Young Writers Society

Er, the title has nothing to do with this. Really.

We want our character to be as real as possible, yes? Jawohl! So don't go to extremes.

I was skimming through a book in the library the other day, 'Victoria' or something... The M/C (Victoria) hated riding horses. It might have been something to do with the way it was written, but when reading it, you could just tell that the author had made a character sheet for Victoria and written under Hates - Riding horses.

Few of us have just one thing that we loathe doing with every baked brain cell and cornflake fibre we possess. Lots of things, sure. Maths revision, putting the washing out on the line, unloading the dishwasher, washing hair... The lists can be endless.

Picking just one thing for a character to hate or like is limited, and it shows. Give them loads of things to hate and love and moderately dislike and sort of enjoy and kind of tolerate. People are complex and characters should be too. Make them deeeeep. Let them think.

Give them freedom to be wide. If your character is happy, then you will be happy too. Unless you're the sadistic type who love to feel their pain...

TL G-Wooster wrote:Unless you're the sadistic type who love to feel their pain...

Haha, that describes me perfectly.

Anyway, great tip. I personally can't make character charts - I do this exactly. Just one or two hates/likes.

When you don't have a chart and are just writing, you really get to know the character. THEY decide what they like/dislike, which is great.

~JFW1415

I don't do character sheets or charts; they tend to ask questions to things I don't need to know about (why should I know who their grandparents are, they aren't a part of the story?!) or that limit me, like this. I only need to come up with why my character acts a certain way and who they are; what they like and don't like will come to me eventually and make sense.

I agree with JFW, writing the character gives you so much more than character charts. You aren't limited to thinking about what the chart asks of you, and the characters will give life to themselves and tell you more about them.

TL G-Wooster wrote:Unless you're the sadistic type who love to feel their pain...

That's me! However, I recently found the point at which their pain makes me cry. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, considering I don't want to press too far pass that point, avoiding great opportunities to cause them even more pain and angst.

I could never use charts either >.> They feel too much like personal ads, you know?

"Likes to ride horses along the beach and dislikes onions on her pizza."

It tells you bare bits about their behaviors - the what's, if you will - but it just doesn't get into the depth of the characters: the hows, the whys, the whens and so on. My view is that your characters' motives, ways of perceiving things, thoughts, interests, ambitions, etc. are all interconnected and, in some ways, based off of or resulting from each other, so categorizing each individual aspect of their beings means leaving many things out.

I like getting into my characters' minds as I write instead, asking myself, "Knowing this person inside and out, how would he/she react to this particular situation with all the circumstances surrounding it?"

If your character is happy, then you will be happy too.

This is true XD If I'm in a bad mood and I'm trying to write a happy scene, I either can't do it or it ends up awkwardly dark.

I agree with you completely. That's why I cut out the character chapters in my 'How To Write A Novel' books. Everyone has some traits that people depise and others are likable. But that's only if you are writing realistic fiction. Sometimes fantasy and sci-fi characters don't really apply. Good job!

I kinda agree, I kinda don't.

Character charts are good to keep organized but bad for the reasons mentioned above. I don't use them because my characters change too much and I can't figure out how to show that in a character chart (like if they hate something now but like it at the end of the book). Generally I don't use them or if I do I tweak them a bit.

I do plan to make a chart for all my characters when I'm done though, so if I write another book or story about them I won't have to look through piles of notes and word documents. I mostly just keep a sheet where I write all there information, quirks and stuff like that on. Just so I don't have to stop writing and search through what I've already written to find what I'm looking for.

Well that was my two cents...

Sometimes I use character sheets if they don't bore me completely. Really, though, you have to reason out the answers - if you just arbitrarily make stuff up, it doesn't work. But sometimes it helps, because in making up that your character hates horses, maybe it's because she has a rare form of anemia and she considers herself frail, so horses represent the raw power and wild spirit that she'll never have, or something.

And that was really not a very good example... but you get what I mean, yes?