Hi there

I have never really done these to any great extent before, but I am about to embark on a new story, and feel that some prep work and character study may be in order this time - mainly because I want to be sure that I know my characters, without putting too much backstory/info dump in to the beginning of the book.

So, just curious really on what your thoughts/experiences are on this, do you find they help? Or are they just another way of wasting time when I could be starting the book in ernest?

I know everyone works differently, and what works for one won't work for another, so this is just a general question - thanks.

Kris

I found the recent blog craze of listng 25 pieces of trivia about oneself very useful when applied to each of my characters - even if I couldn't come up with the full 25 things.
Also Leila adapted it in her blog: '22 random things...':
http://bookchildworld.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/22-random-things-i-remember-about-beaches-from-when-i-was-a-child/
Again, I tried it for my main character, as 20 random things that happened during outings with my parents.

- NaomiM

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It was the sort of exercise I found more helpul after I'd started the wip and already had a few details down about my characters.

Definitely not a waste of time, although I've seen some crassly formulaic approaches recommended. Getting one's ideas straight in advance about character back-story, detail, idiosyncrasies, etc., can only be time well spent. With my current book I only wish I had carried out this exercise properly before writing the first draft rather than afterwards. It would have saved me a huge amount of re-writing and re-construction.

On the other hand I suppose that, if you take it too far, you can risk losing a degree of spontaneity. For the best of both worlds, the answer is probably to do the character analysis as at the stage of their arrival in the narrative but let the development of the book deal with how they change from then on.

Chris

All good suggestions. One thing I find in my own writing - and from knowing other writers it's not uncommon - is that because fiction is about character in action there's a limit to how far you can get with making lists of attributes, because the reader - and therefore the writer - only really gets to know characters by what they do, and by how they interact with each other. Of course fiction, unlike drama, can let us into characters' thoughts, but the core of it has to be how they behave, so until you start writing events and scenes and making people get across each other and fall in love and so on, you won't actually be developing your characters much at all.

I do know writers who plonk characters down in scenes they've no intention of putting in the novel, just to find out more about them in the process of deciding what would happen.

Emma

In line with other comments, I didn't do any of the character planning you're 'supposed' to do with my first novel and there were many times I wished I had and thought it would have saved me time. However, I do agree with Emma that I don't know in retrospect how much use I would have found it. I needed to see the characters 'in action' before I felt I really knew them.
One thing I'm trying out with my current book is to write a short-ish (3000 words or so) rundown of each main character's back story and their experience of the story as it unfolds, told in the 1st person. It's probably just because I'm lazy and am hoping it will fulfil the task of plot planning and character planning in one, but I am finding it helpful. I suppose it's a less extreme version of something a writer friend does - she goes out and buys a paper journal for each main character, then keeps a journal for each of them until she's 'got' them.
Claire

I don't get on with those character lists. Taurean, works in the City etc.

They work for some authors, but I just don't think 'knowing' that my character always wears a soft blue tee shirt to bed, or drinks tea before coffee every morning tells me anything useful, anymore than such details would indicate whether you'd get on with someone in life: they don't even come close to the essence of the person.

I tend to start with what I already know - what they've already done in my head - the act that warranted interest in them in the first place, and then work backwards or forwards with that through questions. So, in one story I knew a teacher did moonlighting tutoring for a brutal army general but didn't know why, so wrote around it until I found out his wife was pestering him for a new sofa, and intimating that teaching wasn't a very manly profession. So that helped uncover a core weakness or pliability in him that then got exploited. It's different for everyone but I'd be wary of question lists that produce a sort of character clutter rather than home in on the essential defining traits that make this person different or interesting - worth exploring.

Thanks everyone, all very helpful comments.

I kinda like the list idea, perhaps populating it with the more significant events, family history and turning points in the characters life, rather than trivia.

Also, dropping a character into a random scene out side of the main story sounds interesting.

I shall have a play.

Kris

Agree - those lists don't do it for me at all. But maybe, to take Emma's point about character in action you could think of some situations to put them in and see what they'd do. F'rinstance = someone sits behind you at the cinema and their mobile phone rings. What do you do (your character) when the person answers it?