A) Yes, I have had some characters that at times seem to fade in and out of existence on me. This either being because of a loss of muse or other such pertaining reasons. Most of the time for me the characters that I have seemed to loose touch with are ones that weren’t planned out enough, or at active at times that I have conflicts in real life that come into play such as work or school.

I have tried with many of my characters to try to bring them back by giving myself either a little bit of time off from the site. Be it by watching a movie or reading a book in some off time or focusing on schoolwork for a bit, however what usually does the trick is music and making graphics. I only really ever switched characters when it comes to the Ministry of Magic RP.

I think what I try to do with my next characters is to simplify things. As my future characters not many of them will be related. Currently most of my characters are either cousins or step-relatives of the same family line.

Yes I do feel guilty about abandoning characters because they in a sense had a life of their own. They are sentient for the most part for me that is, as I try to help them to come off of the page and feel very real. Almost as if the character wrote the words down themselves and have it not seem that I, the narrator, wrote them down.

Characters that have faded:

Chelsea Payne – her personality wasn’t strong enough, and she never seemed to develop her own voice. I tried to make her stick but she never really felt genuine to me.

Kyleigh Tanner (nee Manning) – although I have recently begun playing with her again she did for some time disappear for me. This is in part due to school work and the fact that during the tail end of her seventh year she kind of tapered out in my head about the same time that I got a job in the retail-hell of Walmart.

Amelia Johanson – never actually faded I kind of had to leave the RP for one IC term and built it into her history that she spent most of the time in the library. When in reality it was because I had far too much classwork in my Art History and Graphic Design courses last term at school. She is back now just so her stalkers can know that again she is happily stalkable.

India Johanson – I had her mainly planned but in all reality halfway through the summer before her seventh year her sister bounded into my head and wouldn’t keep quiet. It got so hard to RP her that I started RPing Amelia on the side in different RP sites so that I could keep the angsty-India going for a while. She was sort of drowned out by Amelia upon her graduation from Hogwarts.

Alicia Tanner (nee Devereaux) – honestly she’s still in my head most of the time but I find its harder to RP her know a days especially considering she’s kind of lost in the abyss of motherhood. And Tori – the person who RP’s her husband hardly ever goes online although they are still very much together in both of our hearts.

B) Tips to avoid losing steam, that is a great thing to think of. I would say to try to have them develop their own voice. Another thing that I tend to do that I find helpful for developing characters that 1) stick 2) are stalkable (maybe?) is to give the characters traits that I have in life. With this I do try and enhance them. For example my character India was somewhat angst-filled and rebellious and I have a tendency to say things like it is and be opinionated – as well as being a bit quirky at times. I gave her the angst-rebellious trait as a starting block and let her character mold from there. With my characters Kyleigh and Alicia they both are clumsy, kind, and a bit quirky which are all traits I have – again, I emphasized it and made it even far more exaggerated than it is or ever would be in my life.

This might sound strange but really the characters sometimes just appear one day without hardly any thought, its just a voice loud (sometimes obnoxiously so) and a feeling of a personality. Like they are breathing life into themselves sometimes it happens when I’m watching a show and I realize that that itching feeling in the back of my mind was the character building, a character that didn’t really have a strong hold at first begins to form like a block of clay.

Most of my characters are easily fun to play. Whats the point of making them “fun” if there isn’t a fun bone in their flimsy thought-filled body? I mainly let them grow and form for me and try to see how they would react in situations. Most of the characters are generally nice – others are really not nice at all but are good at acting nice when needed.

As Roro said, I myself try to make each of my characters very different. Although as most have been related there are certain characteristics that I pull from one to another but each time it’s a different characteristic (except for with Alicia and Kyle as both were and still are detrimentally clumsy).