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Getting to know my characters



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Wed Aug 19, 2015 7:38 am
Redbox275 says...



I'm freaking out over developing character!

I heard that to breath life into character it helps to treat them like a person. Chat with them. Give them a face. But I've been having this fear that if I chat with my characters they will just be a puppet, stay dead, and never turn into real people. It seems writers are mentally insane when they converse with their characters and bring them to life. Well..I want to be insane too!

Any tips when talking with my characters letting the be themselves and keep them assertive in their personas? Is it like talking to an imaginary friend?
  





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Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:00 am
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Lightsong says...



Well, try to be them. Try to think like them. This is like pretending you're someone else. Try to use first PoV for the character, immersing yourself in the character. You know what you want your character to be like so force his or her personality to your mind that you think like him or her.
"Writing, though, belongs first to the writer, and then to the reader, to the world.

The subject is a catalyst, a character, but our responsibility is, has to be, to the work."

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Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:21 am
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BellaRoma says...



Sometimes I try to "ask them questions".
You write down a question, and reply as them in as much detail as you can. It can be good if you're stuck on something. Not sure how much success I've had, but you're welcome to try.
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Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:29 pm
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Kale says...



Some writers never have conversations with their characters. For some writers, characters really are just puppets, and it's simply a matter of skill in making these puppets appear as human-like as possible.

And that's okay. It works just as well as the imaginary friend model for those that use it, and it's just one of many methods of viewing characters from an authorial point of view. From the sound of your first post, it might be closer to how you also view characters.

Regardless of how you view characters, one of the best ways to get better at characterization is to write stories with those characters. Short character-centric vignettes are a good exercise to help you get a better feel for your characters and their respective voices, and you might even be able to use some of those scenes in the story proper.

If you don't, though, it's still no waste because the only way to get better at writing anything is to actually write it, and as you go along, you'll find that you'll wind up doing a whole lot of writing and rewriting that doesn't survive to the final draft.

But that's a normal part of the writing process.
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Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:10 pm
StellaThomas says...



Hey @Redbox275 ! If you're looking to breathe life into characters, I always think that it's fun to think about things that are never going to come up in the story. Like what their favourite colours and foods are, and their middle names, and all those random little facts.

'Chatting' to your characters is pretty cool, and there's a club on YWS just for that: clubs/1447 Here you can try and answer questions in your character's voice and get an idea of their point of view and their opinions!

The other thing I like to do, though this might just be me: write a short story for that character. I recently introduced two new characters to my novel, and I wasn't sure how to slot them in or get an idea of what the inside of their head might look like. So I wrote two stories. In the first, the first character is given a horse by her brother and learns to ride from a stablehand in the palace where she lives. In the second, the second character tries and rectifies a situation where one of his best friends has broken the heart of a scullery maid. After that, I realised that there was a pre-existing character in my story whom I didn't have a handle on quite as well as I would like, so I wrote a story with all of her friends in it, where the environment was familiar to me, about them all getting drunk and revealing bits of their personality I didn't really know about. I found this really helpful for then writing these characters in the story - I had a better idea of who these people were, how they saw the world, the dynamics of their relationships with other people and they just felt a lot more three-dimensional.

So those would be my tips! Other than that, don't worry. Especially if it's a new story - you won't really know any of your characters as well as you would like until you reach the end and look back, and see how they developed on the way.

Hope I helped!

-Stella x
"Stella. You were in my dream the other night. And everyone called you Princess." -Lauren2010
  





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Fri Aug 21, 2015 3:08 pm
LadySpark says...



I'm a big believer in games to help build your writing experience. I create games for myself all the time, and they've helped me on more than one occasion. When I'm trying to build a new character, I like to write little short tid bits that have nothing to do with the actual story. Building off of what Stella said, I like to find out about my characters while I'm in the process of writing them, because I can't just sit down and ask them a bunch of questions.
When writing those tidbits, I am telly. I don't try to show anything or have it make sense because it's not for anyone else to read, it's for me to fall back on if I am in need of it or need to explore a character a little bit more. I'll start with them waking up, and finish with them going to bed or taking a nap. Sometimes I'll make it a very average day and then other times I'll switch it around and throw in a huge mind-boggling plot twist, just to see how my character reacts.
The key thing in this game is to not overthink it. I usually play my games in a word war, because when you're trying to write x amount of words in a given space of time, you have less time to think.

If you're one of those writers who can't just sit down and be in the mind space of your characters, this game might work for you! I've found it to be very helpful to a. know how my character reacts to things and b. use as a fall back when I'm not sure what my character feels/is doing/would do.

Try it! But seriously, the likelihood of your characters being as flat as you're afraid they're going to be is small. Just take a deep breath and relax. It's only your first draft, anyway! :) Good luck!
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Fri Aug 21, 2015 4:58 pm
Pompadour says...



Getting to know your characters does not imply letting them take over your life, although sometimes, daydreaming is actually more helpful than we give it credit for. The real deal lies in, I think, how well your character transmutes to the page and the intended traits that the author is able to convey, rather than the traits the author passively knows. I can have pretty long, meandering conversations with other people about my characters, but more often than not, I find that the character that makes it to the page is only half the idealised version in my head.

As far as 'getting to know your character', then, the only advice I really have is to write. Write practice scenes, write scenes that call for interaction or introspection or some massive speech on your character's part. Develop their internal voice--their thoughts, their gestures, their speech patterns.

Sometimes, what really helps when I have a bland, flat character (whom I know ought to be more than just a tool to carry the plot), is to ask myself what the character wants. What do they want? How could they go upon achieving it? What obstacles might they face and how does their base personality develop upon them facing said obstacles? (Base personality is me referring to the handful of traits you 'assign' your character at the beginning of writing, like selfishness or bravery, etc.)

I'm one of those people who believe in letting the character develop and become three-dimensional via the actual writing process rather than establishing who they are prior to writing. This is because your novel is going to be a set of situations, and these situations might change as you write, causing the way your characters behave to change as well. AKA: Nothing is set in stone, so I wouldn't worried about getting to know your character that well before writing has even begun. Leave achieving consistency in characterisation + giving the characters further shape for the second and third drafts!

Write. Your character will come through to you themself. Scrap-scenes are also a thing, as are false beginnings, and although they're annoying when you scrap them out of the actual novel--they're more helpful to your characterisation than you think.

Good luck! c:
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Tue Sep 08, 2015 6:43 pm
Stori says...



Play video games. I'm serious. I've had characters come to life just based on, for instance, the way my Old Republic character delivers his lines. Now when I think of Porthal, the actor's voice plays in my head no matter what he says.
  








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