Hi - I know the answer to this will be as diverse as everything else related to writing but as I am working on forming a particular character at the moment and trying to get under his skin a little more I was interested in how others go about this.

Do you start with a clear idea of the character? Do you find it helps to visualise physical features first or do physical features not even matter to you? I think I need to "see" them in my mind before I can start adding more personality to them.

Do you ask questions of your characters and how do you make them reply? Sometimes I find I'm giving answers that I feel I've chosen simply to give an answer - if that makes sense.

How do you decide what a character's particular habit(s) might be snd do you think bringing a habit out throughout a novel helps to make that character appear more real? I don't mean that every five paragraphs a character clears their throat or picks their nose but does bringing that habit into play now and then help to solidify them?

Do you write a biography of each character?

I have actually "interviewed" a character in the past which was really helpful. It was interesting to find out things that had happened in her life that I previously had had no idea about.

Does that make me sound mad?

Sharon
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I don't find I pay too much attention to physical features. As a reader, I think I prefer to build up my own picture, which is one of the reasons why film versions can be so annoying when the actor doesn't match the previous visualisation.

There are all kinds of 'character questionnaires' out there, designed as aids to 'building' a character, but I think it is important to have your own feel for each character from the outset. Starting out with a questionnaire or similar approach risks producing a rather artificial result. On the other hand, using a questionnaire approach at a slightly later stage can be very helpful and forces you to consider all kinds of things, like being precise about age, that can cause inconsistencies and problems if not specifically addressed. The question of habits could be part of this. It's probably the verbal ones, the 'idiolects', that are particularly important. Does this character have a way of speaking that will identify him/her from the others? Are particular words or expressions used habitually?

The questionnaire or formal analysis approach can also force you to think about each character's attitude and relationship to each other main character. I've found this very helpful and using it has enabled me to put right many illogical situations and inconsistencies.

So, no, you're not mad. But it has to be a combination, with the gut-feel approach fundamentally driving the characters but the formal analysis (questionnaire, interview, whatever) sorting them out so that they work properly. That's my take on it.

Chris

Crudely, I think you can work out characters from the inside out, where you use your understanding of how people tick to work out what they do:

childhood with very judgemental parents: what does that make them like?
makes them tense and nervous: how does that show physically?
makes them constantly fiddle with their fingers: what does that make them do?
keep dropping things: what do they drop this time?
the present the new, un-judgemental boyfriend gave them.

or from the outside in, where you decide about the character as we do with real people in real life, moving from what they do towards working out how they tick:

the present was from the new, un-judgemental boyfriend: what happened?
they dropped it: why?
they keep dropping things: why?
because they're always fidgeting: why?
because they're tense and nervous: why?
because they had very judgemental parents.

FWIW, I rarely know what my characters look like, beyond approximately tall/short (important for the choreography especially sex scenes), dark/fair, thinnish/plumpish, unless I actually need a specific inherited family resemblance (spot the historical novelist...). I do know how they move (choreography again), which is related but not the same, because that's character in action, which is the fundamental building-block of fiction. Just character on its own won't power the novel. Going back to the stuff above, you could equally say, instead of outside or inside first, for both reader and writer, does the character dictate the action, or the action reveal the character?

Emma

Chris, I totally agree about having to have a feel for a character rather than trying to build one from scratch with questionnaires and certainly when I've attempted to complete a questionnaire in earlly stages I have found it artificial so that I don't really gain much from it. It's interesting that neither you nor Emma think too much about physical characteristics though I guess personally if I can visualise their physical aspect it makes it slightly easier for me to regard them more as a real person.

Hmm, I don't think I've given much thought to my characters' attitudes towards other main characters - well I probably have but I haven't thought too deeply about it and your comment about inconsistencies is what has prompted this question because the character I'm working on is making all the right moves but I've begun to question what is motivating those moves, and that led me to realise that perhaps I don't know him half as well as I ought.

Emma, your approach below has me wondering if I'm not asking "why" enough when I'm writing. I don't think I've consciously thought about character "in action". Lots to think about there.

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated

Just jumped a blog post of this, so thank you for the inspiration, Sharon!

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2009/12/clothes-and-food-and-dropping-presents.html

Emma

Do you start with a clear idea of the character?

- No, I often see them from the back if it's 3rd person, or through their eyes if it's 1st person.

Do you find it helps to visualise physical features first or do physical features not even matter to you?

Doesn't matter so long as I have an age, nationality and sex, although often I'll be looking through a magazine and a photo will jump out at me as being the spitting image of my main character, and then I'll stick it on the wall to remind me. The problem with having too clear an idea of their looks is you risk describing their hair and eye colour, and readers prefer to fill those sorts of details in themselves.

Do you ask questions of your characters

- No. I prefer to put them into situations and see how they act.

How do you decide what a character's particular habit(s) might be snd do you think bringing a habit out throughout a novel helps to make that character appear more real?

- Pass. I leave it up to the characters.


Do you write a biography of each character?

