TJ's characters

Hey there everybody! I've been sitting around doing nothing for a good two years and two months now, and I've decided I'm going to get off my lazy butt and get to work on writing up my character bios. My first story is on the way, but the first draft sucked so it's being re-written, so it will need time. Hopefully my characters will not require much more work, seeing as I've had this much time of working on poorly written stories and revisions on the characters to see how best they'd work. Also, just to note, This was written with the intention of it being looked over by my friends who are better writers than me, but don't know a lot about Felarya, so some things are stated here that are going to be completely obvious to you, but is simply meant to help them help me in not being as much of a sucky writer. But now I'm rambling! The character goes up now.


Name: Sherl Umaia (Ooh-my-uh)
Race: Human
Sex: Female
Age: 24
Height: 5'4"
Skin color: Peachy Beige
Hair: Long and Orange
Eye color: Faded Sky Blue

Backstory:
Sherl grew up on her homeworld of Fatelve, a world that developed greatly in the fields of magic and technology. Alchemy is a common profession there and her mother was one of many who did well at it. Her childhood was a simple and relatively normal one, though the only raising that her father did for her was to exist through stories. He was a mage who her mother had met off in a distant world, one very different from her own. Her mother would tell her these stories of him, how he had once returned home every week or so when she was still just a baby, telling of his travels. According to her mother, one day he just stopped coming back, and though she'd never outright say it in front of her, she assumed that he was dead. All the stories had left her fascinated in this world, a world called Felarya. After getting older, and after years in school, she began to do a bit more research into the Felaryan topic, every new thing she learned was a psychological adventure. She questioned how everything worked and how she'd act in certain situations. It would be many years later before this obsession would amount to anything. One day, seemingly out of nowhere it started. A plague struck Fatelve, a virus that spread like wildfire to almost every living being on every continent. No one knew where it came from or when it truly started, but when it spread, it was fast. For the most part, it left those who were infected with this virus with immune systems that were in a state of disrepair. Leaving those effected, at best, only barely able to fight off other diseases.

Sherl was one of the lucky few who weren't hit very heavily by it. She got an infection in both of her eyes, leaving her with blurred and damaged vision. A few mages and alchemists were needed to specially enchant a pair of glasses that would restore her sight while being worn. She continued to grow up, watching people suffer at the hands of this virus, wishing that something could be done about it. By the time that she graduated from college, almost half of the world's human population had already died from secondary diseases. Some people were losing their lives to simple colds and fevers. But as Sherl had gone through college, she put her work into one subject that she would hold on to, that she would need. Mineralogy. She remembered the stories she'd heard of the place called Felarya. How the soil was magical, it could heal wounds and cure diseases. How no one who lived there ever aged or became stricken with illness. She had a plan, regardless how dangerous. She would go there and get soil, easy enough. So she thought. Unfortunately, most of soil's properties are lost after leaving Felarya. It helped, but not enough to make a difference. She needed to do research. She needed to know why. It would take an extended stay in that dangerous world, but if she could find out why it lost it's healing abilities, she might be able to stop it from doing so, and eventually get enough of it back home to stop everything on the planet from going extinct.

She didn't care that everyone who had tried this before had failed to discover why, or just failed to live long enough to get the job done. She assembled a group to help her, a long stay would not be safe or easy, and she'd need the backup. She got an old friend named Izobor who excelled at alchemy, a body guard, and a biologist, and a few others to carry equipment. After gathering their supplies, they hired a local mage to set up a dimensional transport for them, to send them to Felarya. Unfortunately, they were not sent to the right location. They wanted to arrive at the dimensional gate near Negav, that way they could ask around for the safest possible areas to work with, but they arrived through the dimensional gate at the ruins of Ur-Sagol. With no way back, they would have to trek for the nearest, safest human settlement, Safe Harbor, which itself was still a few days of walking away. But she needed to do this, for the sake of her home. It wasn't like there was any turning back anyway.

