fleshing out characters?

Cherry-picking qualities off a list isn't the way to flesh out characters.

Best tip I ever came across was ask the character what they want. Then ask them how far they're prepared to go to get it. Then ask them why.

I think you can really tell when an author is faking it. Advice for the very young or inexperienced author would have been to go out and get experience-- don't get your experience only from the tv/computer/books. If you can't, then work within the scope of your own experience. At the risk of sounding agist, I really tend to appreciate older writers. They usually have undergone catastrophe, dissapointment, death, sorrow, scary medical problems, amazing journies, much more than younger writers (not saying you are either because I don't know you). The best way for a writer to write about fictional people is to have a true and deep understanding for people and the human condition.

I'm not claiming this as a universal panacea, but I was once given a character sheet to fill out that has often proven useful:

Character Chart
Date this chart was completed: MM/DD/YYYY.
Character’s Full Name: The character’s full, legal name
Reason or Meaning of Name: Any particular reason for this name?
Nicknames: ?.
Reason for Nickname: ?
Character Concept: Is there an archetype or story-based quick description that seems appropriate?


PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Age: In years. A birth date would be nice. Include Zodiac (East or West) sign(s) if you like.
How Old Does He/She Appear: ?.
Eye Color: ?
Glasses or contacts: ?
Hair Color: ?.
Weight: ?.
Height: ?
Type of body/build: ?.
Skin tone: ?.
Skin type: ?.
Shape of face: ?
Distinguishing Marks: ?
Predominant feature: ?
Looks Like: ?
Is he/she healthy: ?.


FAVORITES
Character’s favorite color(s): ?.
Character’s least favorite color(s) ?.
Why: ?.
Favorite Music: Genres, styles, particular artists?
Least favorite music: Genres, styles, particular artists?
Why: ?
Food: Cuisine and/or dishes.
Literature: ?
Sports: ?
Movies: ?
TV Shows: ?
Expressions: ?
Expletives: ?
Mode of transportation: ?

HABITS
Smokes: Yes or No? And what?.
Drinks: Yes or No? And what?..
Hobbies: Not in terms of profession.
How does character spend a rainy day? ?

BACKGROUND
Hometown: City where born and/or where they grew up.
Type of childhood: A quick précis on type, conditions, favor, situations, etc.
First memory: Whether important or not.
Most important childhood event that still effects him/her: Whether they remember it or not
Why? ?.
Education: What kind of schools (if any) and how did they do?
Religion: Not only activities but beliefs. Have these changed? If so, how?
Finances: Job? Family money? Are they in debt?


FAMILY
Mother: Name, age, profession

Relationship with her: General description.
Father: Name, age, profession
Relationship with him: General description
Siblings: Name, age, profession
Relationship(s) with him/her/them: General description
Son/Daughter: Name, age, profession
Relationship with them: General description
Spouse/Significant Other: Name, age, profession
Relationship with him/her: General descripton.
Extended family: Name(s), age(s), profession(s)
Relationship with him/her/them: General description


ATTITUDE
Most at ease when: Place and/or time.
Ill at ease when: Place and/or time.
Priorities: Day-to-day.
Philosophy: For example, what would their motto be?
How he/she feels about self: ?.
Past failure he/she would be embarrassed to have people know about: Whether anyone else already knows about it or not
If granted one wish, what would it be? ?.
Why? ?.

PERSONALITY
Greatest source of strength in character’s personality (whether he/she sees it or not): ?
Greatest source of weakness in character’s personality (whether he/she knows it or not): ?
Character’s soft spot: Something or someone for whom they feel affection/loyalty
Biggest vulnerability: Their “Achilles Heel” as it were in terms of personality
Daredevil? Or cautious? In general (or specific) terms
Same when alone: Yes or no?
What makes this person laugh? Explain
What makes him/her cry? Explain
What makes this character angry? Explain


TRAITS
Optimist or Pessimist: In general (or specific) terms.
Why? What reason would they give, and/or what is the truth?
Introvert or extrovert: Generally, but also under what circumstances?
Drives and Motivations: Why do they do the things they do overall? What shape do their desires and actions take?
Talents: What are they just naturally good at?
Extremely skilled at: Those things they’ve spent time developing in themselves
Extremely unskilled at: What they have not developed, not trained for some reason
Good characteristics: Positive aspects of character in general
Character flaws: Negative aspects of character in general
Mannerisms: How do they stand? Walk? Eat? Drink? What sort of gestures do they use? How do they wear their clothes? Etc.?
Peculiarities: Any noteworthy habits or tendencies?
Biggest regret: So far, anyway
Minor regrets: Mistakes that haunt
Biggest accomplishment: Source of pride, or should be
Minor accomplishments: Good times
Character’s darkest secret: What do they want to keep secret at almost any cost?
Does anyone else know? If so, who?

