To want is to live

[Endrenesk]

I'm still not sure how to start things like this...
Okay, so- If you've ever heard of Asperger's Syndrome, this should sound familiar- Empathy disability, Lack of eye contact, Challenges with Nonverbal Communication, Inability to understand emotional or social issues.
Most of these things are problems I have, and it explains a great deal (For me, at least) why I don't understand people.
So, looking through the emotional baggage and appearance of a person, a character- is a core of some sort, right?
Like what is wrong, what is right, what the person wants.

Because I don't understand people, I need to start from the beginning to know someone completely.
"What do you want?"
But even here, I reach a roadblock.
A story is a set of events, all determined by what paths each character takes.
Beginning a story, as it seems, is the most frustrating thing in the universe.
Why?
For an event to take place, you need characters.
But for characters to exist, you need a world.
And to have a world is to know events that already happened, or will happen.
Whenever I try to make anything, I end up in this tangled circle hashweave dreamcatcher thing that is incomprehensible.
This is why I'm frustrated, and have been for a year.

Creating a character is the first roadblock. "What do you want? What do you want!?" This roadblock will continue to haunt me until I understand people. and perhaps forever. I can't just write a bunch of gibberish hastily stuck together with cool ideas, that doesn't work. It doesn't at all.
This brings me to an important point.
Why do I want to make a story? I'm only 16, as of yesterday. So, why am I ramming my head into a solid wall?
Is it to be acknowledged? Is it out of spite? Hope?
I ask so many questions because nothing makes sense.
The only true sense in this world is that people die when they are killed. "hur dur that's almost an anime quote"
yeah okay sir
But, I really mean it. History is just a bunch of asshats doing stupid things getting themselves and several millions of others dead.

I'm sorry that this was such a long post, but I have a tendency to be all over the place and non-concise.
Sorry if this feels like... dumb homework.

[wiggly]

You can think of it in terms of animal behaviour, as that's what humans are. We do the things we do for a bunch of reasons, social bonding, sex, safety. Maybe until you can learn to understand people and then create your own characters and also yourself, you can think of them like that, in biological terms. I know people are more complex than that but at least its a start?

Sorry, if I'm just butting in on your rant here and you didn't mean for someone to reply but this is my advice I'd like to suggest to you. Even if its some really bad ones. ^^"

[Quinineer]

Hey; this might not be helpful, but just putting in my two cents.

With my characters, I try not to think of them as other people, but to build on them based on my own thoughts or feelings, so I have a reference point. Maybe you don't "understand" people, but you can try to understand yourself.
You have complex, thoughts, right? Musings, emotions, reactions, core beliefs; empathy is understanding that everyone around you has the same degree of complexity and layers of emotion to them. Of course, this is much easier said than done.

I try to explain my own characters, but it never makes sense at first. As you build on your story, you should be able to work things out; if not, it's okay. Making comics should not be a race. Enjoy yourself creating what you love- it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect at first. Heck, looking back from my buffer pages, I'm laughing at the dialogue, the interaction- everything.

Creating comics is about improving, and learning. Sometimes, you improve more, sometimes less. The important thing is to go forwards.

[Heck]

I have been struggling with the same problem you have. I understand other people 0%. Creating characters is the first step to any story and it's so discouraging to be stuck there for months or even years. Here's some things I've done to help myself, hopefully they'll provide the same for you :>

I like to follow basic story principles because they work, but because I have a hard time understanding people, I analyze human behavior, but I draw feelings and qualities from myself and things which are familiar and/or important to me. Here's what I mean.

So the first thing I do is look at something like this:

I like this one in particular because it groups needs into specific categories. The names of these categories can provide themes or morals, which is usually my focus. I then choose any number of needs from any category, but I choose ones I am drawn towards and want to explore. Because these are all relate-able human needs, it doesn't matter why these things are imbalanced (such as a financial problem, or an alien invasion), or how my character tries to fulfill these needs (such as makin mad crack cash, or kickin alien butts), all that matters is that a need is not being met, and my character is directly or indirectly struggling to fulfill it by making some kind of effort.

What might happen if my character was without comfort, or food? What sort of situation is this the result of? How does it affect their well-being? How might those needs begin to be met? Is an outside force aiding them, or providing the drive to help themselves?

Maybe I am a 6 year old child living in a rural house with my mother, and she is a hoarder, and my house is filled with junk, and I can never bring my friends over, and I have to climb over piles every day, and every night I have nightmares that the junk will eat me or I will get trapped and die, but my mom doesn't really seem to care how it affects me at all and won't listen. I have never been in that situation, but by correlating it with the list of human needs, I have the functional core of a character. Little bits like flaws and hobbies are just the sauce.

All I have to do is show how these unmet needs affect my character in the beginning, show her making an effort and struggling to better her situation in some way, and show how she changes and succeeds, or show how she doesn't change and fails, or even show how she changes but maybe it still doesn't work out in the end. It seems stupidly simple and probably like it won't work, but it gets ya every time. That's a story!

Second, I play with the nature of these ideas and how I want to plug them into a functioning story structure, using something such as this or this. The gist of this is that they are one way in the beginning, and learn something by the end. Eventually, I have enough to work with to continue on with the details of my story, although it can still take a very long time to get there. If I have a plot idea, this is usually where I'll bring it in and try to mold around it. A lot of editing and letting go of unneeded ideas ensues, but at least I have a clear idea of what I want to happen, all I have to focus on is how.