- Yes, for every character, but not at the beginning. I do it part way into the mss, after I've got to know them, and then update the bios regularly as the story progresses.



- NaomiM

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Just to add, some bios may only be a line - age, sex, relationship to main & secondary characters, etc.

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I find it often helps to have an idea of their past relationship with their parents, as that usually marks a person for life (just look at Prince Charles!).

Any time, Emma

Great blog post. This

What's their middle name, their taste in garden ornaments, their star sign?

made me smile since in my earlier days I decided that to get to a character I would simply take a star sign, read the traits and apply them to the person. If only it were as cut and dry as that ....

Oooh, Naomi, some good points there. You said that you write the biographies part way through the MS which is interesting as I guess that's where I am. I feel I've hit that point in the draft where I need to know more about the characters before I move on.

I like the idea of putting the characters in particular situations and seeing how they deal with them.

Thanks for the reply.
Sharon

I feel I've hit that point in the draft where I need to know more about the characters before I move on.

Yes, that's usually the point I get to, when the bios starts expanding beyond a simple outline. I find ages are very important because that pin points important moments in their life, when set against an historical timeline - eg, were they teenagers in the 70s? Are they Thatcher's children?
I was playing round with the bio. of an elderly character recently - someone who would have been a child in WW2 - and thought 'what if her maiden name was German?' And that opened up a whole host of possibilities for backstory.

Yes, I hit that point too, when you suddenly have to pinpoint things a bit more.

Emma

I feel it's also important to make connections between characters - after all, they're not just plonked into a scene but have had a full life beforehand.
A recent group I was playing with developed like this:

Patrick, aged 76, fell in love with Ellie when she came to work for him as an office junior in the 1960’s. He’d recently taken over his father’s factory, with a wife, Marjorie, and toddler Katie, (now 51, with two teenage children) and baby Paul, (now 47, with partner, but no children).
Feckless Paul didn’t want to take over the business from his father, and was happy when a compulsory purchase by the government for a road widening scheme resulted in the factory being knocked down.
His father has given him regular lump sums to start up various failed entrepreneurial schemes which regularly went bust or collapsed due to 'accidents'.
- Ellie suspects Paul resorted to arson when he got bored with them and hates Patrick wasting money on his son because it means Patrick's never been able to afford to ask his wife for a divorce and marry Ellie.
...Which gives an indication of Ellie's feelings about her lover's son, Paul, even though they've never met.

and thought 'what if her maiden name was German?' And that opened up a whole host of possibilities for backstory.

I love those 'what if' moments - the germ of an idea opening up.

That would be a useful exercise, Noami, thanks for sharing it.

Sharon
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Yes, 'what if' moments are great. In your original post you asked "Do you ask questions of your characters and how do you make them reply?", for me it's more a case of 'what ifs'. In the backstory, above, there are a whole load of questions waiting for answers in the wip itself, eg, does Patrick's wife know about Ellie? - what happens if she does? what happens if she doesn't? Which is the most likely of the two, and what would be the consequences for Ellie?

How do your characters form?

In a vat

Seriously though, this looks like an interesting discussion, I'll go back and read the posts with interest.

I start with a vague idea of what the character looks like. I know the colour of their hair, if not their eyes, I know what their body language is like, the way they hold themselves (tense/ relaxed). I know if they gnaw their nails. But I don't know if they have a birthmark on their bum, for example, and I don't think it matters (unless, like, it's something they obsess over and which is driving the plot!). At the moment I'm developing a character who's a pikeman in the Civil War, and the fact that he's tall and strong for his age just developed as I considered the physicality of holding a pike, and what his attitude was to it. I am beginning to see him as a kind of stalwart, blond, gentle giant, as he slowly comes to signify honesty and naievty and a sort of ideal Englishness that's turned upside down by the war.
Their voice or their inner narrative is also important to me - if they are suspicious or stroppy, that comes out in the way they sit on the bus, legs crossed away from the aisle, for example. Or like Bathsheba, she's melodramatic, up and down all the time, so she's very physically demonstrative - jumping on the bed, bursting into tears, etc. So I'd say, body language, physical attitude, interaction with the world, rather than habits.
I don't ask questions of them. I have done it once, I think, and it was quite useful, but I've no time for the cookie-cutter questionnaires. It's ridiculous to ask your Bronze Age boy what items he habitually keeps in his pocket, for example.
I write a history of each character, sometimes, if I need to keep on top of it (I did for Jack). If I know a certain event has happened in their history (his mother died recently) that then leads me to think of ways that might influence their interaction with other characters (when he meets his love interest, he might associate her ways of moving, her caring nature, with his mother, and be drawn to her).

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"a photo will jump out at me as being the spitting image of my main character, and then I'll stick it on the wall to remind me"

Now, this is something I never do. I never find photos that look like my character - too precise for me, somehow.

Other thing I hate to be too specific about is ages. To me, it doesn't matter if a character is 47 or 46 or 48. Of course it matters if they're 47 or 37. But I never see the point of stating their ages precisely.