Character Outlines

I couldn't imagine working without character outlines. Since I mostly co-write, it's crucial for my cowriter and I to stay on the same page. We use visual references and short biographies of all major characters and most secondary characters. If a character changes (has an arc) then we need to establish what they change from and to.


This is an excellent approach to character pre-writing:

http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/5/2/before-fingers-touch-keyboard-my-6-pre-writing-steps.html


Our approach is pretty informal but still very in-depth. We usually have Physical Appearance, Dress and Aesthetics, Body Language, Personality, Family History and Heritage, Defining Life Events, Sexuality.

Sexuality is super important, since we're writing romances. Not just their sexual orientation, but their entire approach to physicality and sensuality, what they want sexually and how they go about getting it and how they feel about all of that.

Some writers do quite well working without preparation, but I've also seen people without a character bio having to waste a lot of time because they drifted into writing their character in a way that didn't make sense for the plot... so they would have to go back and delete a lot of stuff and rewrite.

I don't do hardcopy outlines, but I do spend a considerable amount of developing them in my head before I start writing/introduce them. I like to develop their phyiscal look, personality, and motivations so they are unique in the story and don't overlap w/another similar person.

My characters change too much from my original idea for me to bother with outlines. They're real to me in my head, and their traits and foibles are interwoven with the plot, so I don't write them seperately. Plus, I'm a total pantser (love that term - I'm British and it makes me giggle cos 'pants' means men's underwear in the UK so I get really strange images in my head. Yes I'm immature).

I actually do my character work-up and outline together on storyboards. It is a very loose and basic outline of the plot, leaving plenty of room for the story to grow and change. As far as the characters, I start with maybe two or three lines of very basic information (looks, personality, what drives them) and put that on the storyboards. The rest I make up as I go along and the characters grow and become real.

I find that the storyboards help keep me on track and not wander off topic. That being said, do I follow them to the letter? Not if my writing takes me in another direction. I follow where my characters go.

It would drive me nuts to do character outlines.

The way the character speaks and acts in impromptu response to events and situations creates his character for me. I would hate to know in advance that a character had to speak and react in a certain way in order to conform to his character outline.

But each to his own.

I've tried to write formal outlines a couple of times. Hasn't really worked out, so I tend to do it Bufty's way.

I suspect it's one of those "horses for courses" things. Some do, some don't. If I've got lots of minor characters to keep track of, then maybe. But my MC is pretty well burned into my brain anyway.

Character development, like plot development, is a process for me. I don't just sit down at the computer and start typing, hoping to learn about my characters as I go. I already know them through and through so I'm able to have them behave "in character" from page one. That involves creating what I call my "Character and Chronology" outline. It's especially helpful since I'm writing a series.

It's not a question of 'hoping to learn' - it's just that some folk prefer not to use outlines.

I can understand the benefit in keeping track of characters if one has a series and many characters to keep an eye on.

I'm a plotter. I know pretty much everything before I start writing. When I work on characters, I start with their arc -- how are they going to change in this novel / what do they need? Then I fill in the WHYS behind that. I also focus on the relationships between characters and how that will affect the story (and the whys behind it).

By the time I've done all that, I have a pretty good backstory and pretty deep characters. What I don't have is stuff like what they look like or how they voted in the last election. That kind of stuff comes out when writing.

I hate character outlines. They tend to turn characters into overblown, patchwork imitations of people. I don't give characters traits, or weaknesses, or strengths, or special abilities, or likes, dislikes, etc.

I use real people, and let them be themselves.

Jamesaritchie said:

I hate character outlines. They tend to turn characters into overblown, patchwork imitations of people. I don't give characters traits, or weaknesses, or strengths, or special abilities, or likes, dislikes, etc.

I use real people, and let them be themselves.

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I don't understand - you just use actual real people? Surely they all have likes, weaknesses, strengths and so on?

Linda Adams said:

No character outlines or sketches for me. I just toss them into the story and they happen. I'm afraid I look at an outline of questions like "What's the character's favorite color?" and am wonder why I'm wasting my time. If it's important, it'll be in the story.

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Especially the bolded. Some things I list quickly as I'm working on my book, make notes on index cards. Then fill out the other things if I make mention in the story. Sitting and filling out those character questionnaires asking favorite ice cream/color/music/gemstone ended up being a really good way to procrastinate my time away from doing the hard part. Writing.

That said, usually before I start writing, I do sit each character down and think about things in their life that have brought them to where they are at that point in my story. We talk about things they want, what they want to achieve. I will sometimes try to work up a psychological-type profile and it does get incorporated into my outlining so I know where I'm going with the character, which does sort of drive the shape of the story and what happens to them and how they react.

I'd suggest refraining from an outline until AFTER your finished with your first draft. Write what comes to mind, and get to know your character's looks, quirks, etc. as you go. If your character has blue eyes in the beginning and brown eyes at the end, who cares. It's an easy fix, and chances are by the end you'll have a fuller picture of them from the beginning. What DOES matter and needs planning is the character arc. Who are they on the inside, and how is that going to change by the end of the book?

I don't do a detailed outline of my characters, more like a quick paragraph on who they are, what they look like, and how they relate to the other characters. I mention special talents or a career if they have one. Where they're from. It's so I don't forget.

Anything deeper comes out to me as I write my first draft. I don't find interviewing my characters helpful, at least before I have a first draft down.

There are vague notes scattered around the place, but no, I don't really outline: rarely plot, never characters. That's because I plan my characters and plot during my zero draft, where I explore them to a much deeper level than I could in planning.

