# fursona depth



## VarghulfNox (Apr 13, 2015)

Does anybody else have trouble giving more depth to their fursonas?

Mine is supposed to be a literal fursona of myself, so it's easy to just look at him and see everything I know is there, including the stuff I WANT to be able to get out there in real life. (I guess that's half the fun of original characters, right?) 

Anyway, is it easy or hard for the rest of you folk to bring your fursona to a vivid life?


----------



## Pinky (Apr 13, 2015)

Putting your sona in different kinds of scenarios and seeing how they react to them can help you make them more life-like.


----------



## VarghulfNox (Apr 13, 2015)

That makes a lot of sense. So basically, just kind of treat it like a real entity? Let him encounter situations and work out how they would approach them? Huh. It's both simple and quite clever, actually! Thanks.


----------



## Charrio (Apr 14, 2015)

Mine has a book so can't say I have, she has a full life and history. 
I had to imagine her life tho, it was mostly boring lol


----------



## Unsilenced (Apr 14, 2015)

I create characters that are very specifically not myself, so I don't really have that problem. They have very complex lives and their own character arcs that intersect and interact. 

Not making a character that's yourself is a start. You don't have an outside perspective of yourself, making it hard to write 'you' as a character. You want a character with a couple of defining features and themes, with a clear path of development. You, as a naturally occurring human being, do not have narratively cohesive traits or an identifiable, linear character arc. You also know too much about yourself. You could generalize another person to make a decent fictional character, but you know every last detail of your own story. For any one thing you try to think of as a trait, you can probably think of a couple of counter examples that make it not seem important or consistent. 


So my recommendation would be to start from the angle of writing a character that is decidedly not you. Make instead a character that interests you instead, one that you would want to read about. A common way of thinking about it is 'dimensions' of a character. A one dimensional character can be pretty much summed up in one word. He's a jock, she's a mad scientist, etc. Good enough for a background or bit character, but not very interesting in the long run. A two dimensional character is "x, but y." You pick one trait that is an immediate and obvious, and another one that runs counter to it and is only revealed though certain actions. With those two elements, you now have a character about whom the reader's opinion changes over time, which is the basic building block of character depth. Try making some of these, and then elaborate on ones you find appealing.


----------



## DrDingo (Apr 14, 2015)

I don't really want to give him depth.
The deeper I make the character, the less I can do with him.
In this avatar of mine, he's been drawn looking absolutely insane. In another picture, he could be looking smart and sensible, or even badass! There's nothing stopping me from doing whatever I feel like with him, because nothing is set in stone.


----------



## Charrio (Apr 14, 2015)

DrDingo said:


> I don't really want to give him depth.
> The deeper I make the character, the less I can do with him.
> In this avatar of mine, he's been drawn looking absolutely insane. In another picture, he could be looking smart and sensible, or even badass! There's nothing stopping me from doing whatever I feel like with him, because nothing is set in stone.



Well your character could be a toon, toons don't have to be subject to reality
Mine is one and he knows it, he abuses it all the time. Drawing doors on walls, erasing things i drew, drawing himself all buff you name it.


----------



## DrDingo (Apr 14, 2015)

Charrio said:


> Well your character could be a toon, toons don't have to be subject to reality
> Mine is one and he knows it, he abuses it all the time. Drawing doors on walls, erasing things i drew, drawing himself all buff you name it.


Haha, that actually sounds really fun.
I do think of him more like that, as opposed to being like a real living person. People can identify with him more when he doesn't have any sort of specific history; they can take a look at him and imagine the sort of schemes he might be coming up with. 
If I gave him a detailed background, it'd only ruin the fun of it all!

"Ehh, what's up, Doc?"


----------



## SkyboundTerror (Apr 14, 2015)

My 'sona's personality is heavily based off my own, inspired by my own struggles, fears, and morals. His story is also based off my own nightmares of a lonely, bleak future where I'm tied to obligations and duty with no hope for freedom. His defining traits are staying headstrong and optimistic, other traits chipped away at as he lives on. 

I know it's a bit self-centered, but I knew that if I made a 'sona, I had to do my best to make him a solid representation of me and with a story that relates to mine. I've heard many people say to make your 'sona how you yourself wish to be, but I couldn't get behind that idea because I wouldn't want to be anyone but me.


----------



## Charrio (Apr 14, 2015)

DrDingo said:


> Haha, that actually sounds really fun.
> I do think of him more like that, as opposed to being like a real living person. People can identify with him more when he doesn't have any sort of specific history; they can take a look at him and imagine the sort of schemes he might be coming up with.
> If I gave him a detailed background, it'd only ruin the fun of it all!
> 
> "Ehh, what's up, Doc?"



Very glad to have helped, and it is really fun having no limits. 
Every pic or story is like an episode or short.



