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| The 2025 Character Creation Challenge completion image. |
Tackling a month long project? Have a plan. And be prepared to change that plan.
A plan is an expression of strategy. It moves you closer to a goal. It is not a process - that comes later. Any plan is better than starting off with no idea of how things are going to get done. Modifying an existing plan is less fraught than coming up with a way to move towards a goal in mid-stream.
I started the challenge with a list of games and a schedule covering the first couple of weeks. That simple plan didn't survive for long. It was never intended to. I had no experience with this challenge when it kicked off. Any detailed plan was going to be bad and wrong. I went with a simple plan that I could easily modify as I learned more about what I was doing. Games were added and dropped from the list. The schedule changed constantly depending on how much time and effort I had available. Circumstances changed and my plans changed with them.
Don't be afraid to use the best ideas early on.
There is the temptation to save ideas for an ideal time. Bury that temptation out back. There's no need to save ideas. Execute them now. New ideas will come with painful experience.
I was afraid that I was going to run out of ideas halfway through the challenge. And my well of ideas did run low around that time. However, inspiration struck. Many of my best ideas didn't even occur to me until well after the challenge began.
It's okay to use okay ideas.
There is also the temptation to rule out lackluster ideas. That temptation leads to either not starting or falling behind. Again, gave that temptation the fate it deserves. Wanting to put your best foot forward is understandable, but pushing out something less than amazing is generally better than nothing.
I'll admit that not every character and post represented my best possible effort. That wasn't the goal. The challenge was to create thirty one characters and post them online. I would've preferred to produce more polished work, but not at the cost of falling behind on the challenge.
Defy convention.
Don't get stuck inside the box. It's confining and the cats that are already inside won't appreciate it. Go ahead and use the weird ideas that might not work for everybody. It makes things more interesting.
There are multiple examples of my not coloring inside the lines during the challenge. Going back to the "ship as a character" concept more than once. Generating characters for solo TTRPGs. Creating NPCs that I may use in my home campaign. Reincarnating a necromancer in one game after another. Starfleet officers with some darkness adding contrast to their backgrounds. All of these made my contributions to the challenge uniquely mine.
Processes will develop. There might be pain involved.
Just as my planning had to change to meet the needs of the challenge, I had to develop processes for how to carry out those plans. The distinction between process and plan can be illustrated with a comparison. A checklist is not a plan. It is a process that instructs the user on what to do, not how (plan) or why (strategy).
My approaches to creating characters, writing posts, and getting everything online where folks could see it were all evolving processes. Those processes were all streamlined over a month of me banging my head up against this challenge. Repetition led to a Darwinian process. What worked was kept and what didn't was ruthlessly weeded out.
Falling behind is no reason to quit.
The idea of quitting can be a tempting one. It is the path of least resistance. And it looks awfully relaxing. Remember what to do with temptations? It involves a shovel.
I ran out of gas about two-thirds of the way through January. I was running out of games and ideas. There was grit getting into the gears of the processes. Things weren't flowing anymore. It was getting harder to crank things out. And the buffer I had built up ran out.
Getting back to the mental state where I could "just" do the things I needed to do was the hard part. It came down to a couple of things. I wanted to finish more than I wanted to regret quitting. And I had to ease up, stop beating myself up, and find a way to enjoy the challenge. I decided to treat it like a game. One of those video games where grinding away makes the eventual outcome more rewarding.
After that, it was "just" a matter of getting back on that horse.
A plan is an expression of strategy. It moves you closer to a goal. It is not a process - that comes later. Any plan is better than starting off with no idea of how things are going to get done. Modifying an existing plan is less fraught than coming up with a way to move towards a goal in mid-stream.
I started the challenge with a list of games and a schedule covering the first couple of weeks. That simple plan didn't survive for long. It was never intended to. I had no experience with this challenge when it kicked off. Any detailed plan was going to be bad and wrong. I went with a simple plan that I could easily modify as I learned more about what I was doing. Games were added and dropped from the list. The schedule changed constantly depending on how much time and effort I had available. Circumstances changed and my plans changed with them.
Don't be afraid to use the best ideas early on.
There is the temptation to save ideas for an ideal time. Bury that temptation out back. There's no need to save ideas. Execute them now. New ideas will come with painful experience.
I was afraid that I was going to run out of ideas halfway through the challenge. And my well of ideas did run low around that time. However, inspiration struck. Many of my best ideas didn't even occur to me until well after the challenge began.
It's okay to use okay ideas.
There is also the temptation to rule out lackluster ideas. That temptation leads to either not starting or falling behind. Again, gave that temptation the fate it deserves. Wanting to put your best foot forward is understandable, but pushing out something less than amazing is generally better than nothing.
I'll admit that not every character and post represented my best possible effort. That wasn't the goal. The challenge was to create thirty one characters and post them online. I would've preferred to produce more polished work, but not at the cost of falling behind on the challenge.
Defy convention.
Don't get stuck inside the box. It's confining and the cats that are already inside won't appreciate it. Go ahead and use the weird ideas that might not work for everybody. It makes things more interesting.
There are multiple examples of my not coloring inside the lines during the challenge. Going back to the "ship as a character" concept more than once. Generating characters for solo TTRPGs. Creating NPCs that I may use in my home campaign. Reincarnating a necromancer in one game after another. Starfleet officers with some darkness adding contrast to their backgrounds. All of these made my contributions to the challenge uniquely mine.
Processes will develop. There might be pain involved.
Just as my planning had to change to meet the needs of the challenge, I had to develop processes for how to carry out those plans. The distinction between process and plan can be illustrated with a comparison. A checklist is not a plan. It is a process that instructs the user on what to do, not how (plan) or why (strategy).
My approaches to creating characters, writing posts, and getting everything online where folks could see it were all evolving processes. Those processes were all streamlined over a month of me banging my head up against this challenge. Repetition led to a Darwinian process. What worked was kept and what didn't was ruthlessly weeded out.
Falling behind is no reason to quit.
The idea of quitting can be a tempting one. It is the path of least resistance. And it looks awfully relaxing. Remember what to do with temptations? It involves a shovel.
I ran out of gas about two-thirds of the way through January. I was running out of games and ideas. There was grit getting into the gears of the processes. Things weren't flowing anymore. It was getting harder to crank things out. And the buffer I had built up ran out.
Getting back to the mental state where I could "just" do the things I needed to do was the hard part. It came down to a couple of things. I wanted to finish more than I wanted to regret quitting. And I had to ease up, stop beating myself up, and find a way to enjoy the challenge. I decided to treat it like a game. One of those video games where grinding away makes the eventual outcome more rewarding.
After that, it was "just" a matter of getting back on that horse.