Young Writers Society

11. What stimuli does your character most respond to?

Your character can respond to visual stimuli, but it doesn’t have to be visual, it can be other things. First, for a psychology lesson from Dr. Cal, people learn in different ways. There are three different learning styles: visual, audio, and kinesthetic or tactile. Although potentially people can be a combination of all three. There is usually one that you are strongest in. Because of this hierarchy of how you learn best, different things will be easier for you or not.

Visual learners remember written directions well, need to see things to learn them, are artistic, and have difficulties with just listening to directions.

Audio learners are very good at remembering what they hear, may have difficulties remembering things that they have read, also may have difficulties reading and writing. They also can find it hard to read facial and body language.

Kinesthetic learners are active learners, they learn by touch and movement. So hands on is the best learning for them. They also don‘t require instructions to assemble something, and can have difficulties if they have to remain seated for long periods of time.

But remember these are all on a scale of degrees. I personally am I kinesthetic learner first, then visual, then audio.

Take these learning styles into account with your characters.

So, characters can respond to all different stimuli, from all different senses. Maybe a character responds more to touch, the feel of their clothing against their skin. Another hearing is their strongest, they can pick out the different sounds around them. Play off their strengths and weakness in this while writing. Maybe a character talks lot about how things taste, or smell.