Interviewing your character for realism

[Moore_Attuned_Ed]

How to paint realistic character development and bring them to life on the page.

Relatable, realistic characters are the backbone of story. If we don’t empathise strongly enough with them, we won’t care for the outcome of their story or their transformational change.

The key word here being ‘empathise’. Not every character has to be loved, or even liked, but empathised with and understood – as John le Carré said, ‘the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy’. They’re strongly interlinked; you need love to be able to hate.

Inconsistency is the bane of character development. Every action the character takes or every word they utter has to remain true to their personality and voice.

If one of a character’s core values is family and happiness over work, yet they eagerly accept a new opportunity working torturous hours, that rings as untrue to the reader. (Unless there's a very good reason for doing so.)

So, how to avoid this? Interview them. Get to know their:

- ins and outs
- pet hates
- innermost fears
- their secret obsessions

Even invent situations: what they would do faced with an ex, or if an old friend betrayed them, or something as trivial as a barista getting their name wrong on a Starbucks cup!

Will they react to conflict with outward displays of anger or shy away? Will they plan revenge at a later date or leave it be?

Get to know everything you can about your character and how they’d react in situations that won’t make it into your story (better yet, this exercise may help find moments you want included!). This way, you can ensure characters act and react authentically to themselves, avoiding a breakdown of suspension of belief.

How far do you go with this and making character sheets etc?

 

[pmmg]

There are, or used to be, some threads floating around that were essentially people role playing their characters. They had titles like 'a discussion with...'. I've not seen one in a while.

I dont have character sheets for my people, but I can see why some would. Mostly I have a text document with names, and sometimes a note, like has axe. But I may not be typical in that. I have a lot of characters, and so far, not gotten them confused. But I am getting to the point where I may need something more formal. Also, It would help to have for the marketing tools.

Just last night I had a thought. I was editing, and I stumbled into the one thing my character would never do.....Uuuuuuhhhhhh.... It has me thinking. Would not the story just twist so wrenchingly if they were forced into no other alternative. That has not been the story in my head, but I bet Hollywood would go that way.... I am thinking on it.


Edit: Has its own section, Character Q&A in the forums.

 

[Mad Swede]

I don't do any of this. No character interviews, no detailed character sheets, not even any notes on the characters. Part of that is because I'm dyslexic, but mostly it's because I don't write like that. I start with an idea for the story, and write the key scenes. Then I join those key scenes together and in the process the characters develop. Keeping character behaviour consistent isn't something I've ever had a problem with in my writing, for me the characters are just there complete in my head and I can write the story.

 

[Penpilot]

For me, I start with the character's wants and why. It's usually a couple of paragraphs at most, and I find the rest along the way. Plot on the other hand, I go quite in-depth with. Also, for me, I don't frame things the same way. I don't strive for realism. I strive for believable. I can't remember where I got the phrase from, but story is life with all the boring bits taken out. Story is the illusion of real, so that's what I aim for. In some ways it's like stage magic. We all know it's not actual magic. We know there's a trick to it, but the performance and presentation is such that it convinces us to suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride because it's fun.

 

[Arielcat]

How to paint realistic character development and bring them to life on the page.

Relatable, realistic characters are the backbone of story. If we don’t empathise strongly enough with them, we won’t care for the outcome of their story or their transformational change.

The key word here being ‘empathise’. Not every character has to be loved, or even liked, but empathised with and understood – as John le Carré said, ‘the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy’. They’re strongly interlinked; you need love to be able to hate.

Inconsistency is the bane of character development. Every action the character takes or every word they utter has to remain true to their personality and voice.

If one of a character’s core values is family and happiness over work, yet they eagerly accept a new opportunity working torturous hours, that rings as untrue to the reader. (Unless there's a very good reason for doing so.)

So, how to avoid this? Interview them. Get to know their:

- ins and outs
- pet hates
- innermost fears
- their secret obsessions

Even invent situations: what they would do faced with an ex, or if an old friend betrayed them, or something as trivial as a barista getting their name wrong on a Starbucks cup!

Will they react to conflict with outward displays of anger or shy away? Will they plan revenge at a later date or leave it be?

Get to know everything you can about your character and how they’d react in situations that won’t make it into your story (better yet, this exercise may help find moments you want included!). This way, you can ensure characters act and react authentically to themselves, avoiding a breakdown of suspension of belief.

How far do you go with this and making character sheets etc?

