how do you build a character?

Horserider92 · Sep 18, 2009

well i know many of us are writers but how do YOU build your character? like do you picture and describe or do you ask other people? what do you do? and what do you have trouble with?

personally, i picture my character. i know what they look like but i just like to get opinions on what they think. i go to naming websites such as behindthename to get names and then i just imagine my character and my character is created! sometimes i have issues tho like with describing but i always figure it out in the end

Danthia · Sep 18, 2009

I figure out what their problem is, what their flaws are, and what their hopes and dreams are and then throw them into a ton of trouble to see what they'll do. Physical descriptions are the last thing I worry about, since that doesn't say anything abut who they are. I need to really know my character before I can write them well, since most of their troubles will come from the choices they make.

katiemac · Sep 18, 2009

The only things that really matters to me when building a character is knowing what he or she wants and how far they'll go to get it.

Stunted · Sep 18, 2009

Step 1) Wander aimlessly through my day.

Step 2) Have some stupid thought.

Step 3) Recognize that my stupid thought has triggered an interesting emotion.

Step 4) Character forms around that emotion. The character immediately has a gender and then starts to have a backstory to relate them to the stupid thought, and then starts to react to the stupid thought and then finds himself or herself in a situation with Another Character, who arouses an emotion, and then it all gets rolling again.

When you write this way, your characters don't always look like anything, and sometimes you have to poke them with a stick to see how they tick, but I love doing it this way.

Deep Woods Writer · Sep 19, 2009

Character building

I personally use the people I have met and worked with over the years as model's for my characters. Smart, stupid, sober or drunk doesn't matter. And that includes my character's personal history. I write a outline of sorts for each character that includes some of their personal history that I can use later on in the plot as it develops, ala Brown and Clancy and Rugerro. The only problem is keeping all the charcater's history's straight as the story builds in suspence and timing. But hey, that's what good writing is about, correct ?

Brutal Mustang · Sep 19, 2009

Danthia said:
Physical descriptions are the last thing I worry about, since that doesn't say anything abut who they are.

Actually it can tell a lot about them.

A short man or ugly woman will probably have a complex, though they may overcompensate to hide it. A strong person is likely to be confident--my personal experience with bodybuilders (from back when I was one) is that they are the most laid back personalities on earth, insults slide right off them. The way a character dresses says much. Also, it takes time and money to keep hair blond (except for those very rare people who are naturally so), so it will say a lot about a girl or guy's personality if they are blond.

Linda Adams · Sep 19, 2009

well i know many of us are writers but how do YOU build your character?

I'll have a need for a character in the story, so I toss one in, and the character develops from there. I needed two characters to go into a dangerous tunnel, so I figured a police officer and a firefighter. Came up with two names, and they became main characters. The rest of who they are developed in the story. I don't spend any time in preliminary development, and the characters don't change over the course of the novel (I don't have any character-based arcs or subplots). They're simply who they are, and they stay true to that.

like do you picture and describe or do you ask other people? what do you do? and what do you have trouble with?

I go more for impressions rather than actual descriptions of what they look like--something omniscient viewpoint allows me to do, and a need required by the large cast I have. It would be very tedious coming up with descriptions for 25 characters.

Where I have trouble is the character names because I have such a large cast. I ended up with Jack, James, Jerry, and Gene, three of which were main characters and one was the bad guy. Not only that, I had a character named Barry! :Headbang:

So I changed three of the names and turned Barry into an unnamed character so I could replace Jerry with Barry. I also have one character's name that I absolutely cannot spell, and I ended up doing an information sheet to list all the names.

barbilarry · Sep 19, 2009

I like to use life lessens I have gained from the people I have met too. People I admire, people who have a strong character and those that don't. People that are users and those that are givers. Those that cause pain and those that remove pain. And the list goes on and on. Any emotion or value you notice can be given to your character. After I give them a value system and emotions, I throw them into every kind of situation I can think of and see how they react.

Idkwiaowiw · Sep 22, 2009

Brutal Mustang said:
Actually it can tell a lot about them.

A short man or ugly woman will probably have a complex, though they may overcompensate to hide it. A strong person is likely to be confident--my personal experience with bodybuilders (from back when I was one) is that they are the most laid back personalities on earth, insults slide right off them. The way a character dresses says much. Also, it takes time and money to keep hair blond (except for those very rare people who are naturally so), so it will say a lot about a girl or guy's personality if they are blond.

That was meant to be sarcastic, right?

Salis · Sep 22, 2009

One of the things I heartily believe is that every human being shares 99% of their personality with every other human being (or, at least, a lot of other human beings). Sort of like genes. It's that other 1% I try to get at to evince personality.

The characters that are really flashy and off the wall are easier to do that with, but with the ones who are more "subdued", I like to go with minor details. For example: one character hates jazz excessively. This doesn't really inform their actions, or provide some deep insight into their soul, but it is one of those really random details that by its very randomness creates the illusion of reality (there's probably a word for this, the piling up of very small details).

ETA: I'm going to break from tradition here and say that I almost never draw on my real life experiences for characters. I've been around the world a bit (literally), but most people I've met are truthfully not interesting enough to read about. The situations they are in, maybe, but not the people themselves.

