One of my MC's is the embodiment of Chaos and trying to write him is extremely frustrating, I end up overthinking things and getting his personality all muddled in the process. So, a couple of questions: -What makes a person chaotic? (Do they make weird things happen at random? Are they bad at decision making? Etc.) -How do I develop his character? (He's literally Chaos, I can't make him less chaotic.) -Should I make him trustworthy? (Is it even possible?) Sorry if this is worded strangely, it took me awhile to even figure out what I needed to ask, but any and all help is appreciated.
This is a tough topic here. Um hmmm. When I think of chaos I think of a disorganized person, mentally ill person, or DandD Chaotic. I guess you c ould check some of that out.Nothing this character will do is going to make sense to the other characters but you need him to relate to the readers or at least give them enough inner person to allow them to understand his actions and reasons for doing so. Let's take a mentally ill person who has ocd on top of a severe disorder. I'm not sure which ones pair together or what is incompatible, but ocd in and of itself isn't bad but compounding it on another illness makes things worse. Well, typically all of these people reactions to things or responses tend to be over reactive or confusing to others. I touched my cereal bowl now I need to wash my hands, then the spoon and hands, milk and so on and so on what takes you and I 2 minutes takes this person 2 hours to do. We can't relate. But given an inside to their mind maybe we could at least understand their irrational fears. Maybe it's germs, maybe it was abuse and if they don't mom beats them, even if she's dead and long gone the fear is still there resulting in the action. An example that isn't a mental illness: A person may choose their actions and be able to rationalize why they are right, even if they fail and didn't expect it they can rationalize themselves that they are right and they "knew they'd fail therefore they won. But the trick is making this person believe it on top of it. My plan went to plan anyway. Win or lose you still lose. Reckless actions, self-centeredness, no morals, rationalization to everything, maybe even disorganization or organized chaos (cluttered dirty disorganized but knows where everything is and if you touch their things then they get mad because now they don't know where it is.) As for the rest I'd look into dand styled examples and see what kind of things characters like this do or what their patterns are in certain circumstances. I don't know if this will help much I did my best.
to me a chaotic person is in a constant state of flux; they become agitated by things being as they are, quickly bored and on a hairpin trigger to shake things up. words that come to mind are restless, twitchy, unhinged, unexpected, wild, untamed, etc. as for developing your character... that depends on how you want him/her to develop. Are they the good guy? the bad guy? something confusing and in between? i always see a chaotic character as the wild card, the person whose motives are murky because they're not doing anything for others unless it serves their state of mind right now (and that's what a chaotic character is; someone who lives now, not thinking about the past or future repercussions of their actions). i've read a few books with a crazy, chaotic character, and in one case she was difficult to peg down. she cared about her brother, but couldn't help falling prey to her intrinsic need to break down the structural integrity of the society around her, which meant her brother could never tell if she was there to help him or cause him trouble. I guess my previous answer kind of answers your third question. i can't picture a scenario where a chaotic person is inherently trustworthy, because chaos by nature can't be compartmentalized in to something that makes sense. the linear thinking of a rational person is nonexistent in someone who is the embodiment of chaos.
Not to be a party pooper, but I don't think you can write what you describe as "literal chaos." Chaos: complete disorder and confusion. (physics) behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. The character would appear to be random nonsense. In order for this person to move the story forward, he needs to act within some boundaries, even if it's only one rule or one motive. I'd guess that's where the source of your frustration lies.
I'm writing a chaotic character, too. From what I know, I think I can help you with some tips. - The character loses his temper very quickly if something holds him back from what he's trying to do. - It's almost impossible to convince him of something that doesn't interest him, like helping some people in trouble just out of the kindness of his heart. He would just walk away careless. - He raises his voice frequently. Or, if you don't want that, he would have a tough voice, scarier than usual. - A trustworthy, chaotic character would be tricky to manage. People don't really like him (I suspect), so nobody can trust him. If you can figure a way around, it would be interesting to hear.
An utterly chaotic person would, IMO, function as if they're insane; they would be a tremendous danger to themselves and others. I think that you're going to have to come up with some moderating influence here, in order to even allow them to be a character.
See the thing you must remember is that they will be unpredictable, and not even those closest to them will know if they can truly trust them or not. Pure chaotic will be wildly extreme. They would show up to a sword fight with something so absurd, get laughed at, and win the fight with wiffle ball bat. They will 99.9% of the time come right out of left field, and catch everyone off guard. Think of Gomez Addams for instance, he greets Tully by having a rapier duel with him, and it is totally out of the ordinary to greet some one that way. They keep everyone around them on their toes, guessing what insanity they will do next (or say). Though there is generally one thing that grounds them to sanity( A lover, child, friend, or object of affection), and messing with that thing will not end well for whom ever does. Though you have to decide to what degree into madness they are. Good luck.
