So some of you may have read my script I posted a while ago, and I'm grateful for the feedback I got from it. As it stands though, I am expanding upon it, and I'm also going back to square one: rewrite the character bios. Still, this is new territory for me. I know outlines and plot are important, and I have it figured out very well. Character is something that I'm still floundering with. How much of a character's bio do flesh out: is it something you plan out or discover yourself as you go? Discovery writing sometimes works for some than others (i.e.; Stephen King), but not knowing seems like a detriment than anything else to me.
I'm an extremist - I'd suggest to give people whatever biographical details serve the scene, provided that all the scenes serve to reveal and develop the characters. One of the differences between story characters and real people, is that story characters aren't really products of their upbringing and experience: they have to spring fully-formed from their writer's head. It's nice to create the illusion they have a past in the fictional world the writer puts around them, but personally I wouldn't try to do that prescriptively. I find that "making it up as I go along" produces more believable biographies - at least they never have a biography that conflicts with something they say or do in a scene. "Discovery writing" might mean different things to different people - I've taken it to be a polite word for "pantsing", which is more like what I do than plotting is. I come up with stories by having three or four daydreams about the same character (which become the key scenes or story beats), and then trying to walk that character through them sequentially. In the process I have more daydreams and change the story to fit them in. I don't have any story structure or character arc in mind, but the daydreams are about conflicts being resolved by changing - so there will be a character arc. As to where the daydreams come from I wish I knew, my dreams in the night are bloody useless. I haven't seen the workshop post yet so will look at that now - but for me the biographies wouldn't be a square at all.
For a character bio, you don't need to write their entire childhood, but you do need to write the parts that will be relevant to the story you're trying to tell. For example, if you're telling a story about a girl reconciling with her estranged father, you will need to write the background on how she feels about her father. But if you're writing a heist story, you don't really need to know in the bio if the safe-cracker has a brother. It might be true, and it might get mentioned in passing, but it's not important to the story. You might feel like you have to map out the character's entire personality at the start, but I think this is best done on the fly. If you spend too much time obsessing about the consistency of the character's personality while you're writing, you'll get pulled out from writing the consistently best plot. You can always reread and change personality aspects, but if you get a plot point wrong, you have to rewrite a lot more. So, focus on getting the story out first, and keep consistent the aspects of the character that are relevant to telling that story. Then you can go back and revise to get everything else in order.
JWE1985, You bring up a valuable point. This is how I deal with it - I see the story as a tree. The tree trunk is the life story of ONE MAIN CHARACTER. And the REST of the bios attach to it, like branches - at the time they met the Main Character. This is the connecting point of a branch to a tree, and we go from there. For example: John DOE (50 years old) is the Main Character. FIRST BRANCH: Jenny (45 years old). Jenny met John through work 7 years ago, she was a "damsel in distress" at the time. John helped out Jenny, and she fell in love with him. To John - Jenny is only a charity case. But she wants him all for herself. They've been at it ever since. So, Jenny's BIO (branch) "attaches" to the Main Character (trunk) when he was 42. All I have to play with is Jenny's general disposition, her tendency for self-pity, her inability to take care of herself, her desire to "hang" on to a stronger personality (John). This is the gist of their relationship. SECOND BRANCH: Wallace, 62 years old. Wallace met John only 2 years ago, when John took pity on the old man, and gave Wallace a job at his company. Wallace has a lot of feelings for John, too, and he requires even more care. Unable to fit in this world because he is transgendered, Wallace has a severe inferiority complex and is often depressed and suicidal. So, Wallace's BIO (branch) "attaches" to the Main Character (trunk) when John was 48. All I have to play with is Wallace's disposition, his feelings towards John and the questions of what can come out of this relationship. THIS way I have about 20 of them sweet branches... This "MAP" hangs at the beginning of every file with a new chapter (deplorably, I use NOTES to write), and I can always come for reference there to avoid silly mistakes and contradictions. I don't know if this helps. Just another opinion
