Writers: How do you create your characters?

Cafe Society
1

By what process(es) do you come up with characters for your stories? Do you come up with the situation and think of a character who would react the way you want? Do you start with someone’s birth, chronicle their life, and then write about how they react to a situation? Do you just start writing a character and see where he/she goes? And then maybe develop a backstory to explain their characteristics?

Also, which process do you think creates the best characters, or allows you to create your best characters?

2

Well, first, I roll 3d6 six times, and write down the results of those die rolls for my character’s Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. Then I pick a character class based on which of those abilities is the highest, and roll the appropriate dice for the character’s hit points and starting gold pieces. Then, I run the character through a beginning dungeon, where he or she will usually get killed by kobolds in the first room. Character creation is a tedious and disappointing process most of the time.

What?

3

Superhero fiction is easy: I’m mostly working with well-worn achetypes that have invented, re-invented and re-interpreted for decades, but trying to look at them from a different POV or “twist” that will, in turn, hopefully suggest fresh situations and storylines. For instance, I started a recent Superman thread obstensively to talk about the power of super-smell, but also to test out a potential analog “big cape guy” character I’m working on who relies on his highly developed sense of smell, like, say, a even more sensory-acute Wolverine or Daredevil, in addition to the usual complement of “big cape guy” powers of invulnerability, strength, flight, stamina, etc.

So, having decided on this aspect of his powers, you figure out an origin, backstory, occupation, secondary cast, location. You build a world that supports the backstory and contains the seeds for ideas that can happen later in your serial storylines. You’ll need enemies, partners, lovers, allies – perhaps a family. Perhaps a surrogate family. And maybe a rogue or two. Perhaps as you do all this new points of conflict and characters will occur to you.

Treat your setting as an intregal character and you’ll be fine… generally, the more detail the better.

4

It’s been a while, but to me characters are generally an integrated part of the story, and I will work them out as best suits the story.

I think one effective way of working them out for yourself is by having conversations with them. Just treat them as one of your friends, and tell them things, and then react in character. This is how you experience the different characters of other people, so it allows you to see where they lack character, what makes them interesting or not, and so on. Give it a go, you won’t be disappointed.

5

You’re an old-school gamer, aren’t you?

6

I make all my characters shallow and one-dimensional, but I add lots of gratuitous sex scenes so no one notices.

7

I ask myself key questions:

What does this person want?

What is their name?

What shaped their needs?

What shaped their surroundings?
All of this is in the context of a story I want to tell. For example, I want to tell the story of someone’s last hour, on their way home from work.

What does this person want? They are looking forward to a weekend with their family. They have been working extra hard and have a two week vacation planned, away with the kids and spouse. Because I am male, I will make this a male character because it will be easier for me in this exercise to create a male character. He wants a good life for his family, and he has worked hard for it.

His name should be solid, as he is a likeable guy, loving father, not perfect, but a pillar of the community kind of fellow. So, I’ll think of some standard names that resonate with me on that level: William, David, Johnathan, Daniel, Edward. I might consult a name book to more closely pick a first name that really fits the bill – a quick search has given me Hector as meaning steadfast or anchor. I like the name Hector and to that I’ll add the name Goodman, which, while obvious, does express qualities I want the character to represent.

Hector has always had dreams of travel, but he married early and has been a strong and steady presence in his family’s life. He has a good job, but one that keeps him indoors mostly and constrained geographically. This trip, for the next two weeks is the culmination of some serious planning on his part to see many of the early American historical places in the North and Middle colonial states. Things he has always admired.

His father never believed in travel or vacations, they were always used to work around the house. While they were middle class, they never had luxuries, but were a happy family. His experiences led him to love history and art, things his mother and father just didn’t get. “There’s enough to worry about right here and now,” his father would say.

He has tried to impart these loves to his family, which he has been moderately successful at.

And so it goes. . . I build the details along with the big strokes, and by the time I have a character – I have a lot of stuff I may never use, but it does form a character when I’m done. Yes I pick a lot of it out of thin air, but I only keep together what fits together.

Hope it helps

8

I start with the situation. The characters are revealed through their dialog and interactions. I pay attention to what they say and, after a few pages, I begin to get a feel for them.

9

Back eons ago in the Clarion workshop, Ursula LeGuin used to say that her stories always began with a character. Mine didn’t. Funny how much better her stories were than mine. :smack:

I’m not sure I can explain the process I use today. Sometimes characters come first, sometimes I want to explore a setting or a situation or an idea and let it stew until a character starts moving around in it. As Chuck says, you do need to listen to your characters, which you can often do in the process of writing their existence.

