Monday, October 11, 2010

How to Make Believable Characters

As I mentioned in my post about naming characters, they tend to pop into my thoughts almost fully formed.  They tend to have a name already attached to them, and a very general description for them.  I don't really have a process that causes that result.  The closest I've ever done it "on purpose" is if I go to sleep actively mulling a story over in my head.



So when I run across people asking "How do you get ideas for your char­ac­ters?"  I do draw a bit of a blank.  I do know that every character I've ever written starts out as basically a -- for lack of a better term -- blank.  At most, they have a gender.  They also may initially have a generic name.  Or more accurately, an acronym.  I've used the acronym U.L.I., which stands for Unnamed Love Interest, in several stories until I figured out more about the character in question.

When I need more specifics on a character, such as during a rewrite, I read what I have written about to get them firmly in my thoughts.  Then I promptly do something else.  Like go for a walk or go to sleep.  It's when my subconscious mind can wander that the character will suddenly pop back into my thoughts, much more firmly developed.

When they resurface from the depths, they usually have a concrete name.  And a bit more fleshed out description of how they look -- hair color, height, clothing style, etc.  Since they're still not fully formed yet, I push them back away from my current thoughts, and go do a mindless task where they can "simmer" a bit.

Usually on this second resurfacing, they are "complete" characters.  They usually even have a mostly finished back story, or at least enough of one to be both reasonable and complete for their needs in the current writing piece.

It's not a very methodical approach to developing characters.  My method is a bit "intuitive" in nature, and somewhat difficult to describe to others.  But it works, and I suppose that's the most important part, isn't it?

What works for you?  Do you do character sketches and actively build a character as a writing excercise?  I'd like to know how others approach this problem.

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