***CC's Guide to Tossing a Character

Well, this isn't so much a guide on how to toss a character, but how to determine whether you should toss the character or not.

YOU SHOULD NEVER TOSS A CHARACTER BECAUSE THEY ALL HAVE POTENTIAL. IF YOU DO TOSS, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND DESTROY YOU LIKE AN ANGRY HIPPOPOTAMUS, AND YOU WILL BE VERY SORRY. VERY, VERY SORRY.

Ignore that piece above. Obviously, there are times when a character should be tossed. But be careful before deciding to auction your character off, or kill them, or whatever you were going to do with them. I believe that every character has potential to become interesting and amazing, you just have to give them some time to grow and spend a while figuring out exactly who they are.

Anyways, if you are thinking about getting rid of a character, despite what you've just read above, consider these things first.

• Have you really exhausted all possibilities with this character? Are you really done with them? Is there nothing else you can do?
  
  

  Obviously, the answer to this will always be no. There's always something to do, don't even try denying it. However, whether you want to travel those paths is a whole 'nother story. Maybe the direction your character is heading is somewhere you're just don't want to follow them. Understandable. We can't always control our characters. Sometimes they just do what they want. And that's okay. Just think of those questions above first.
  

  
  
• Alright, so you're thinking that maybe you could do something else with the character. However, you don't really know exactly what. I urge you to think about their personality, history, and recent threads.
  
  

  Maybe they've had a budding romance, but their boy/girlfriend was taken to the Games...I think the obvious solution there would be to have them spiral into a depression or start to hold everything inside until they have damaged themselves terribly, or something like that. Well, that's what I would do. Remember to keep to your character's personality.
  
  Just try to think of all the possibilities. If you don't really know what to do, just enter or start a thread and see what happens.
  

  
  
• If you still don't know what to do with your character, and you really think they just need to die, I think that you should consider how the best way to kill that character might be. Take a long journey there with your character (and by "long journey", I mean a few threads or something). Maybe you'll find along the way that your character has a lot more potential than you thought. You never know, people.
  
  
• So, if you actually did follow all of the above steps, and your character is still boring you, than you probably should just kill them. Just make sure to keep them in character, and have fun. ...Too creepy? Well, that's about all I can say on that. Check out Ree's guide to death for this.
  
  
• In the case that you just want to get rid of your character quickly, I recommend auctioning them off, because that way, someone else can explore them and have fun. Remember, every character has potential, sometimes it just takes a little thought and patience.
  

Alright, so, this might be the lamest guide ever. All of you people who think that characters are just a means to an end (the end being better writing) probably don't really care about this guide and think it's stupid. Maybe it is. But I really love characters, and I believe in giving them all a chance to grow and become amazing. Character development is da bomb.

...Ignore my attempts to be cool. Anyways, I hope that you will try to work with your characters more when you're not sure if you want to. Each character is an amazing creation, why waste them?

--CC--