Writing Your Dolls story.

@Mitis Feles:

Thank you for your reply! I was starting to think I was the only one who had a doll arrive without a story! (And continues to not have a story...)
And thanks for letting me know that there are ways to hunt down these stories. When I have the time, I think I'll try to dig them up. But here's a question, since back stories are such an integral part of the doll-owners' experience, why don't we have a section here for them? Is it because the forum is going to be spammed by walls of text?

 

Mitis Feles & SPhosphate you're not alone with your dolls not having (had [sry grammar, English isn't my first language]) a background story. This, as an artistic hobby, lures mostly artistic people who'll often also draw, write etc. besides collecting dolls (and possibly shelling their pre-existing characters in doll form) so it is like somewhat of a status quo in this hobby.

But because most do it doesn't mean all do it, of course. Some people just like pretty dolls, no strings attached. Which is also good, to each their own.

Personally I'm on the fence. I do have stories and characters but I don't act them out with dolls but rather get the dolls I want because of "yay, pretty, must have!". Once I get them and customize them I think up something of a back story but more to keep the doll in a specific theme/setting/mood then to create an actual story. For me each doll embodies a very specific idea or mental image, which I want to preserve. So when I'm handling a doll in any way I think up stories or variations thereof about how it became the way it is.

 

@Rillja: No worries. English isn't my first language, either. I guess by your definition I am kinda on the fence, too. I want to be able to have a doll and dress him up in as many ways as possible. (The endless customization possibilities is what attracted me to BJDs.) So now I suddenly feel like I stand out like a sore thumb with a doll but no story and not even a set "look" to him. I am trying to get around that at the moment. Now I have the doll and I know what I want to do with it, I am planning some kind of a story where he can have different looks and different wigs, etc. For a long while, I thought I'd be in the minor, minor minority to tackle this "back story" idea this way!

 

My stories started after I bought dolls. I bought a notebook so I can write information about them and their story. I haven't actually started writing yet but I would love to do a comic type thing. I have a few ideas. I will probably start drawing them out soon.

 

I am a writer long before I started with BJDs and to be able to give a physical form to some of my characters was one of the things that captured my attention.
All my dolls have stories and even the dolls in my wishlist have stories already XD I keep them on my computer alongside their profiles. I do not write them as a novel but as single chapters of their lives, as they are likely to be made as photoshoots.

 

I do make stories about them although I never really share them with the world, they are like my personal little diary! maybe someday I will make a public story about my dolls so that other people get to know them better too!

 

I am currently writing a story including all of the dolls I own so far. Maybe someday I'll share it with the general public. However, currently the only people who know the story are one of my doll friends and my younger sister. I've noticed that I'm much better at writing character backstories than an overarching story with multiple characters. The dolls are helping me get over that hurdle and I love it.

 

One of my dolls is a representation of a character I've had for years, so of course there are things written about him. The other has no story whatsoever yet, or even a name. XD; I'll think about it. I also have three more coming - two are going to be characters, and the third is starting to take shape in my mind. He'll probably be somebody by the time he gets here.

 

My dolls are based on characters from a story that, until this year, has been in my head. My first book should be published to Kindle this fall, and the second one will be officially started in November. I have plans for an entire series of books based on my characters and the world they live in. I do write short stories for them as well and have a wordpress site that I post them to.

 

My dolls stories are fairly simple. I leave them that way for roleplay purposes so that every roleplay partner gets something different. Different situations, different outcomes and such. The only one that's not simple is my precious Erik, whom is my opera ghost. He follows the book's history.

 

I share short monologues and stories, usually on my tumblr or in the writing prompt game, which I'm 100% shamelessly promoting because I can't post in it again until someone else writes a thing for it, and it updates really sporadically. Also a great way to flesh out characters by putting them in new situations. I also have a manuscript started about one of my doll universes. That isn't posted to the Internet because I intend to get it published.

 

People have been asking me what the backstories are on my dolls, and I've just been honest with them. I don't have them fully developed yet. I'm not going to do so until I get my third doll to finish the trio of characters for the start of their story. I have snippets of their personalities finished, but their lives aren't even close to being developed. However, once I do officially start making them backstories, they will be written down in a novel format.

 

As a writer... I'm a damned good editor.
(In other words, I have absolutely zero talent for that particular part of the hobby. )

What I am instead is a long-time old-school, books-and-funky-dice tabletop RPG player and GM. Most of the members of my crew who have ended up with extensive back-stories and complex characterization are resin avatars for favorite tabletop characters or roleplayed MMO toons. They grew out of playing games. Mender and Oracle, the Machine City androids, are the only ones here who have an origin purely in text. A few others (the Turtle House characters, primarily, but also Arjuna and his supporting cast-) were created specifically as doll characters with no "outside" reference at all.

 

Yes, I have fun writing stories about my dolls.

 

I have all my doll's stories written down. Their back story, small stories of their lives, interaction between my dolls and so on and so on. I happen to be an author and I use the dolls as a kind of relief when I am stuck. If I suddenly don't feel like writing my books and my editor is yelling at me for finishing the next chapter so he can go through it, then I sit down and write a small story about my dolls. about their lives or just a random situation they encounter. It is a great help for me to get through my every day life but I don't share my stories with anyone, I just keep them for myself and read them from time to time. I guess I could share them but I don't know where I should do that or how to do it. It is so different from the books I write so I highly doubt that my audience would be interested.

 

Oh man, I write all the time. I like to write about my dolls because it's a nice set of characters that I am very familiar with. I carry around a notebook and pens in my purse or tote bag because I never quite know when inspiration is going to strike. A lot of it is stuff that isn't going to be shared, but it's stuff that I needed to get on paper for the sake of being able to reference for other stories, and I don't want to contradict my own timeline or events. I'm also slowly putting together a "bible" (a reference to the master book from television shows, of this character does this and likes these things, this is the timeline, these things would never happen, backstory, etc.) for my own reference.

 

I tend to write a lot, and most of the dolls on my wishlist are characters I've written about... that said, I don't write down any stories for Vince! I wrote a fairly lengthy saga about my other dolls, I've written about various off-topics, I've written so much about my floating head that he has, like... three alternate universes. And yet Vince, my first doll, just sort of... is.

 

I haven't written anything down yet - just a basic family tree - but I would like to. I buy dolls first then think of "who" they are in correlation to my other dolls.