SELF-PERCEPTION One word character would use to describe self: “?”.
One paragraph description of how character would describe self: “?”
What does character consider best physical characteristic: And why?
What does character consider worst physical characteristic: And why?
Are these realistic assessments: ?
How character thinks others perceive him/her: ?
What four things would character most like to change about self and why?
1. His/Her FILL IN THE BLANK
2. His/Her FILL IN THE BLANK
3. His/Her FILL IN THE BLANK
4. His/Her FILL IN THE BLANK
If change #1 was made, would character be as happy as he/she thinks? If not, why not? ?


INTERRELATION WITH OTHERS How does character relate to others? In general terms
How is he/she perceived by:

• Strangers?
• Acquaintances?
• Co-Workers?
• Friends?
• Enemies?

How does character view others?
1. Fill in the blank
2. Fill in the blank
3. Fill in the blank
4. Fill in the blank

What do family/friends like most about character? ?
What do family/friends like least about character? ?


GOALS
Immediate goals: What do they want in the near future?
Long range goals: What are they aiming for sometime in their lives?
How does character plan to accomplish these goals? ?
How will other characters be affected? ?

PROBLEMS/CRISIS
How character reacts in a crisis: ?
How character faces problems: ?
Kinds of problems character runs into: ?
How character reacts to NEW problems: ?
How character reacts to change: Both sudden and gradual

GENERAL Favorite clothing: Not only favorite item, but preferred types of clothes as well.
Why? Or at least what reason they would give (along with the truth, if different)
Least favorite clothing: That they own or have owned
Why? Stated reason and real one if different.
Jewelry: Any? What type?
Other accessories: Computers, weapons, musical intruments?
Where does character live? The actual place they “hang their hat”
Where does character want to live: If given a choice
Spending habits: What to they like to buy, and how?
Why? Both the “what” and the “how”
What does he/she do too much of? And do they realize this?
Too little of? Ditto
Most prized possession: And why?

UNCATEGORIZED Person character secretly admires: Of the people in their life and/or the story.
Why? Explain
Person character was most influenced by: Overall.
Why? Explain.
Most important person in character’s life before story starts: ?
Why? Explain
Who is this person’s hero? A fictional person? Someone from history? A famous artist or soldier or politician?
If this person were a mythological creature, what would they be? Let your imagination go wild with this one

I find that character sheets like the one above are great for kickstarting a great brainstorming session. But instead of filling in the blanks, I tend to write longhand essays about the character, starting with their role in the story, and then their history. Once you know their history, you know motivation, and it makes it easier to come up with believable quirks, characteristics and flaws. And to move them through the plot in believable ways.

If you have a lot of characters, assignment pad/memo notebooks are great. Assign one to each character, including names, physical descriptions, etc. to keep everything straight. The smaller notebook is less daunting than a large one, too.

The informal interview (imaginative, if your work is fictional) was mentioned before. One thing writing such a thing down does is kick start some of your creative talents.

You begin the interview as if you were writing it for a publication (say, Rolling Stone). Give a brief description of how you arrived to view the character, for instance: (this is one I did for a difficult character)

Narrators notes: The interview is held at Delphi’s home, if you can call it that. We are greeted at the door by a gun toting teen who doesn’t identify herself. She simply checks my credentials and pointedly emphasizes (with the talking end of a Glock plasma charge pistol wagging in my direction) that if Delphi feels like talking, she’ll talk, if not, I leave.

Delphi is behind a half-wall of padded couches and plants. She is magnetically lying on the floor, stomach down, reading a book. It is “The Dark Arena” by Mario Puzo. I climb through the narrow opening to discover her hidey hole has an escape hatch that is low on the wall.

Where does that go? I point at the wall.

“To my room.” She says without looking up. She doesn’t quit reading; so I take the opportunity to observe.

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What I did was create a setting that begins to peek into the dwelling conditions. Next comes my (the narrator's) impression of what she looks like. This is more than just a run-down of height/weight, etc. It is more like a first impression. What stands out?

Then I ask some questions. When the character clams up I change subject, but work it back around in another way to find out why they are clamming up.

While it never makes it to print, what happens is your character begins to tell you tidbits that make him/her tick/twitch. These become invaluable when writing because now you have the buttons to push to make them rise above, get dragged down, react, overreact, and "feel."

Hope I helped.