I think where I often get stuck is in "wants". When ask myself what I want, I think things like "I want to be stupid rich." But why? "Because that'd be bitchin and I could by a new laptop and eat steak all the time." --But, see, that doesn't really make for a good story. And though I couldn't even fathom the wants of other people, what I find is that when one of these human needs is off-balance, we don't realize it. It's often subconscious, yet the little desires we have are motivated by the instinct to ease that imbalance, whether we realize it or not. It also helps to ask yourself what the character is missing, rather than what they want. I could be something surprising, like compassion or closure.

Where your personal input comes in is in the "showing" part. Perhaps you have experience with a certain situation, or a feeling, or have a theme or message which is very important to you. There are no wrong answers with this, and the more personal something is (by experience, interest, or witness), the more of an impact it tends to make. Keep in mind this method is for character-driven stories only, and is much too in-depth for a plot-driven story (unless it's super long).

This is just my personal strategy and there are many many other types of character stories (for instance, they may think they are perfect and don't need to change, but are forced to by an external force). This is mainly for the protagonist and antagonist, if there are any. Side characters have a much simpler version, and their purpose is to compliment or contrast the desires of the main character. On a note, antagonists are simply characters with contrasting opinions to the protagonist, no matter if they are truly bad or good answers. (realism vs optimism, mercy vs justice, etc, or simply desires which directly oppose one another). Anyway, hope something helped and I didn't assault your eyes with my text wall :>

[vongcw]

In the words of Tim Burton, "It looks like you have a creative bone. You'll just have to learn to live with it."

Sometimes, "Why?" can be an incomprehensible question. We lack the information to find a meaningful conclusion to it. Often, we don't need very clear answers in order to progress forward. So, I'd be celebrating your creative streak. Not everyone has it. Is it frustrating? Yes. But is it wonderful? Yes. And I think you know this already.

As for understanding others. Anyone who claims to wholly understand another is lying. We don't. We can understand, support, strengthen, and empathise with one another, but none of us know the thousands upon thousands of thoughts and emotions that goes on in another's head.

For that, I would stop worrying about how you think other people should act. Create your own set of characters! They'll all be aspects of you in the end no matter how hard you try. That is what happens for all of us. BUT I believe if you are true to the characters you create, they will begin to have a life of their own. They will start to demand and say things you would not have done and said yourself.

Use your unique view on life as your strength. Okay so you have a problem understanding other people's non-verbal signals and some social settings are too complex to comprehend. That's not an impediment. It really isn't. We all learn social etiquette to varying levels at varying speeds. It certainly does not stand in the way of creating interesting and engaging characters. As someone once said, "People will read about interesting characters do boring things, a lot longer than they will read about boring characters do interesting things." Your view on life actually lets you create interesting characters more than the "average" person. So stop worrying and just create one. You might think the character is the most unbelievable weird character ever. But you might be surprised how many people like them. At worst, you'll discover people don't like them and then can start asking some meaningful practical questions as what's not to like?

Looking forward to your creations. Come and advertise them in the forum some time.

[sarrowsmith10]

It sounds like you are struggling with the classic idea of "motive." Usually, characters in a story have a strong "motive" for why they do the things they do.

For example:
1. In the TV Show Stranger Things, Will's mother hangs up lights around her house to communicate with her "dead/missing" son. People think she is crazy, but her motive is that she absolutely believes he's alive, and her love for her son drives her to believe that. Love is a powerful emotion that can make people do the craziest, most desperate things.

2.In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, Will goes on an adventure to rescue the love of his life was kidnapped by zombie pirates. Again, his motive is love (and maybe a small glimmer of curiosity about his father's life as a pirate).

3.In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Odysseus leaves home in search of fame and glory and returns home because he misses his wife.

4.In the Guardians of the Galaxy, Starlord goes after Ronan the Accuser (the bad guy), because Ronan wants to destroy the galaxy and Starlord lives in the galaxy and simply doesn't want to die. (He's not very heroic, but it works great)

The motives of your characters don't need to be very deep or complicated. If anything, make your characters' motives the same as yours. Perhaps your character sets out to make a friend because they are lonely? Perhaps your character sets out on an adventure because he lost his home? Perhaps your character set out to save the universe because he likes living in the universe and doesn't want it to disappear? Perhaps your character wants revenge for a murdered friend?

So, ask yourself, what do I want to happen in my story?

And who are the people it is happening to. Maybe ask yourself, if this happened to me, what would I do?

If you need really specific help, please feel free to send me your specific ideas and I will see if I can help you.

[indagold]

Maybe instead of beating yourself up over your disability, make an effort to try to overcome this block you think you have. I'm sure you're capable of writing a decent story, you just gotta do more research, and it takes time to understand and develop stories. It's not intuition and it's not easy at all. Look at the creator of pokemon, they're autistic and they created this massive franchise, story and games. Clearly they spent years persevering on this. You're still a kid at 16. don't expect so much out of yourself! These things take time. I don't give up on my stories because i'm dyslexic, I just keep going even if it means there might be roadblocks.

[agentfink]

First, happy birthday!

And as for your...rant? Start reading up on basic plots (here's a quick wiki search) and figure out which plot appeals to you...and go from there. Every story/narrative/movie you like falls into this, you'll find characters and motivations either before or after you decide what kind of story you want to tell. Research what interests you. Read for fun. You'll start forming ideas along the way-- maybe keep a sketch book or note pad and just free thought ideas down, then try to sort them out in a story manner with a beginning, middle and end.

The world doesn't make sense, no matter what age you are... you just learn to cope with it better as you get older. So don't worry too much on all those heavy thoughts, just focus on what makes you happy and spread that goodness where ever you go. But most importantly, don't be afraid to make mistakes.