How do you create characters?

Actually, it's truer to say that within seconds of writing their introduction, I know what their whole personality and type needs to be.

That's a little different I suppose.

 

With my current WIP, I dreamed the first scene, two nights in a row. The people in the dream were unfamiliar, and I knew that neither of them was me. Dreaming the same thing two nights in a row is unusual for me, so the morning after Night Two, I sat down at the computer and wrote the scene exactly as it appeared in my dream.

I'd recently read about the technique of asking the characters who they are, so after I wrote the scene, I closed my eyes and said, "Who are you people?" The guy "told" me a lot about himself, with the exception of his name. (The girl was evasive and let him do all the talking, so she's evasive in the story.) Then I researched the heck out of everything he told me, to make sure he wasn't lying. ;-)

Asking them who they are was a strange technique for me, but Alexei is the most vivid, well-rounded character ever to appear in my writing, and Katherine's evasiveness has provided the plot, so I'm sold.

 

As fiction writers we rely a great deal on our familiarity with people we have met and observed when creating fictional characters. Some of our might be an amalgamation of several personalities we are familiar with including our own.

 

Oh...Wow...Um. This is a hard question, actually.

Usually the story or backstory of the character comes to me first. I'll note down any of their backstory that I can think of.
Next I consider appearance. I like to draw out some of the most defining characteristics of their appearance, which is usually their style. To get a clearer idea of how they look, sometimes I'll create my character on the sims.
If I'm struggling to describe a character I'll draw a picture of them in the middle of a mindmap and write down connotations and adjectives I think of when creating them. Mainly to do with appearance but not limited to that.
And then I wait for the assault of ideas that come to me. I usually dedicate a wattpad page to their characteristics. Personally, imo, character questionnaires like the Myers-briggs test are bs (but if you like that then cool), bc I forget what answers I selected for my character and in the end the result they get doesn't really mean anything to me. To me, it's like one of those astrology sign tests things, I mean it's cool, but just because I'm an Aries doesn't mean I do xx thing. It's not really of significance to me, I define my character, not some test.
A lot of the time I'll find myself jotting down funny things I've said or screenshotting pictures, saving songs that remind me of said characters. I'll come up with little scenes that happen between characters, really none of this is forced, I don't really intend to have all these ideas they just come to me and it's not something you can really replicate -- it just happens.
I may attribute parts of myself to my character. The wattpad pages dedicated to them are super in depth, tons of notes, how they walk, how they sleep, how they talk, how they react to bad things, are they a messy eater, what are their hobbies, weaknesses, even really stupid stuff like what side of the bed they sleep on. I don't really look to compiled questions about my character, I just think if I was in drama class right now, how would I play this character.
Some of my characters have playlists dedicated to them of songs that remind me of them or how they react to certain things or people, but that's one is optional bc it's kinda tedious adding all the songs.
I don't think I ever consider my character "finished" if you get me, I'm always having ideas that I have to write down so my characters are constantly growing.

 

My characters begin with some vague idea about who they are, then they evolve as the story evolves. Sometimes very big changes, which requires going back and changing their history. And back and forth. I discover my own prejudices and judgments when doing so.

Reminds me of that Jackson Browne line, "And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems/
It would be easier sometimes to change the past." At least with fiction we have that option.

 

I also remember being told, more than once, that the author should be able to sketch out his or her character's whole life story, and know what he or she would do in any particular situation. Not that it would all be included in the work, but it would make the character more real to the author and hence more authentic.

 

I tend to pull my characters out of nowhere, usually with a random name. They just...show up. I don't have any real thought process. I just go "okay, I need a character," and I make one. Not always the one I need, but I'll tweak what I get and turn it into what I want. I dunno. There's no real logic behind it.

 

While I have a idea of who my characters are, there is a definite discovery process as I write the story. Sometimes, my ideas of who a character is can be completely off. While it is important to plan a character out, I think it is more important to 'play' the character out as you write the story. Let your characters be who they are. Let the characters you love say and do things that you wish they wouldn't. And, let your antagonists be human, so to speak. In one of my scenes, an embarrassing decision from a protagonist's past was revealed and it was, of all people, the DB of the group that came to her defense. Honestly, character development, or is it discovery(?) is one of my favorite parts of writing.

 

I was going to express my emphatic disagreement, and then I realized that you didn't say when the author should know this--early in the work or much later.

I think I still disagree about the suggested level of completeness, though. There should always be room for surprise.

 

I had a response ready for this as well and didn't post it for the exact same reason. In my opinion it would be a mistake to define a character so rigidly at the outset, but then again everyone's process is different.

 

I use two different methods that always produce my most enjoyable characters. The first is taking a trait in my personality and cranking it up to 11. The other is that I like the idea of an archetype, and so I'll try to figure out a spin on said archetype that interests me. After that, I just ask "Why?" every time I figure out a new detail about the person. After that, I do my best to method act the character and see what happens organically.

