I don't think I could answer most of those questions about myself, let alone about a character and how it applies to their behaviour, so I'm with you deb on the 'feeling' my character's thingy.

I do want to borrow Kate's list, but I'm aware I couldn't answer them about most of my characters. On the other hand, it's a really good place to go if you are having trouble bringing a character into focus, I think.

Emma

When I answer them, I do it really quickly and miss out the ones that don't spring pretty much straight to mind. Some questions might not be relevant, anyway. It might be best, if you do this exercise, to think of some of your own questions and add them into the mix, too. I think I'd add in something about fertility history, plus something like 'What does this character always wish she'd said to her mother', given that my mc is female and is having problems with her daughter.

More along the lines of Deb's 'feeling' characters, but might be worth trying image streaming. Works very well as tool to develop character in acting, though I've never tried it in creative writing.

Image streaming? Sounds interesting, Could you explain it a bit more, Poppy.

Might be useful to think about how your characters might react in a row situation and whether they get angry or passive-aggressive or manipulative or diplomatic or hurt or diplomatic or verbose or quiet.

Umm. Maybe that question says more about me.

Yes, I tend to feel characters, but what Snowy's posted reminds me of something I do sometimes in the middle of writing if characters aren't coming into focus, which is take a certain aspect, and list all the characters' version of it: arguing, as Snowy suggests, or whether they're tidy naturally or tidy obsessively or casual untidy or pathologically chaotic. Or what colours they wear, or what other people are wearing, is another. Greedy or abstemious, and what kind of food? Which of the five senses dominates in each of them? It really helps to sharpen the contrasts between them, which is as effective in making them come alive as their own individuality. I once got a whole character right from nothing - she'd been completely bland, just a way of getting my MC to say things I needed him to stay - when I realised that she doesn't eat much and is rather clumsy, all knees and elbows... I still don't know much more about her than that, but she's many people's favourite character in TMOL.

Emma

Naomi, I've wwmailed you.

px

Oooh Poppy, can you send the info on image streaming to me too, please? I've never heard of it.

Thanks Kate for suggesting I should do what feels right to me, and it's reassuring that Naomi, Poppy and Emma tend to do the 'feeling' thing instead. Once I've 'felt' a character properly (that sounds rude) I instinctively know what they'd do, because they're so alive in my mind. Like you'd just know what you're mum or partner would do when faced with a certain situation. So I don't feel the need to 'work it out' before writing them.

Umm. Maybe that question says more about me.

LOL Snowy....

Deb

Yes, I've realised that I 'know' almost nothing about my current characters, in the sense of having worked/found it out. I haven't much idea of what any of them look like, beyond dark/fair and short/tall. And I have read books where the author clearly has a long list of characteristics that they describe, but it's actually a substitute for true characterisation, in that none of it actually makes them breathe, and they just operate as fantastically detailed puppets. (Sometimes that's a subset of a more general show-don't-tell problem, but not always.)

I do wonder if the 'feeling' system reproduces more accurately how we apprehend others in real life. When you meet someone new, you first get the mere basics of colouring and hair, perhaps taste in clothes, so you have a rough pigeonhole/stereotype for them, but it's only slowly that you pick up a sense of how they tick and what really motivates them, and even then it can be quite instinctive and not something you ever make explicit. You realise that when they do something surprising, and you think, 'that was out of character' even though you'd never really articulated what your sense of their character is.

Emma

I totally agree with all that, Emma, and thanks for articulating it so clearly. I 'felt' that but hadn't crystallised it in my mind.

Deb

I agree, too, definitely. When i was at drama school, a lot of the character work involved, eg, writing biographies for characters, listing their likes, dislikes, deciding what 'fruit' they'd be (yes, really) and suchlike - all jolly good fun, but all cerebral (if I'm using the term correctly) - didn't necessarily engage with the creative at all, which was ironic because that's precisely what it was supposed to be doing.

It's all personal, I suppose, but when i tried to write a short biography for one of my characters,for example, it turned into a much more creative, imaginative piece of work, written without much 'thought' (more writing stream-y,actually) pretty much lacking any of the historical info I should have used, but much more helpful to me in terms of getting inside the character (or, rather her getting inside me).

Just wondering for those who DO use this question method for characters, do you just do it for the main ones, or for anyone who appears in the novel?

I do find the questionnaire things a little bit restricting, but good for focusing my thoughts in perhaps a different way.

Michelle

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Also - those who 'feel' their characters: what do you do for character work before you start writing the first draft?

I think the questionnaire thing works best as Lammi uses it - to bring things you didn't know you knew up to the surface: if the answer doesn't float up immediately then you move on. In other words, it's crystallising what you've already 'felt'. I suspect it goes wrong when you sweat over it like an exam paper and solemnly try to think up each character's favourite flower, or whatever, and then solemnly try to fit all that stuff into the novel under the guise of character description.

As primarily a 'feeler', before I start writing I know the basics of about where my characters have come from: marital status, job, age, outline of childhood, probably height and build and colouring, and that's about it. I probably have two or three adjectives I could apply to them, which are the product of those basics. Everything else I find out about as they react to each other.

Emma

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also, I know sexual orientation, should have mentioned that, and am trying hard to intuit the voice that comes from all those basics, because you can't get far without that.

Yup, I usually start with the basics too, although 'age' may change by a few years to fit the biographies of the other characters.
Occassionally I'll find a photograph in a amgazine that fits the profiles of a couple of my characters. The rest is built up as the story developes and they are placed in situations to which they have to act 'in character', and I won't know what that is until they are confronted by various choices and situations.

I like books where a character is pushed to the point where they act out of character - the worm turns, the brave coward, the honest thief. But that is usually best left towards the end of the story, after their character has been fully developed.

- NaomiM