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Character Development - Do You Outline?

lianna williamson

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I used to do a lot of background character work, but now I've streamlined it to just a few things I need to have nailed before I start writing:

1) What does the character want? If she looked into the Mirror of Erised, what would she see there?

2) What false belief about herself and/or the world does she need to get over to achieve her goals?

3) Where does that false belief stem from? What backstory situation or event created it?
 

indianroads

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I usually know who my characters are when I first conceive the story, and I know their roles. However I still create a character profile wit things I may forget, such as their description, and words / phrases they frequently use. Sometimes I will also note something particular about their character, such as one young man my resent his father for pushing him into a job or career.
 

Bufty

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Thank goodness we are all different, eh? :snoopy:

And dialogue can be fascinating. We rarely know, in life, where a dialogue exchange is going to lead.

It just takes the smallest inflection or unexpected reaction/response from a character to toss a spanner in the works. Wonderful to see where it goes.
 

Myrealana

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I do some amount of background work on important characters, but I'm not big on in-depth character interviews or anything like that. It's more me keeping the details straight so I don't screw them up at some point in the writing.
 

Maze Runner

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I'm tempted to start with an outline next time. If I do, I can see how character profiles could naturally follow. But, looking at it from the outside in, it seems that it could turn out to be formulaic and stifling. For me. I know it works very well for others.

Thus far, I've done what BethS said upthread. I always read your posts. Always find them informative and helpful. :Thumbs:
 

CJSimone

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Just debating on the best way(s) to flesh out the main character for the WIP I have going right now. Does anyone have a good character bio sheet to recommend, or what does everyone do to get their characters as human as possible?

Hi BlankWhitePage. A lot of my characters have some basis in reality, so that helps me flesh them out and make them more human. Of course they've got differences, especially as the story develops and as I revise (I don't personally know anyone rescuing kid hookers like my current WIP's MC, though as a character he's toned down to keep him YA appropriate :)). Sometimes one character will consist of a few people I know combined into one (with some made up parts). I do know my characters well at the beginning, but they usually evolve as the story develops and as I revise. I have to make the effort to pay attention and give them their own speech patterns and such (especially if they're at all similar), and keep them consistent in that.

This could be the wrong way to go about it, but I only know as much about a character as one of my POV characters knows. I don't use bios or anything, but I do know a whole lot more about my POV characters than goes in the story.

CJ
 

Simpson17866

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1) Categorization

I pick MyersBriggs types for my characters, D&D Alignments, and I pick roles that they are playing at the beginning of the story.

For example, the 4 protagonists of my Urban Fantasy WIP are a team of drug dealers turned bank robbers: my first-person peripheral narrator is a Lawful Evil ESFP, his main character friend and boss is a Neutral Evil ISTJ, their mutual best friend is a Chaotic Evil ESFJ, and the ESFJ's younger brother is a True Neutral INFJ.​

People worry that MyersBriggs doesn't work because only 16 boxes can't tell you everything about a person, they worry that Alignment is worse because there are only 9 boxes, and they feel that there would need to be 7.4 billion personality types in order to truly describe how a person is different from everybody else.

First of all, using both at the same time gives you 144 combinations to choose from (bit of an improvement I'd say ;) ) ; second of all, even this combined system of 144 boxes doesn't tell you everything about a person, and it's not supposed to. A stethoscope is not useless because it only gives information about a person's heart rate and not also about their brain waves, rather a stethoscope is useful because it gives information about the person's heart rate.

2) Distinction

Once I have a baseline for my characters, I look at how they differ from other characters – both from my own work and other peoples' – of similar MyersBriggs/Alignment baselines (going back to the metaphor about the stethoscope: how are their brainwaves different from people with similar heart rates).