SkyboundTerror said:


> My 'sona's personality is heavily based off my own, inspired by my own struggles, fears, and morals. His story is also based off my own nightmares of a lonely, bleak future where I'm tied to obligations and duty with no hope for freedom. His defining traits are staying headstrong and optimistic, other traits chipped away at as he lives on.
> 
> I know it's a bit self-centered, but I knew that if I made a 'sona, I had to do my best to make him a solid representation of me and with a story that relates to mine. I've heard many people say to make your 'sona how you yourself wish to be, but I couldn't get behind that idea because I wouldn't want to be anyone but me.



Nah nothing wrong with bringing yourself into your fursona, it's you after all and people make it their own.
Sometimes directly like just a drawing of themselves, I have myself in my comic too so I think I'm a little 
self centered too but at least in comics I'm funny lol


----------



## Maelstrom Eyre (Apr 14, 2015)

My fursona is sort of split - in that I use her appearance and demeanor for online RP in Second Life, though she has her own backstory there that doesn't mirror my own life.  She lives in a different sort of world, a different time period altogether.  But it's sort of like acting, where you can put bits of yourself into a character and think about how you might or might not respond if you were in the same situations.

When I am not RPing, though, she is "me."  Or, maybe a reflection of a lot of the things I'd like to be (she's much better looking and a far better dancer).


----------



## X_Joshi_X (Apr 14, 2015)

I didnt give him more personal depth. And I dont want to, because he is me. He's as depth as myself.


----------



## Bonobosoph (Apr 14, 2015)

She is me how I see myself, but for creatuve purposes lives a different and more species specific life, but she still reacts to things and thinks about things in a way that I would. The depth does not matter.


----------



## Crunchy_Bat (Apr 14, 2015)

I feel like my fursona inherently can't be deep, because he is the portrayal of all the traits I like of myself, and none of the bad ones, you sort of need flaws to have a deep character. That said I really don't mind that crunchy isn't this deep thought out character since FA FAF and my furry art work are things I do to get some relief from the troubles of the real world, i'm okay with not introducing depth to that me time :3


----------



## hey look a train! (Apr 14, 2015)

well its easy to express mine irl, via my personality but since im both too poor and too young, i cant go to any cons nor afford a fursuit, but i try my best to bring him irl


----------



## Charrio (Apr 14, 2015)

hey look a train! said:


> well its easy to express mine irl, via my personality but since im both too poor and too young, i cant go to any cons nor afford a fursuit, but i try my best to bring him irl



I like to think of a fursona as always with us, might not be visible other than a pic or badge with you but inside you there they are. 
Nelwin never leaves me, like at times i try and think of his opinion of a situation or such.


----------



## CrazyTundraWolf (Apr 14, 2015)

Back story wise I like to make it detailed but open enough to tweak the scenario ( e.g he's forced to conscript into the military , I never say in what time period , he could be a modern soldier , a knight , hell he could be a spaceship captain ) . 
Personality wise I over exaggerated certain parts of my personality and added a few things in and keeping some the same , I consider myself a bit crazy so I made him a psychopath most of the time but , just like me , can turn back into a relatively calm person in the span of about 10 seconds


----------



## Dr. Franken-Fox (Apr 14, 2015)

The Professor's traits are certainly routed in my own, but he's not an idealised version of me nor is he a warts-and-all portrayal.
I can imagine it might be creatively limiting not to mention tiresome to painstakingly represent all of my personal characteristics in a fursona, also by doing that, I think I'd be missing the point since part of why many people even create a fursona in the first place is to do with escapism. 

Not that I don't want to have anything in common with him, I actually think it's important to have a connection with your fursona, even if it's through something small or insignificant as long as it's something that's meaningful and personal to you. In the case of the Professor that would be his eccentricity, only for him it's not due to having a learning difficulty but instead it's from the years spent alone living underground due to his intolerance of sunlight. I thought it would be a fun way to take a character flaw I have that's deeply affected me personally without making him flat-out autistic, doing that make might him too 'real'.


----------



## Sylox (Apr 14, 2015)

Mine's loosely based off of me IRL, and has a lot of different traits, feelings, beliefs goals, etc. than I do and that allows me to tell a vivid story. I'd always struggled to write about him or even place him in a story, because he wasn't interesting at all, he was so generic and pretty much felt like a Gary-Stu. However, once I progressed him a bit and fleshed out some of his details, I was able to create a much more dynamic sona than I had before.


----------



## PastryOfApathy (Apr 15, 2015)

Fursonas are about as deep as a kiddy pool in Afghanistan.


----------



## Gator (Apr 15, 2015)

if it weren't just "me", then it would be an OC and not a persona.  that's how i feel about mine, anyway.  other folks can have as much depth and different stuff as they want.


----------



## TigressFirefeather (May 11, 2015)

I showed a drawing I received of my fursona, Tigress, to my roommate, and she asked about her, and I was actually shocked at how easily everything about her just flowed out. Like, she has her own life, her own personality, everything. My roommate commented on how strange it was that I talk about her like she's a real person, and it occured to me that she kind-of is, to me at least. Like, she's literally another side of myself, but not in a multiple personality sort of way


----------