 

I didn't mean rigid a rigid and unchanging structure imposed on the book. It can and should evolve as the book evolves, but the idea is to make your characters, at lest the main ones, consistent and realistic, not stereotypes dragged in to match the situation.

If it doesn't work, don't do it. I think it helps.

 

But determining your character's whole life history and knowing what he would do in all situations, and making characters consistent and realistic and not stereotypes, aren't the same thing. The first may be one way for some writers to achieve the second. But there are other ways.

 

One of my favorite experiences creating characters was this: I had a character join my party from an underground civilization known for its cruelty and deception. My plot had her pretending to join the party in order to lead them into a trap and collect a bounty that would allow her to live free on the surface world. She would try and kill the MC, fail, along with the trap and then flee.
Only, in the story line, I determined that she had left her world because she had lost her belief in it and their leader. In the MC of the book, she found someone to believe in and became very loyal. The betrayal still happen, by a guy who got into the group by being the MC's best friend's boyfriend. Death and disaster results. This character sees the best friend as a betrayer and tries to kill her. The attempt fails, and she flees the group just like in the plot. The character in the story line turn out to be a lot more interesting than the one in the plot.

 

Well you see, When a Mommy Character and a Daddy character get together and do the midnight samba, An MC is born.

Lol, just joshing you.

But seriously, It sorts of just happens, the MCs and sides do get more developed as i go, forcing me to go back and revise. And some times characters who are only meet once, might become more developed into support characters.

 

Layer Layer Layer.
Details. Minute, showy, deep, important.
Character motivation.
Inner goals & Exterior goals.
I usually start with a small germ of what the character is ... a type -- and then flesh it out so that the character is no longer just a type. I can't do this with character sheets it doesn't work for me. I need to get into the nitty gritty of a scene and let it work itself out. I can write a simple action in a situation and understand my character better than filling out a character sheet. I'd love to write an article about this ... maybe when I'm done the first draft - the evolution of my characters.

 

Whatever. It seems to work for me. I never meant it as the only approach.

 

I mean for me it's basing them off of myself and other people but like taking certain traits and mixing and matching them to make their own seperate people. Either that or observing others.

 

So far I just start writing a character and then slowly that character grows in my mind, and I start jotting down certain traits I want that character to have and continue to develop it from there. A pretty organic process for me.

 

What I’m doing is keeping a separate document, in outline-header mode, with a section for each character. I agree that some things I don’t know in advance, but develops with the plot. So, I only put what I need at first. Then, I use that to record details to maintain continuity.

For example, how much older is character C’s mother? Could be any reasonable child-bearing year. Now if Cs family goes to a theme park while C is in a stroller, why? Probably have older sibs that would enjoy that park. So now I need to allow for an older sib of the proper age difference, adding further constraint to the mom's age.

What I decide about the family goes in the file, and now it’s defined. If I change something, I know I do need to go find things to revise, and if some property is not defined than I know it’s not used at all and I can freely choose it.

 

Step 1: I take something I love, like cookies, or bad puns.
Step 2: I take something I hate, like brussel sprouts, or good puns that insult my own ability to make good puns.
Step 3: I scoop out all of the leftover tomfoolery that resides in my brainal cavity.
Step 4: I throw all of that into a blender.
Step 5: I turn on the blender.
Step 6: I turn off the blender.
Step 7: I unplug the blender for safety concerns.
Step 8: I pour the freshly mixed contents of the blender down the garbage disposal, because nobody wants to drink that crap.
Step 9: I attempt to create a character while completely ignoring the above steps.
End Result: I end up with a character with almost the exact characteristics as the above steps, and then question my life choices.

 

Not sure, they just sort of happened.

For instance one character was the father of my MC but as I developed him, he became his own character and later MC. Some are quite literally born as in my MCs have a child who becomes there own character. Some characters are decendants of other MCs.

Also their are always roles that need to be filled, i.e. Chef, physician, guards. Etc

 

It's mostly guesswork for me at this point. If I don't start with a part of someone I know as a template, I'll take to emotionally-fueled freewriting and see who emerges.

 

The major characters in my WIP just kind of started off as sort of random people who I gave a name and a physical appearance to, but weren't developed beyond that. The minor characters were made for a purpose, and were developed from there. Then, I spent (and spend) an insane amount of time in my head fleshing all of them out, improving them, imagining them in different situations and stuff, and over all, making them who they are now.

 

The last few posts have described what’s known as a breakout character in serials. It happens more often than you might have thought.

As I recall, the development of Serek of Vulcan followed lines similar to that. Dorothy needed a character, and she just fleshed him out along with some backstory, doing a great job. A one-time guest position turned into a new major character of the franchise, and the fallout from this caused changes to the rules (contracts) for assigning royalties. She never got a piece of all the income generated by subsequent works that use her characters.

That list has things that are not serials too, so it’s basically saying that the original idea was different and the character developed over time before the script was finished. So if that happens to you, it’s no different than Inspector Clouseau, who made them rework the idea even as they were filming; and Captain Jack Sparrow who was written as a supporting role but acted as if he was a lead.