Asking yourself questions is a useful tool for worldbuilding, character concepting, figuring out the details and limitations of abilities, and planning scenes or interactions. My question is, what oddly specific but helpful questions do you ask yourself?
As an example, one that I love is "Does it affect an electric eel?"
This comes up with "power nulling" situations, and helps define how it actually works. Electric eels basically have a real life superpower, so understanding if and how they would be affected helps define the bounds of the nulling. You can also mess around with this question a bit to help figure out how a potentially-nulled ability works, and if or how it may work or partially work in different kinds of nulling situations.
Another question I like, more of a classic, is "How does the janitor get through?"
It's always tempting to fill an evil lair, fortress, or megacorporate facility with traps and hazards, but a pitfall under the carpet in the main hall doesn't really make sense, yunno? This extends into questions of how traps or hazards are activated or put on safety mode, what each space is used for day to day, and how the people living or working in the space avoid getting shot full of toxic darts while taking a message to the boss' office.
Last example: "How do they talk to customer service staff?"
Most people need to buy groceries, or at least end up going to buy something sometimes. Deciding if a character is chatty and friendly, quiet and mumbly, flat but efficient, or a cashier's worst nightmare can be really useful and interesting to help flesh them out. The difference between the suave starship pilot who's still Mister Cool with the snappy oneliners at the grocery store and the one who drops the attitude and is more innocuous outside the cockpit is a big one!
What are some of yours? ^v^
As an example, one that I love is "Does it affect an electric eel?"
This comes up with "power nulling" situations, and helps define how it actually works. Electric eels basically have a real life superpower, so understanding if and how they would be affected helps define the bounds of the nulling. You can also mess around with this question a bit to help figure out how a potentially-nulled ability works, and if or how it may work or partially work in different kinds of nulling situations.
Another question I like, more of a classic, is "How does the janitor get through?"
It's always tempting to fill an evil lair, fortress, or megacorporate facility with traps and hazards, but a pitfall under the carpet in the main hall doesn't really make sense, yunno? This extends into questions of how traps or hazards are activated or put on safety mode, what each space is used for day to day, and how the people living or working in the space avoid getting shot full of toxic darts while taking a message to the boss' office.
Last example: "How do they talk to customer service staff?"
Most people need to buy groceries, or at least end up going to buy something sometimes. Deciding if a character is chatty and friendly, quiet and mumbly, flat but efficient, or a cashier's worst nightmare can be really useful and interesting to help flesh them out. The difference between the suave starship pilot who's still Mister Cool with the snappy oneliners at the grocery store and the one who drops the attitude and is more innocuous outside the cockpit is a big one!
What are some of yours? ^v^
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