn victims).

Tattoos can burn and ache if they’re on the legs when you stand, as blood and your body weight settles back into place.

Tattoos do very weird things to your body depending on the amount of ink and the time it took to design. Your skin peels kind of, but not exactly, like a sunburn, and every artist has their own tips for aftercare.

If the ink is over thin skin (I have one that ends over my ankle) the ink may have a texture left behind, a raised puffy bump, that fades over time.

A character receiving a tattoo might have this kind of bell curve effect, where it hurts really bad at the start, until adrenaline kicks in and dampens it, and then again once their adrenaline runs out. There is no pain quite like tattoo pain and everyone describes them differently. I like to think of them as itching a bug bite on a sunburn, dialed up to 11.

According to my past artists, women almost universally handle the pain better than men. I have definitely suffered other injuries worse than tattoo pain.

Fine linework hurts more than broad stroke coloring or shading, because the distribution of pressure is wider with more needles packed together. The larger the needle bundle, the less it hurts. All of mine are water color and the *splash* effect for the illusion of water drops uses a single needle and it’s always the most painful part.

Feel free to tag any that I missed!

111 notes View Post

antoniachuu

1 month ago