Outlining Collective Characters/Fantasy-SF Races

Chantho, alien chick, Doctor Who

In NORMAL fiction, you usually only need to outline the individual characters. You don't need to write yourself an essay on what the human race is, or a reminder that black people tend to have dark skin.

In fantasy or science fiction, however, you may have to deal with creating collective characters--- groups with common characteristics. Like elves, Vulcans, Timelords, hobbits, Buggers/Formics, hertasi and other fantasy/SF races.

You might also have a collective character that is a faction within a race/species/culture. Like the Death Eaters in Harry Potter.

What you do is you work up the collective character as if it were a single character. In the place where you'd put physical appearance, you put down the distinctive characteristics--- an insectoid race with a hive mind, a humanoid race with pointed ears..... For things like values, ambitions, story goal, you answer for the collective character as a group--- any individually important members of the group you will outline as an individual character, anyway.

If you are using the Snowflake Method, the steps that deal with characters are Step 3: Define Your Characters, Step 5: Write Character Sketches, and Step 7: Create Your Character Bible.

What I did--- since I have Asperger Syndrome and my brain is weird--- I wrote a free-form sort of Step 5 (for both collective and individual characters) and then went back to do Step 3, which has 7 sub-steps and is so more formal/organized. In time I will do Step 7 to expand on the important characters/races.

On organizing the result: I have a big binder which has sections for the worldbuilding--- one tab for 'Erileth' (name of my planet) and one for each of the five regions--- and sections for the 8 initial snowflake steps for the individual novel. For the collective characters/races, I will have to make 2 copies of my print-outs, one for the worldbuilding section and one for the individual novel's section.

Today I worked on the race known as the Gray Seekers. They all have gray skin, black hair and silver eyes.They all wear nearly identical white coveralls, are engaged in scientific research, and have the highest level of technology--- or magic--- of any race on Erileth.

Tomorrow I'm probably going to move on to the Sahchiro, who have dark brown skin, green hair in various shades, and golden eyes. They wear very short, colorful tunics and no underpants. They are warriors who live in high mountains. Their name for themselves means Eaters-of-Men, and their name for other people can be translated 'meat-that-walks'.

So--- what do YOU do to create and outline your fantasy or sci-fi races/cultures?