Creating Characters

My tip:

Don't try to get to know your characters -- try to be them.

Role play a character in your mind. Try to feel the insides of their shoes. I do this sometimes before going to sleep.

I like to write bios for my characters: where they were born, what their goals are in life, what their hobbies are, what their favorite color is.

Elektra said:

I thought, rather than continuing to go back and forth in the other thread, we could get a fresh start on the topic here.



Akuma, I hope you don't mind the quote, but I thought it might be a good jumping off point.

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Of course I don't mind. It's probably safer out of the war zone, plus a thread people aren't trying to avoid will draw more suggestions.

Thanks for the help, Elektra!

Just turn them loose to write/speak? Could be as a journal, could be as telling their story (even if the story's not 1st person/they're not the narrator) - not an interview, but just wherever they want to take it, and see what turns up.

The poetry sounds cool!

Willowmound said:

My tip:

Don't try to get to know your characters -- try to be them.

Role play a character in your mind. Try to feel the insides of their shoes. I do this sometimes before going to sleep.

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There's a lot to be said about role-playing. People use the technique every day to solve crimes, understand human trauma, and in the end understand a fundamental aspect of our own potential. For me, it's about being able to see the world through the eyes of my characters and respond to stimuli as they would (given a basic emotional framework to operate in). So in writing a scene, I tend to visualize it through my character's eyes. How would they react if I did something unexpected. How does it challenge their own beliefs and allow them to grow?

Appearance, history, likes and dislikes are all helpful, but also incorporate little mannerisms that belong only to your character - the way she chews her lip when she's thinking, or the way he rubs his forehead or folds his arms when he's upset.

I agree with the idea of 'being' the character. That is why I have never felt comfortable with character descriptions, interviews and so forth. I get a feel for what it is like to be that person. Then I don't need to write down the details because as soon as a situation comes up I immediate know... whatever, how they take their coffee, what type of car the have or how they laugh.

In the TV series MASH there's an episode where a couple of the characters realize that there's no hope for a relationship between them. They met because of the war, but in the civilian world, they would have never met because they traveled in such different circles (it's the episode with the USO woman who gets appendicitis).

That's kind of where we started with the character development. All these characters who would never otherwise meet are thrown together by the circumstances. They don't like each other, have no reason to trust each other, and then we pile on complication after complication. Personality problems drive them apart, but circumstances drive them together.

One of the hardest characters to characterize was the male hero. We were fishing around trying to characterize him--why he was in the war, the tools he used, where he was from, etc. As it turned out the reason his characterization didn't work was because his role in the story hadn't quite come together. Once we fixed that, his characterization fell into place. Then we put him into conflict with the heroine, using a lot of misunderstandings to ramp up the conflict.

I can only speak for myself, but if I'm at the point where I need to profile each of my characters through interviews and such, I would hope that I might realize how much I do NOT know my characters and approach it differently.

Which begs the question, what would and FBI profiler make of me? Oh gods.

Chumplet said:

folds his arms when he's upset.

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I can also help having an awareness of typical gender behaviour. For instance, folding ones arms when upset is typical for women, but atypical for men. A man doing this would be exhibiting feminine body language. Be sure those things are inteded.

Willowmound said:

I can also help having an awareness of typical gender behaviour. For instance, folding ones arms when upset is typical for women, but atypical for men. A man doing this would be exhibiting feminine body language. Be sure those things are inteded.

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This could also be intentionally invoked in the case where the sexual orientation of characters might be expressed through body language and mannerisms.

Edit: and be sure to read to the very last punctuation mark in a post before you reply LOL!

Like I said, be sure it's intentional.

It might be a really long process, but I discovered who my characters by just writing my story without any idea of who they were at all. I just wrote. They started out as completely blank people with no definition whatsoever, then as I let the story progress, I found out what their motivations and interactions w/ each other were. Then after the first draft, I did a synopsis to uncover how to turn their interactions/motivations into a plot. Hence, my first draft, as I discovered, turned out to be more of an outline and a bunch of backstory than anything else. Then as the first rewrite came around, I used those things I discovered about them in the first, now using their personalities as a means to make a plot. It took me a while, but now all my characters have a complete life of their own.

karo.ambrose said:

It might be a really long process, but I discovered who my characters by just writing my story without any idea of who they were at all.

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I use to write like that. Only now that I've gotten a bit older and my memory a bit worse I find it's helpful for me to have little character bios around for me to refer to so I keep my characters consistent. These come in really handy for minor characters that I don’t use all the time.

Willowmound said:

My tip:

Don't try to get to know your characters -- try to be them.

Role play a character in your mind. Try to feel the insides of their shoes. I do this sometimes before going to sleep.

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Willowmound, I couldn't have said this better.

Every night before I go to bed, I close my eyes and run through a scene I know I'll be writing soon. I picture my characters in that situation with as little preconcieved ideas about their actions as possible. What I find is that characters really do have gut reactions, and that these actions define their character - not the other way around.