It’s almost always possible for me to tell when a writer is yanking a character around and making it obey the needs of the plot. That’s almost a hallmark of amateur writing. If your character doesn’t start doing things you hadn’t expected or at least balk at your manipulations, you don’t have a real character.

10

I don’t have a set process. Often - this makes me feel unoriginal and uncreative sometimes, but hey - I’ll be daydreaming, put a twist of some sort on a person I know, and then think ‘hey, I could use that somehow.’ But there are a bunch of ways; I’m not sure it’s necessary or good to always attempt it the same way. Right now I have a vague story idea I want to pursue; it came to me via a phrase that popped into my head for no particular reason.

The big thing, to me, is integrating a character into a story. This probably explains why I don’t get as much done as I should, but I don’t have much of a method for this and I mostly just try to get it to come to me.

11

Well for me I pick people who I don’t like in the real world, and then I do really really mean things to them and I feel better about myself.

12

I tune into the conversations different characters are having in my head, and if I hear something that catches my interest enough I’ll write it down (if I can remember it long enough to find a pen and paper). After that I’ll try to track down the speaker again. (I usually check in the NYC white pages and failing that I do a google search. I shy away from those “we’ll find anyone for $50” places because they creep me out, and the last thing I need is for some shady private dick to start snooping around in the dark and shadowy corners of my brain).

If I can find the speaker again, I’ll take them out for coffee (if they’ll agree to it) and let them ramble on to their heart’s content. If they continue to interest me afterwards I’ll try to get them to move into the brownstone I house all my current interesting characters in. If they agree to move in, I sit back and watch what happens when they meet up with the crazy old cat lady in 5A who smells of ammonia and citrus. Or how they handle it when Mr. Johnson bangs on their door at 3 in the morning to warn about the impending insect insurrection thats sure to carry us all to our graves. (It’s a rather unsettling househousld at times I admit.)

If I’m lucky, eventually a couple of characters will get going and start saying and doing some really neat things. If I happen to be around when it happens and have the time to take note, so much the better for me. If not, I’ll just continue to wait for the right time. (No, Julia Cameron does not currently live in the brownstone).

Wrenchslinger

13

You sure you don’t run a reality show in there?

14

I start with a situation, then extrapolate what sort of people are likely to be in that situation. After that, I start thinking of real people I know or have read about who are like that, then try to use their backgrounds and characteristics to build a character.

15

Depends. Some of my characters started out as concepts, while others were variations on people I knew. I usually develop backstory as I go, and let them “talk” to me (and each other) in my head. I also roleplay as them and continually revisit their character concepts to see what else I can tweak.

So far, a handful of my characters have finally “come alive”: as far as I’m concerned, they’re real people. (It helps that I actually met the real life version of one of my creations, and I obsessively develop some of them to the point of ridiculousness.)

16

I add loads of violence and random car-out-of-control-jumping-over-a-fruit-sellers-car scene. Amatuer.

17

I just write a few notes to sketch a rough outline or situation for the story, then name the characters and decide who’s going to do what. Their backgrounds, personality, quirks, etc. tend to develop as I’m writing rather than before I start.

18

I daydream incessantly. I mean, nonstop. You take your world, I’ll take mine.
I build certain characters around people I sorta know. People that I hear about from others. Y’know the gossipy parts of life. It is far easier and much more enjoyable to write the evil characters or, more likely, the slightly evil and needs their comeuppence characters.

It’s not that they will ever read them, but my most successful leaping off the page character (and she is a bit player) is a well-manicured drama queen whom isn’t a bad person, just self absorbed. She is fashioned after a good friends SIL who I have meet a handful of times in the past. She’s a corker.

I peicemeal the characters from one part real life people, one part TV/movie characters and the rest is born of my trying to create realistic or interesting characters.

What adds dimension to any character is adding smells and touches to them. What they can smell and their favorite touches. Or perhaps, a particular effecting vocal trait.

Sometimes giving a bit part character a trait, like clearing their throat, sniffling, limping…nervous habit. Can add a whole new level of humaness too it.
What I notice, after ooooh, twenty years of writing, that all my heroines pretty much are nearly flawless…and that clearly has to stop. I need to give them some huge quirk. Like nose picking or something .

19

Speaking :wink:

20

Usually, I get something in my head. Most often, it’s a snippet of dialogue, no more than a line or two. Sometime’s it’s a situation that someone’s in. From there, one of the first questions is: How could someone get themselves in this conversation/situation? What sort of actions lead up to it, what’s surrounding it, and what sort of person goes through those actions?

From there, it sometimes falls into place.

Also, weirdly enough, it helps me to have a really clear mental image of what a character looks like, physically. I don’t know why, maybe it helps me solidify the way that person interacts with others. Anyway, I occasionally fool around with this little online widget (the free version) to get a better image.