I have a somewhat different approach to building characters. You guys (a couple of you) seem to be talking about patchworking together various traits to build a character profile. I personally can't do it that way, at least not bare-bones as it sounds like you're doing it. Instead I think about people I've known, seen in movies or TV shows, read in books etc. People with a character similar to what I'm looking to create. But obviously I don't want to just copy an existing character, so I keep thinking and come up with several more candidates with similar traits. Or maybe contrasting traits—people are complex, I don't want them too simple. So once I've got anywhere from maybe 3 to 6 or 7 people in mind for one of my characters I sort of mash them together and see what happens. I don't know if I can describe this, but it's like somehow averaging them out. Only it's a lot more organic and dynamic than that sounds. I keep in mind these are real, living people (supposed to be anyway) and you can't just Frankenstein them apart and stitch parts together (though at one time I did think of it that way). It's more like the way botanists will graft a shoot from one plant onto another and see if it 'takes'. If it doesn't they get a non-viable hybrid. But if it takes, it lives and grows. Characters are the same. If I merge a few characters together, using some traits from each, sometimes it works and I get a character that takes on life in my mind, becomes a living being for me. I won't use it unless that happens. It means really letting the unconscious do the work. If you try to force it by doing it consciously you can end up with monstrosities or flat mannequins that move like puppets. They need to spring to life in your mind. Once I've created a main character this way I keep him or her in mind as I'm creating the others. They need to all function with or against the MC and each other. I suspect even when people talk about patching together individual traits to create a character bio, often they're doing something like this. Maybe they never thought of it this way. I did a big write-up on it somewhere once (where I did refer to it as Frankensteining characters together). Let me see if I can dig that up real quick... Here we go: I Know Nothing About my MC EDIT—I want to clarify something—I don't mean I think about individual traits and try to graft them together somehow (that talk about plant grafting might have created the wrong impression). I just think about the whole group of characters I want to combine, and let them merge in my mind into one. Some traits seem to automatically rise to the surface and some disappear. And they change. It happens organically, I'm not in control of it. It just becomes a new character that I find has some similarities to several of the ones I put into it. In fact maybe it's more fair to say most or all of the traits of the intial donor characters are in there somewhere, ready to be used if needed, but there's a distinct character now that isn't like any of them. It's been largely formed according to my needs for the character I'm wanting to create. Ok, that's the best I can do toward explaining it.
Xoic, I read both your post AND the article "I know nothing about my MC". I FOUND THIS TO BE SERIOUSLY UPLIFTING: "Why it woke me up every morning excited to get back into it, and the excitement drew me on through any and all distractions. This is the real magic of writing. The characters." You could be a great inspiration for the beginner and self-doubting writers! Actually, the "grafting" thing was very fitting. Made me think about stuff. You explained your ways pretty well. You surely have a very scientific approach. I loved it. Both these posts can be used to lift the spirits of writers everywhere! Where can I read your works?
@Griffin Frank Thank you! I'm not a published author or anything, just another schlub in here writing about writing. I only have a few pieces of things posted in here, plus one short story, all in 1st draft stage: Beastseekers—Now with 3 chapters Labarinth I didn't create characters for either of those using the method I described above, sorry to say.
Xoic, Oh, thank you very much! And, you know what, are't we all that? And it ain't gonna kill nobody to write about writing Let me go sink my teeth into your links!
My characters just kind of come to me. They have been so long in my life that I forget how much they have changed over the years until I find some really really old embarrassing piece of writing back when it started as me just writing my ideas from a journal type format so that one day when I am old and senile I will have a way to remember. This was when I was starting to grow up and transitioning from playing make pretend or I guess now it is termed "role play" and had to start internalizing all this energy lol I needed an outlet so I started writing out the various scenes I would come up with. The pieces kind of come to together or some new inspiration will hit and I find a way to build it into my characters. One had changed names because initially he was based on a character from my fav movie lol He is now an entirely different person but at the time I didn't realize I was developing a story. *some of the inspiration comes from specific places- or just pulls together inherently given what I already know about that person. So what do I do.. anything from photo albums and collages with pics of various people or scenes that depict or resemble how I envision them or visualizes their body language or demeanor... I go so far as to edit some images like remove backgrounds or whatever and photoshop the characters together to make it look like a photograph from my story- anything I can do to bring my characters from out of my head into the real word lol. I have a soundtrack and assigned playlists for each character with the music they would listen to. Outlines or character profiles are super super fun because either the info about each character is so obvious to you or forces you to think about things you had not about them.
Sorry to jump in here, but I'm a newbie on the forum. You mentioned you had posted your script - I'd love to read it! Where do you find scripts on here? Thanks in advance!