Also, I figure I could never truly define myself with a character survey, so how could I expect to define my characters that way?

I've never done a character survey, nor have I interviewed a character. I only use character notes for serial work where there's a chance that someone else might need to step in and write an episode or two. Even then, it rarely works. Mostly, the characters just turn up, and they have lives and interesting things happen, and they do what they can.

They don't make grand entrances, they don't have Hidden Secret Pasts (well, some of them do, if they warrent it) and mostly, they don't have combat skills. They're just people. They can be extraordinary and interesting people, but they're still just people.

Everyone uses different techniques to achieve the same result. It’s a cliche, but it’s true - find whatever works for you. My take: I let my characters define themselves with as little help from me as possible.

The best scenes, the truest emotions, the cleverest plot twists and my most believable characters have come out of nowhere. (Or more likely, my subconscious that’s been trying to get in touch with me.) Gabor Szabo, a Hungarian jazz guitarist, was once asked how he knew when he was playing well. “When I surprise myself,” he reportedly said. When my characters surprise me, I know I’m on the right track. And sometimes, if you just write without trying to plan or think, great things happen.

I never used to believe in characters taking over. I mean, who’s in charge, anyway? But in one of my mysteries, I had an ex-cop, now a PI, trying to get some information about a drugstore robbery out of a cop from another agency. But the cop won’t tell him anything--why should he? Cops don’t divulge information to civilians who walk in. This character was definitely in charge. No matter how I wrote it, it sounded phony

Worse, I had no idea where the information was going to lead. (Often a problem for those of us who wing it.) I kept writing the scene over and over until it sort of worked, but it was never quite right. So the cop eventually tells him he knows who did it, he can’t prove it, but he knows who it was. “Who was it?” asks my guy.

At this point I didn’t have any answer. I had no idea who had robbed the drugstore or why. I stared blankly at the paper for a moment, and then, swear to God, I quickly typed a name without even thinking about it. “Badger Willie.” I stared at what I’d just written in amazement. Of course! Now it all worked, it tied a whole bunch of stuff together, all the loose ends now made perfect sense.. I had literally tied up a complicated plotline without conscious thought. A character in my head actually provided me with the answer I hadn’t known I had.

Sadly, this doesn’t happen often. But it does happen every once in a while, and it’s always without conscious thought, and it always feels utterly right when it does.

Of course, you can’t write a whole book this way - or at least, I can’t. If could, I think I’d be one of those genius writers.

rugcat said:

At this point I didn’t have any answer. I had no idea who had robbed the drugstore or why. I stared blankly at the paper for a moment, and then, swear to God, I quickly typed a name without even thinking about it. “Badger Willie.” I stared at what I’d just written in amazement. Of course! Now it all worked, it tied a whole bunch of stuff together, all the loose ends now made perfect sense.. I had literally tied up a complicated plotline without conscious thought. A character in my head actually provided me with the answer I hadn’t known I had.

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I love when this happens. It truly feels like magic, or as divine intervention. I don't believe in either, but that's what it feels like.

Little late, but shifted from the other thread.

Akuma said:

I also seem to have trouble in interviews--either I can't ask the right questions or it doesn't feel right because a character (let alone a real person) doesn't just spill their darkest secrets.

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No, they don't. Which is why I sometimes find it helpful to act out the roles. I find that by getting into the character's head it helps me understand them better. (Then again I might just be schizophrenic.)

I don't find it easy to discover my characters, like some respondents have suggested. At first, I tend to find them artificial, filled with characteristics I've imposed on them. But as I write them, I find they grow and change beyond what I'd originally constructed. All I can suggest is write, write and write some more.

That said, I'm hardly an expert. I'd really like to hear what others here suggest too.

Akuma... just a suggestion, and it may not work very well, but you could write character bios, hand them out to your friends, and then have instant messenger conversations. Sometimes when someone else is playing your character "wrong" it gives you a good idea of how to write them right.

Something that works quite well for me is to journal on behalf of a particular character. This has proven incredibly useful in my WIP, in which the protagonist is an avid journaler and a bit private. It's revealed quite a bit about her, and changed some elements of the story to boot!

johnzakour said:

I like to write bios for my characters: where they were born, what their goals are in life, what their hobbies are, what their favorite color is.

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For one character in my story, who only appears twice in the whole book, I created an entire family tree complete with fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, children that goes all the way back to 1834 when they arrived in America.

I generally create a detailed history of my character's life...but I do it in my head. I never write it down, unless it becomes imperative to the plot...a childhood fear or event. I find they're too complex to jot down everything about them...it's time I think is better spent on the actual story. Just my two cents.

I generally start by thinking of who I would cast in the roll, from a movie I've seen, or book I've read. I steal other people's similar characters and start writing. After about three chapters, they're nothing like the people they started out being.