For example, my narrator is a Lawful Evil ESFP, but so too would I say are Darth Vader (Star Wars) and Don Maroni (Gotham). Darth Vader looks like an ESTJ at first glance because he's spent years keeping his inner personableness hidden under a veneer of professional military efficiency, but Don Maroni is very open about wanting to be seen as an ESFP people-person (unless you don't do your job). Darth Vader is willing to submit to the will of the Emperor, but Maroni cares so much about becoming the king of the hill that he ruins a truce with a dangerous rival by insisting on calling all the shots. Darth Vader is also a "law and order" Lawful Evil whereas Maroni is an "honor among thieves" Lawful Evil. My own narrator is as criminally-minded and as openly a people-person as Don Maroni, but is also willing to submit to my MC's leadership in the vein of Darth Vader rather than trying to run the show himself.

My MC herself is a Neutral Evil ISTJ like Dexter Morgan, but where Dexter only kills those who kill the innocent, my MC has no qualms about running violent drug operations that leave swaths of addiction and drive-by shootings in her wake.​

3) Trial and error

If I come up with a bit of characterization that I decide later that I don't like as much as I thought I would, I see what I can do to change it.

My MC was originally supposed to be a Neutral Evil INTP who orchestrated bank robberies for the intellectual thrill of getting away with crimes, but then I came up with a back story about the group starting out as drug dealers, and I realized that she was more interesting as an ISTJ pragmatist who's just trying to make a living.​
 
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blacbird

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No. I start with ideas for characters, and situations which they would inhabit, and in the writing of those, character ideas develop and solidify. That's they way we get to know actual people in our lives; we meet them, and from that we get to know what they look like, but we really don't get to know them unless we interact with them. For me, narrative writing works best when it mimics that normal life experience.

caw
 

Quentin Nokov

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I think one thing that determines how developed a character will become, is how much time you spend them i.e. how long it takes you to write the story. When you meet someone in real life how much do you know about them in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year? For better or for worse I've been working on my current novel since January 2008. (This is the 4th or 5th rewrite v.v) 9.5 years is a long time to spend with imaginary people, but they've fleshed themselves out very well in that time. Not saying you need to spend nearly 10 years with your character(s), but the more time you deal with them, the more you'll 'get to know them'. Sometimes I swear my characters have a mind of their own; I don't know where they came from or what they'll do next.

Occasionally I will write notes down on my characters so that if they stray from the storyline I can get them back in check, but it's not something I really need to do because I just know my characters so well.
 

Albedo

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I don't outline. I just write, and the characters become more concrete and defined the longer I write them.
 

sockycat

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I don't outline, but for longer works a practice I discovered awhile ago is writing the character in bits of flash pieces outside of the story, both in past, present, and future. The MC of my novel has been with me since I started writing it four years ago, but she's appeared in dozens of other stories, sometimes as a side character, sometimes she's already dead and characters are remembering her. it's an immensely helpful practice because it kind of lets you step outside the immediate plot.

So, an example would be that I recently wrote quick exercise focusing on a new character, and the MC of my novel was already in her late 50's. In the novel, she's about nineteen. I've also written pieces of her as a kid, her interacting and training with other characters, etc. None of these will ever end up in the story, but the essence of them does, because the better I understand she is as a whole, the better I can write her as a more three dimensional character.
 

Niki03

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I do, but mostly as I write. Half the time, I don't even know a character's name until they have a personality. Sometimes I know what they look like as a starting block.

I take notes as I write and come up with birthdays, birthplace, and all that when I come up with it.

It works well for me.
 

ValerieJane

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emstar94

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THIS THREAD IS RIDICULOUSLY HELPFUL. OMG.

Also. Often times my characters die before they've even got on the paper. What I mean by that is they are soulless, I do not care about them, they are 2D and for whatever reason I am trying to force them when they don't and can't exist.
My best characters are the ones who I am ... sortof obsessed by. For whatever reason, whether I love them or hate them I just have to feel ridiculously strongly for them.
I guess my tip is this, maybe write the characters you are aching to write in your heart. The ones you don't feel you 'should', the ones you feel you 'have' to. I think we all have them.