One of the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is unpredictable, chaotic behaviour. Think Trump.
Chaos doesn't mean random. Chaos doesn't mean crazy either. It could have some of those elements. But it's not just totally crazy all the time. And, perhaps most importantly, a character like that will be extremely tiring to read. Think conceptually about the idea of chaos. Chaos is unbound and uncontrolled by anything else, but that doesn't mean it is totally lacking in direction. Much of nature is chaotic, in the sense that it lacks specific order, but it still follows certain behaviors. Animals don't just destroy everything, nor do they randomly attack things or act like they are crazy. They sometimes do things for reasons we can't understand, but they aren't crazy. They have instincts they follow, they have thoughts, they can learn but they won't follow external structures. They do what they want to do and that can be quite structured while still being chaotic. I think a Chaotic character would be like this; animalistic. They have some certain set of instincts or precepts that they follow and they can plan and think ahead along those lines. They would be hard to dissuade from following those without some kind of force, but they would understand when things are blatantly against their interests and play along. Their instincts will be probably something simple, but not necessarily destructive. As long as he gets to do whatever he wants then he won't have any reason to destroy all the rest of the order he comes across. But if something tries to stop him from living how he wants then he probably wouldn't see a problem with getting violent, even to an extreme degree. His decision making might be difficult to follow at first, but like an animal if you spend time around it they become reasonably predictable. He might still claw you sometimes, but equally you can see when he's getting agitated. If it was me then I would start out with him seemingly being very destructive, say something has prevented him doing what he wants and him wrecking it up, before continuing on with whatever he was doing. He starts out as being like a hungry bear or something, he's scary and dangerous and if you try and stop him eating stuff then he's just going to eat you. But he doesn't enjoy violence, he doesn't even feel strongly about the people he kills, it's just that he's single mindedly focused on what he wants. You develop him from there by showing him in another context. Perhaps another character falls into his cave or something, is terrified, then finds this guy isn't actually terrifying. The guy doesn't care that you're here really, you aren't a threat to him and you aren't stopping him doing what he wants. So maybe they talk and we learn more about what drives him, or maybe he can't speak and is totally instinctual, but he happily sits with the other character and maybe shares his food or whatever and lets him leave peacefully. And slowly we learn about him some more and what he's trying to achieve (presumably something since this is a book and it has a plot that must be going somewhere) and we start to appreciate that he isn't evil he just has no interest in, or perhaps even knowledge of, human society and has this very simple, single minded answer for things that prevent him following whatever is driving him. We'll see that he'll look for easier ways around, he won't instantly resort to violence, but if it's just easier for him to splat things in his way then he will and not feel bad about that. And as for trusting him, yes you can build trust with him the same way that you build trust with a dog. If you are helping him get what he wants then he can trust you and you can trust him to a point. When the chips are down he might just turn on you but as long as you are helping him then why wouldn't he follow along? And, like a dog, if he likes you then he would protect you. He wouldn't like the idea of you giving him orders, but he'd understand the concept of cooperating to get what he wants. And as long as your interests align then you can trust him to be him, even if maybe not trust him to do what you ask him to. Please god don't tell me that he doesn't want anything at all either; in that case I don't think you should do the character. A character with no direction at all is just not a character. The Joker has direction, you know? Maybe not some huge end goal, in fact part of what makes him interesting is that he doesn't really have some great plan for the world. He just enjoys terrifying people, and pushing against the order. Your character needs something that is making him do things, and no just "chaos" isn't enough. Even The Joker has more to him than that, he's a mirror image of batman that enjoys the conflict and to him the conflict itself is the goal. That's not the same as just destroying things all the time. He blows stuff up with purpose. He might kill you if you are part of that purpose, but if you aren't then he won't see a reason not to be nice to you. After all you might be able to help him. So, make him something of an animal. Make him rankle against any sense that anyone controls him and always strive to be his own man. But don't let him be just a Tasmanian Devil. He might be very destructive but he does it with a reason. Without that reason he's not even a character.
One character that springs to mind is Hagbard in The Illuminatus Trilogy. His goals are unquestionably chaotic--in his view, the world has become too lawful. Blind trust in authority is distorting the naturally good nature of people, and making them small and fearful creatures, blindly looking for leadership and supporting any tyrant or hatemonger who can offer reassurance. His goal is to wake people up and to get them to think for themselves, free from any coercive influence, including their own indoctrinated beliefs, and even their faith in him (after all, people can't think for themselves if they trust his authority too much). His methods, though non-violent, are extreme, manipulative and often traumatic to the people he tries to "save" (playing with their emotions to force them to abandon attachments or question their principles, confronting them with the fear of death, etc). I think he's a good example of "Chaos as a principle." embodied in a coherent and interesting character.