I hate outlining. It seems useful, but whenever I outline, it just makes everything seem so lame and dry, I lose all enthusiasm for the work. Better just to plunge in.

I do not do this, I kind of learn about the characters as I write. If I need to jot down a few facts about them - now who had the lean, skull-like face? Or the dark blue eyes? - I do so. Otherwise a character outline would constrain me too much. And I'd have to think about it too hard, and too much thinking about my writing gives me a headache.

Seriously, I am like Winnie the Pooh - think think think...

But if I think too much, my brain starts to hurt and then I don't get any writing done.

Back in my roleplaying days I used to love doing character outlines. The roleplays I joined were always the ones where they had clauses saying "must answer in full sentences" and "at least three paragraphs for this answer." and "a paragraph is more than one sentence, please!" etc. I always wondered how other people could write so little!
My first book I started I had files with pages and pages of character outlines. When I go back to rewrite that book I'll still use character outlines as there are a LOT of main characters (epic quest fantasy. You know the ones, lots of different groups of characters, lots of POV, eventually they all cross paths or join together and so on) but the won't be as long or as detailed as they were back then. I was 14 when I started that book and didn't know a thing about plotting a story, so I guess I put extra into character outlines! Plus it was fun.
These days I don't do much in the way of character outlines. I get to know my main characters as part of my plot-planning method where I think about everything before bed and let my subconscious work on it in my sleep. A few weeks later I can sit down and write out the plot and work out the kinks. I find at the end of this I know my main characters pretty well. I have a word file where I make notes on less important characters so I don't forget their full names or stuff, but I only add to it as needed.
I guess that's the main difference between now and when I was younger. Now I only add to a character outline if there's something I'm forgetting. Back then I'd use the outline to create my character.

A Long December said:

I don't understand - you just use actual real people? Surely they all have likes, weaknesses, strengths and so on?

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I think what JamesARitchie means is that he doesn't overtly say "Right, this character's weakness will be x and their strength will be y" as weaknesses and strengths will become apparant when you start plotting and having to justify why a character does a certain thing.

My problem with very detailed character outlines is that the characters start to become predictable, defined only by one element of themselves. Some people in life are very "simple" but most people are very complex. Good people aren't always good; bad people aren't always bad.

I'm another who does a lot of in-head work before letting them loose, rather than outlining as such.

Usually start off with a filthy great clichéd hook and a specific job I want a character to do and go from there. I ask myself questions about them while I'm commuting. It's usually not long before snippets of conversation and bits of scene start to grow around the cliché hook and once the ideas start really taking off, quite often you can remove the starter hook altogether because it's looking cheap and nasty next to all the new stuff that's sprung up.

I tend to do a lot of the character work in my head as well. I think a lot about what they want and how they're going to get it, and write a few scenes to see how they'd react to certain things. Eventually it all comes together for me.

I like to write about a page and a half on each character before I start work on a novel (this is the most outlining I ever do), basically describing where that character is from, what he/she looks like, and how he/she will change throughout the story. Sometimes it proves helpful, other times not so much. Either way, it can't hurt to do it.

I do two things - the first thing I do is go and play the sims, and use that to create characters physically. And just because it's fun to imagine what my character would like to do (master villan ect ect) if they weren't held by the constrains of my story.

But on a more serious note, once I know what the character looks like physically, I go and write about them interacting with someone else. I honestly thing that characters are created by their situations and how they react to them, so I go and put them in a situation and muck around with how they react. If it's interesting and I like it, I go with it. If not, I start again.

It sounds like it takes a lot of time, but it doesn't really. Maybe a good solid days work, and the less important a character is, the less time I spend figuring out the nuances of what they would do.

I depend heavily on my character sketch in the outlining process. Years ago, I found a character questionnaire, which I have tweaked and trimmed and padded over the years until it serves my purposes very well. It doesn't ask questions like, "What's your favorite movie?" (because I don't see how that's helpful, unless the character is a movie reviewer or something). It asks things like, "What is your character's motivation in this story?" and "What is his greatest fear?" and "what does he think about the other characters in the story?" It runs about a page and a half to four pages, once it's been filled out completely.

I am so not a visual person, so I start a character by finding a photograph or drawing that can represent him. As I fill out the questionnaire, I keep a notepad open, because each thing I fill in suggests scenes, aspects of voice, possible plot-specific responses that might be useful later, and I want to get those down and saved. Plus, for me, finding that character's voice in my head is crucial; if I don't find the voice, the character doesn't work. So if he starts making little noises, I need to get that down quickly.

I find using the outline results in much more rounded characters and richer stories. YMMV.

cmtruesd said:

I'd suggest refraining from an outline until AFTER your finished with your first draft. Write what comes to mind, and get to know your character's looks, quirks, etc. as you go. If your character has blue eyes in the beginning and brown eyes at the end, who cares. It's an easy fix, and chances are by the end you'll have a fuller picture of them from the beginning. What DOES matter and needs planning is the character arc. Who are they on the inside, and how is that going to change by the end of the book?

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This is my approach as well. I start with basic, broad-strokes ideas about the characters, but once I've finished the first draft and have a real idea who they developed into and how they interact with people. Then I write a character bio out for each so that those earlier, less developed chapters can be brought up to speed so traits don't seem to come out of nowhere.

I enjoy doing a character outline. I go pretty detailed though, but strangely enough, I don't do a outline for the novel itself.

TikaaniM said:

I am curious how others sketch their characters for their novels and how others fill out an outline. By the way, I am in the process of outlining and have done it before. . . I will probably go somewhere else for this and stay dormant until my stories are ready for review.

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