Character:
Sherl is a very determined person, she had to be from day one just to come to Felarya. She refuses to let much of anything get in her way when she sets her mind to something, be that thing hazardous to her health or not. However, she is not stupid, and does her best to do things safely for not only herself, but for her team. That aside, she would prefer to avoid causing any unnecessary damage to the local flora or fauna, though she knows the fine line between her team's lives, and the life of whatever was deciding to attack them. Although they are constantly fighting, Sherl doesn't want anything bad to happen to any of her team. Especially her only actual friend on the team, Izobor. She also has a bit of an overblown sense of optimism. She believes there is a way out of almost every situation that she gets stuck in, but luckily for her, she's been right most of the time. This is not to say that she hasn't made her bad decisions, such as trying to spark up a conversation with a mermaid on the edge of Shard River just to name one.

While she can become annoyed by the common arguments that break out amongst her research team, she is usually slow to the trigger when it comes to getting angry, and her wrath is a very limited one. Mostly just asking them to knock it off. When not at work on her soil research, she's usually happily reading her books her father had written about Felarya. She even went so far as to bring a few sets of robes to wear while reading, much to the dismay of the heavy lifters on her team. She also has a strange obsession with green clothes with yellow trims, all her clothes tend to have them. While growing up, Sherl picked up some of her mother's skill in alchemy, though, her knowledge of the subject is very limited, even some of the basics elude her. She seems to have inherited her father's talent as a mage, though she is untrained and can only perform minor nature based magic, it has proved useful since her arrival in Felarya.

Although she won't be setting any records any time soon, she is rather athletic, placing as a decent sixth best on her her school's track team. Aside from that however, she is not very strong, but like many of those who aren't strong, she makes up for it with her intelligence. Again, no where near the smartest in her school, but enough that she could out-think the average person. She has a great sense of ingenuity, since her arrival in Felarya, she has already managed to use her reading robes as makeshift tents for her team. Due to Felarya's soil healing her eyes, her glasses now improve on her sight, rather than allow her to see. They practically giving her night vision while wearing them.

Character fact: Out of all of my 11 other (still in progress) characters, she has gone through the most major revision since my poorly written beginnings, her backstory, personality, and role in the rest of my characters' stories have all been completely changed from the first draft. One example was that she was going to be a computer nerd/geek/expert in machines in general.


And so that's my first character. I shall set my fear of bad criticism to the side and await your opinions. Until then, I will work on my other characters, my second should be done by some point in time.

I have to say, myself, I think this is very well-written, especially compared to other bios I've seen. ^.^ It's also rather interesting, and I think it has a good story to it, so well done there. She has decent skills and abilities, sort of a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none theme here, which I think you've also done well. There were a couple of things that didn't sit well with me, though.

First is the fact that your character doesn't seem to have any glaring negative personality traits, at least not that I can see. They might be there, perhaps, which just means you should try to make them more apparent in the text, or you might need to do just a little more thinking in terms of balancing out her personality. :3

Second, where it reads "her knowledge of the subject is very limited, even some of the basics allude her", the word should be "elude".

That's all I can really say. Pretty good job in my eyes, though I think you'd still be better off getting feedback from those more experienced than I am in addition to this. :33

Nyaha wrote:

First is the fact that your character doesn't seem to have any glaring negative personality traits, at least not that I can see. They might be there, perhaps, which just means you should try to make them more apparent in the text, or you might need to do just a little more thinking in terms of balancing out her personality. :3

Second, where it reads "her knowledge of the subject is very limited, even some of the basics allude her", the word should be "elude".

That's all I can really say. Pretty good job in my eyes, though I think you'd still be better off getting feedback from those more experienced than I am in addition to this. :33

Oh, thanks for that, I got the two words mixed up for a second. As for the personality, that's sort of a problem I have. I've never been good at pointing out the negative. I intended to make her enthusiasm a bit more clearly overblown, but I sort of rushed it in a attempt to get done and the comment about her trying to talk to a mermaid was the only thing that remained from that. I also originally wrote that she got easily irritated at her team because of the arguments and complained about it, but then she came off as too whiny and annoying, it conflicted with her personality, and I didn't want that. I'll see what I can add after getting my second character written up.

And thanks for the feedback!