When I think chaotic, I think mental illness honestly (though I like the dog/animalistic idea of LTP's). To expand on everyone else's comments (and try not to repeat too much) this is my take on chaos. Part of the definition of chaos is 'behavior so unpredictable as to appear random' and that's what I would focus on. It appears random, but it isn't. In nature that presents itself as storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, you get the idea. They are not random though. There are other things at play, there are cycles and catalysts. In a character you could have someone who appears to do things randomly (from knocking books off a shelf to stabbing someone - depending on where you're going with it). The important thing is that they do have reasons, whether they appear to be nonsensical or not. And you don't have to ground him to anyone, people can just stand around and be scared and he can just be the crazy guy, but IMO it's going to be a lot better if he's got someone that can somewhat control him. Where I split off from LTP though, is how to build the trust. Dogs don't do what you want because you're helping them get what they want. Dogs do what you want because they love attention. Being petted, given treats, allowed to curl up on the couch, etc. What they're craving, at the base instinct, is all the good feels. In a person, someone who is chaotic as described probably isn't going to be that amenable to interaction with other people because people are likely always treating him like he's crazy. What you need is an observer to control him. Like training a dog, when you see their ears prick up a tiny bit - you immediately need them to refocus on you until you can assess what has piqued their interest and whether or not it's okay for them to run after it. Your observant person needs to catch the chaos before it starts, because of a head tilt, a sound, clenching fists, whatever and then redirect to the good feels. Maybe they've noticed that he likes the color blue, or that a certain song playing settles him down, or that stroking the back of his hand a certain way is something that calms him. You watch for what he does when he's calm, and then you repeat that. And it won't work infallibly. Even with dogs, they're not always going to do what you say. But the observer person can control them somewhat and teach them to crave the good feels instead of acting out. It's a little like a schizophrenic who hears a buzzing sound and immediately freaks out. It's not the buzzing sound that freaks them out - it's what the buzzing sound means to them. Someone who cares for a person with mental illness (Schizophrenia, PTSD, whatever) learns to react to the same stimuli, just in a calming manner for the person who reacts to them chaotically. For instance, my father had PTSD and would become nonsensically violent when certain stimuli was presented - for instance the power going out at night. The immediate darkness and absence of sound would make him flail around, destroying everything in his path, because he felt threatened. He believed he was in danger and somewhere else. You fix that by never ever being without a flashlight and immediately saying things that pull him back to the present and, well, staying out of his way until he gets it. Because he can't fix it himself, someone else has to, or he'd keep going until he was completely exhausted or the lights came back on. ETA: And yes, sometimes the calming influence will get 'bit'. So, it's imperative that they see something in that person that makes them keep trying. That there's some of sort of attachment so they don't just throw their hands up and say 'Not my circus, not my monkey'.
Thank you for all of the replies! I really appreciate it, and I'm super excited about writing the character now that I have a better understanding of what makes him chaotic. I realized that part way into planning, which is why his host (of sorts) isn't born as Chaos. If Chaos didn't have a host he would be exactly as you described, his host gives him the ability to think and feel and thus adds more depth to his character. This is extremely helpful! Part of why my character was frustrating was that I couldn't determine if he would have any order to him (because that would undermine the whole 'chaos' thing) but when you put it like that it really did make it easier for me to understand that even natural chaos has reason behind it. With the whole building trust through training thing, that will be very handy as I needed a way for Chaos to be able to work with his complete opposite, Order. Now I'm also really excited by the idea that Order is basically Pavlov and Chaos is his dog, for some reason I find that infinitely amusing. "Please god don't tell me that he doesn't want anything at all either..." Don't worry, he definitely does, just not everyone understands them at first. I also really dislike characters who're evil just because they can be, how can anybody write a character who doesn't have any motivation?
Order and chaos can certainly work together. As long as their interests overlap then they will work together for their own good. The world is a big place and there's room for both order and chaos out there so they don't have to be enemies, at least they wouldn't just immediately fight. Order certainly won't just seek to destroy chaos on spec because by it's own belief it can't, it can only react to something bad someone did not what someone is. And the chaos wouldn't care about order as long as that order doesn't get in the way of what it wants to do. There might be some sparks there, obviously, because it's not always going to be easy for them to ignore each other. But as long as they both have personalities and are able to understand that working together is better than not then I don't see why they wouldn't.
I would call my main character chaotic. He is impulsive, apathetic, hot headed, and doesn't typically think ahead. My character is no too trustworthy at all, honestly, despite being a "good guy." As for development, you say he IS chaos. Is he human?