Amy

Aligning with scarlet here, I'm of the opinion that fleshing out a character starts with what they want -- and what they're prepared to do in order to achieve their goal. Every action they take, every reaction they have, and every line of dialogue they utter, ought to be affected by this in some way.

It's like the old Hollywood story of actors asking, "What's my motivation?" If the reader can understand what motivates your character, they will picture a more solid 3D character and invest interest in this person.

-Derek

I don't know if this helps, but when I write stories, I tend to surf for pictures for my characters... yup that's right pictures (of celebrities, etc). It helps to visualize those characters, and soon I can picture them just like that. Sort of like a process of casting people in your novel.

Vermilion said:

I don't know if this helps, but when I write stories, I tend to surf for pictures for my characters... yup that's right pictures (of celebrities, etc). It helps to visualize those characters, and soon I can picture them just like that. Sort of like a process of casting people in your novel.

Click to expand...

Lol. I use faces of celebrities to help me visualize my characters, too.

OP, I agree that knowing what your character wants is the first thing you need. But if loosely basing your characters off real people works for you, why struggle with coming up with them off the top of your head?

Bearing in mind that readers can't see those pictures. And real people tend to be boring. Whereas fictional characters don't have to be -- this being the entire point of creating fictional characters.

-Derek

I should mention that the character sheet above is something which often forces me to answer questions that hadn't been asked yet.

You can write what you want, but think what happens to characters when you read.
The writer may give you a simple sketch of a person, but you, the reader, flesh out that character more than anyone.
You drop a few characteristics, clues about the person and the way they may dress in everyday situations, but no matter what is said, the reader is going to build that character in their own head.
Every character in every book looks different to every reader.

I like to interview my characters. I find some starting question that relates to their goals or purposes in the story, then follow wherever the energy leads.

Elizabeth George, in her book Write Away (which I highly recommend), describes how she fleshes out characters. She has a prompt sheet of about 30 things she typically wants to know about a character. With that prompt sheet in front of her, she writes about a thousand words of stream-of-consciousness thoughts, glancing now and then at the prompt sheet to see whether any of the prompts give her new ideas to write about.

I recently found a new book called The Dramatic Writer's Companion, which I also highly recommend. It's filled with exercises for exploring characters, relationships, settings, scenes, the plot, and other elements of a dramatic story. The cover says "for playwrights and screenwriters," but these exercises are great for anyone who creates stories.

Most of the exercises in The Dramatic Writer's Companion are questionnaires for you or your characters to answer. But these aren't the usual "what's your favorite flavor lollipop" questions that you can find all over the internet. They're all questions that explore character traits that are highly likely to matter to the story. Beliefs, attitudes, significant events, relationships with others, attitudes toward specific settings, history related to this story, and so on.

Dale

I've found that character sheets don't work for me. They ask questions that are often of no relevance to the story or things the character doesn't even know themselves. I've found that digging into my own head works better. My first self-created character was Australian, but ended up living in Canada and had a brother who was deaf as the result of an accident. I created a deaf character, because I wanted to explore writing disabled people, but I eventually connected it all invented the backstory that the "accident" that caused his brother's deafness was an attempt on my character's life because he overheard something he shouldn't have. After that, I understood his guilt feelings and his protectiveness of his little brother and I immediately knew who the antagonist had to be. I never wrote the full backstory down, but it certainly helped me to understand him.

dpaterso said:

Bearing in mind that readers can't see those pictures. And real people tend to be boring. Whereas fictional characters don't have to be -- this being the entire point of creating fictional characters.

-Derek

Click to expand...

Yeah I have to keep that in mind. But I find it very helpful what I did, when it comes to describing my characters (just looking at the pictures to describe them). And the more I stare at them, the more I get into my characters, it's funny.

Of course, I don't just surf for 'celebrities' alone else they would all be beautiful haha.

I studied drama at school and they have a technique called the 'hot-seat.' Actors use this technique 'in character' as questions are fired at them to flesh out the characters they are playing.

Something I found very interesting, because reading it gives one a "fleshed-out feel" for a real life person who is often seen as little more than a caricature.

Hitler: A Psychological Portrait

This isn't a quick solution, but it can provide you with something of a base if you stick to it. I find it helpful to write really short stories (like maybe 10-15 pages) about an event that involves a character. It doesn't need to be directly connected with your main story, but should have a slight connection. Write whatever you want in this short story and when it's done, it will become your character's history. When you're writing your main story after that, you'll have something to reflect upon and give you direction. Just write a couple of short tales and you'll soon find that you have a direction for these characters and that you've "seen" their life and "know" who they are.

Never mind. Old thread. (edited original message.)