Forming Characters: How Do You Do It?

I actually mold my characters from real-life templates. I imitate people I admire and also ones I don't. I don't recommend this for all your characters, but quite a few of my own have evolved from acquaintances.

 

i usually start writing after a time i decide to look for pictures that suits my characters.such as actors..famous people. that really help me to form a specific character.his or her manner i can find in that picture.

 

Huh, I never answered this?

My characters are the "come from nowhere, start writing them and find out about them later" type. Often much, much later.

I usually start with a really blatant stereotype... I have no idea how the appearences get into my head, but the moment I need a character they arrive in the scene in the back of my mind, and I see bits of them - hair colour, a vague sort of clothes... Just a faint image that hovers around and I'll build on. I can't really explain it. I suppose just a few words of my writing let me know. So within 2 words of my latest epic fantasy, I was just like, "this guy is such a pretty-guy with a huge opinion of himself" -- and he had just been talking about philosophy. But the instant I thought that I could see him - hair, eyes, way of sitting, the way he moved... It just appeared.

Anyway, then I write them a few chapters relying on the stereotype, and as I write, a mixture of the interactions and details and things they think start to give them a more particular slant. Then I go back and check the start is consistent with their personality later.

In my novel Instant Noodles and Beer, I started as a short story, and used very obvious character types for that - ones that said a great deal about them, in a short space of time. When I converted the short story into the opening scene of the novel I wrote about 50 pages, then went back and edited down the characters, removing a lot of the blatant innuendo, surface anger, and such like, because I knew the characters so much better, and I knew they were explained so much better I COULD move them back down to a blander stereotype, knowing that they were doing enough with their actions and stuff to make them worth reading, but a lot of the blatant characterisation could come much, much later.

I guess short stories always force you to consider personality a lot faster. You need them interacting, learning, and changing in a few hundred or thousand words, and that's time for subtlety, but not enough - not like novel characters. Read this amazing thing someone wrote where one tiny fact at the end illuminated 100 pages of perfectly excellent characterisation and all these clues which seemed just to be personality things became plot relevant, and just re-cast the character entirely. You can't do that in a short story. Throwing in twists is so delicate, that's where the subtlety has to be: just in having one. Whereas the twist in the novel was unsubtle, but the characterisation itself was just sublime.

 

Amazingly, I start out with a stereotype too! I feel like I'm betraying my story in a way, but it's the only path I can take that will let me get a shred of light on him/her.

 

Stereotypes are sometimes a good place to start then use the story to bring out their quirks and humanity

 

Yes, just to get a sense of them. Then going on, you REALLY find out who they are and why they're the way they are. It's really fun.

 

For added fun, start out with the character being a stereotype through another character's eyes, and then proving them wrong.

 

Ooh, good idea, Islander. I'll keep that in mind

 

Sorry for the long post, but this is something I've been working with recently, so a lot of this is very fresh in my mind. It will probably seem like a strange process in parts for some people, but this is how it happens for me, personally. Character development, in my case, is usually a process of discovering more about a character which already somehow exists in my imagination and has very little to do with consciously choosing the details.

When inspiration strikes, it's usually in the form of a very clear image of certain characters in certain (usually dire) circumstances. I don't really 'create' characters so much as 'discover' them. This feeling of discovering a pre-existing character is so strong that whenever I try to change a character to fit the needs of the story I always experience strong resistance and end up having to give in to the character's wishes. I don't write stories and then create characters to act them out; I have visions of fully formed characters that then compel me to write stories about them.

When I say 'fully formed', I mean simply that I have a clear mental image of the way they look and a feeling for the type of person that they are; in fact, it's pretty much the same feeling I get when I meet someone for the first time. I still don't know anything about them, like what they do for a living or how they get along with their parents, but I have a definite sense that this character is already complete and that I just have to push them a little to get the details.

What happens next is a long process of elaborating on the original scene, asking myself what would have to be true for this character to be the kind of person that they are in the situation that they're in. I frequently ask myself: "How would anyone get to be this way?" or "Why would someone like this let this happen?" I feel out the answers, testing various hypotheses until something 'feels right'. A lot of the time, my initial hypotheses are wrong and I know on some level they're not adequate, but eventually I get to an answer that just 'feels right'. It 'fits' the character and does not come into conflict with it or resist it.

As far as process goes, I usually write snippets from various scenes, try to put the character's thoughts into words, present them with a dilemma and see how they respond, have other characters ask them how they feel about controversial topics, etc. The vast majority of this writing won't appear in the story itself, but is essential for establishing the character and helps to flesh out the world and the relations between the current characters.

Another technique I use when I feel that my understanding of a character is too generic or underdeveloped is just to try to imagine them in photographic detail, just doing something trivial, like eating or reading. I try to imagine how they look as vividly as I can, down to the wrinkles and pores on their skin. I also try to imagine how they sound when they speak, what kinds of words that they use.

I find that visualizing them like this forces me to make them concrete, put them in a concrete setting, dress in them in authentic clothing, doing things they would do in their fictional setting. It's really a hard process to describe, since it's very much a cooperative venture between my imagination (consciously deciding things) and just looking at them as something that exists independently from my own thoughts and opinions (my subconscious). I did this recently for an antagonist that I was having difficulty reading and it completely transformed my understanding of him. He went from being a bland, generic villain to something real and chilling, all based on a few comments he made while he was conducting business in court.

Once I have a good image of the character engraved in my imagination and I can see them going about their day and talking to other characters I try to write a 'first impressions' paragraph that captures the feeling I had when I first imagined them. I don't dwell on any details in this paragraph unless they are absolutely essential, so no eye/hair color, height/weight, etc., unless it is vital to the essence of the character. Instead, I try to capture those words and images that really define this character and set them apart from other characters.

In this case, Jonah's height and weight, what he is wearing, and his eye and hair color are irrelevant to conveying the impression that I want to make. This description could be expanded, but it doesn't have to be. Readers will already have a fairly vivid image in their mind of what this character looks like based on his distinguishing attributes and their own recollections of similar people they have met. What matters to me, as the author, is the process that allows me to get from (a) having an impression of a character to (b) understanding that character so that I can (c) write authoritatively about that character, understanding how that character would respond in a variety of situations. I really don't think you can overdevelop a character and the time you spend fleshing them out can add tremendously to the feeling of verisimilitude and interest.

 

Huh, now that you mention it, I seem to do that too. I don't realize a lot of things I do until someone else mentions it.