I prefer to inject a little something extra into my fictional characters. Maybe that's why I like fantasy. I feel that fictional characters do not have to pass the acid test of reality, and in fact should not, they should have a little something brighter, duller, darker, brighter, et cetera. The only test they need to pass is the uncanny valley.

motormind · Sep 23, 2009

Horserider92 said:
well i know many of us are writers but how do YOU build your character?

You need to build characters? Why not let them build themselves?

KTC · Sep 23, 2009

I don't build a character. They just evolve. I don't do any planning...I just freefall the whole story. The characters build out of the writing.

maestrowork · Sep 23, 2009

KTC said:
I don't build a character. They just evolve. I don't do any planning...I just freefall the whole story. The characters build out of the writing.

Same here. When the characters first come up, I have a faint idea of their backgrounds, what they look and sound like, their personalities, etc. but eventually they evolve as the story continues, just like real people. In a way, my characters are like real people I know in real life, except they come from some recess of my twisted mind.

ricmic · Sep 23, 2009

I usually start with an attitude - the glasses through which the character sees the world. Then I think of conflict, and from there comes the back-story. I have a very fuzzy image of what the characters look like, and even if I do have some details, most of them don't make it into the story.

I found out from critiques I got that people attach their own image to the character, and more often than not I'm more happy with their images than I am with mine. One reader told me that she was sure one of my characters wore corduroy pants and used to play soccer. I hadn't thought about it, but she was right.

Samantha's_Song · Sep 23, 2009

I have my characters, I know from the beginning what they look like, I know what I'm going to put them through, but I let the characters build themselves throughout the story. If you let your mind stay open, they will grow all on their own and will tell you how you need to write their personality, their traits, and their dialogue etc.
You've got to put yourself into your characters' heads, not just tell us what you would think or do in the situations you put them in. For instance, I was writing a piece of dialogue for one of my female characters, and tried to put my own words into her mouth, she fought me and told me that she would never say that, that she would say this instead, and she won. That is a character.

Because all of my novels are set in and around France, I do use a website for some of the French surnames. I found a brilliant name for a character who was already dead at the beginning of the story. He was a politician, a complete bastard, and he cheated on his wife, so I gave him the surname Desmarais, it means 'of the pond'. Well, he was definitely pond life after all.

Exir · Sep 23, 2009

I don't start with ready-made character. At the beginning of the story, I know very little about them. I slowly get to know more and more about them, just like I would get to know a new friend.

dirtsider · Sep 23, 2009

I had a basic history for only one of my MC's by the time I started my WIP and that was mostly from my vague history of the mages of my world. Other than that, my characters sort of react to what's going on and that reveals their characters.

donroc · Sep 23, 2009

My characters develop with the story as it is written and even more so during rewrites.

The Lonely One · Sep 23, 2009

First a large cloud of interstellar dust began to contract, and spin, and flatten into a protoplanetary disk. While most of the mass pulled towards the center, several protoplanets also began to form.

Long story short the sun formed and the Earth formed 150 million kilometers from the sun.

The Earth's material condensed.

Then, some believe, after an impact with another protoplanet, the moon was formed.

Then a lot of shit happened but mainly note that molecules evolved.

Yadayada life left the water, some other stuff, then some time later, I wrote this post.

But the point is now I got a bunch of star people to have fun with.

Lady Ice · Sep 23, 2009

A goal, a past, and a flaw.

kct webber · Sep 23, 2009

KTC said:
I don't build a character. They just evolve. I don't do any planning...I just freefall the whole story. The characters build out of the writing.

This.

I've tried to "build" a character, make them be something, make them react a certain way, and, in these cases, they generally just stand there, looking up at me, flicking me the bird. Then I let them do what they want, and they turn out far better than I tried to force them. *shrugs*

MDei · Sep 23, 2009

I just imagine a situation and throw different personalities around in my head dealing with it. The personality that seems most interesting in regards to the situation gets the part and then the story builds around them and the situation. I don't plan my character much. I just throw them in and decide what I want the general first impression of them to be. I go from there and then the character decided what they want to do.

MGraybosch · Sep 23, 2009

I usually use a screwdriver.

lovesaphira · Sep 23, 2009

katiemac said:
The only things that really matters to me when building a character is knowing what he or she wants and how far they'll go to get it.

LOL, that sounds like a quote from legally Blonde.

anyway...

i think up a character and they're basic looks like hair/eye colour, height etc. then i go onto a naming website and give them a name. i usually spend ages finding a name because i can't just choose any name. it has to be the right name. I usually know the name when i see it.
So after i've got the look and the name i delve into their background and other info that i put into a profile. it usually looks somehting like this.
name:
Age:
Looks:
Background:
Personality:
Family:
Powers/abilities: (can you tell i write fantasy? lol)
other:

depends on what story i might add other subtitles, hehe

and yeah. i go from there.

Madison · Sep 23, 2009

Woah! I just wrote a blog post on this! Check it out right here

how do you build a character?

Danthia

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