I get to know my characters in a completely different way, by just knowing them, exploring their personalities, etc.
Sometimes I write some stuff like that down, but usually just to help me keep track of some of the details of it, after I've already known it for years or even decades.
I usually find out what they would do in different situations by simply imagining them in those situations, either as part of the story or as whatever else comes into my head. I don't deliberately put them in certain situations just to see what they would do, but whichever situations they get themselves into of their own accord, and how they react in those interesting different situations, that's part of how I get to know them.
I like to do character portraits of my characters sometimes, just for fun.
Interviewing is also something I use as an exercise sometimes, but I don't need to interview the characters myself, since I usually already know them.
But sometimes I imagine a newspaper reporter interviewing them, just to see what do they seem like to people who *don't* already know them.
(This is potentially useful for discovering how would potential readers see them, etc. In other words, what does someone think of them who does *not* already know them as well as I do. Sort of like the drawing tricks where you stare really hard at something you already know really well, or you think you do, anyway, and then draw it. Like the back of your own hand, for instance. Who knows? Maybe you will get to know it even better, or get to know how to show others what it is like.)
On the topic of acting out of character.
Real people actually do that all the time, and so do some characters as well.
My advice is, if you *really* want to know how your character might react in a very difficult situation, then put the character in a situation where a close friend or family member acted out of character.
(Can be because of an emergency, a physical or mental illness, a head injury, a personality change, other kinds of trauma, or even just, maybe your protagonist doesn't actually know the other character as well as he or she *thinks* he or she does.)
You might be surprised to see what both characters do.
Best of luck from Arielcat.
This is my first post here by the way.
Nice to meet you all and best of luck with all of your writing endeavors.

 

[The Dark One]

When I was first writing seriously - back in the 90s - I used to write out very detailed story maps with even short essays on the main characters and some of the key story concepts. It definitely helped back then but my process is so refined now that it's not necessary.

I continue to write notes about what's coming up in the stories, but it seems I know the characters well enough that essays are no longer needed. Can see how the interview idea would definitely help new writers.

 

[Finchbearer]

I suppose I do this in my head without specifically ‘interviewing’ my characters, such as thinking about how they would react to certain situations, or accents seem to be something that I like to imagine up. Role playing, like actively acting a character out might be a step too far for me, but I can see it’s merits.

I do like thinking deeply about each of my characters and what they look like and what they would wear etc too though, and I think this is essential for making characters believable and it helps me try and translate this on paper too.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Nope. None of that.

 

[skip.knox]

I don't see how it would affect realism. If I'm interviewing the characters, then they need to respond in "realistic" ways; which is to say, in ways appropriate to the character, the situation, and the general setting. And if I can manage that for an artificially constructed interview, then I'm already able to have them converse naturally within the actual story.

And if the characters do not speak in a fitting way in the story, then conducting separate dialog isn't going to help. It's just going to have me striking the same false notes. Writing paragraphs doesn't improve one's grammar; similarly with dialog.

I say this from my own experience. Further, I found that doing these exploratory interviews led me down some paths I had to abandon. That is, in the side conversations I might have a character talk about their rough childhood or how they loved to cook. But as the story developed, these turned out to be mostly irrelevant and occasionally flat out wrong. I was discovering things about a character, but not about *this* character.

So I gave up on that.

Exploration and development do happen, but in a different context. As I work out individual scenes, I often begin by describing what's happening, but fairly quickly I fall into dialog. I have the characters talking and moving and acting. When it's early in a project, that's where the exploration happens. I'm finding each character's voice, tics, foibles. Equally important, I'm developing how various characters sound when they're all in the same room. Inevitably, many such scenes need the dialog tweaked. I rarely get it right the first time. But I find developing (or, if you wish, discovering) each character's voice is more natural and more rewarding when done in-story, as it were. Those other conversations wind up being about as natural as a job interview.

 

[pmmg]

Well, I never quite found a use for the Q and A stuff. It would seem to me that I could just write a scene with two characters talking if I needed to, and that would suffice for the exercise. But...I dont find myself wonder how to get more into my characters head. Conversations and characters dont seem to be my weak point.

Have me describe a room, and it might get dicey.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Interviewing a character always feels silly to me. They're made up characters. Anything I make them say is somethig I've made them say. Like skip.knox I feel that any situation I give them might as well just be a situation in the story I'm writing, since that's what actually matters.

What I have found is that while writing a character, I always come across some random statements by them (or about them) which color their character for the rest of their story. For instance, it might be a remark about how they lost their mother and don't feel worthy to fill her legacy.

 

[Arielcat]

If I'm doing interviewing exercises, it's either just for fun or just an exercise.
(Or both.)
I've never imagined *myself* interviewing any of my characters, as there would completely be no need.
Anything they might possibly reveal in an interview with a stranger is obviously going to be something I already know (even if I might not have expressed it in exactly those words before) and I know much more than that besides.
I'm talking about people who live in the modern world or a version thereof and could potentially be being *actually* interviewed (if they were actual people, that is) by a newspaper reporter or some such sort of person, either as part of what's going on in a book or a story or as just part of an exercise.
I'm not talking about "interviewing" your characters yourself.
I'm talking about what you can find out about what impressions they might make on someone who does not know them, what kinds of things do they choose to tell those people, etc.
*That* sort of thing potentially *is* useful, whereas pretending to be interviewing them myself certainly wouldn't be.
I'm talking about when you know someone really well but you imagine someone talking to them who doesn't know them at all.
It's a completely different kind of exercise.
You can also imagine the same sort of thing about your mother or your grandmother or someone else you know in real life, the person doesn't necessarily even have to be an imaginary person.
The purpose of it isn't so you can find out basic things about them, which I hope you will already know.
The purpose of it is to see how does a stranger finding out things about them react to them and how do people think about them who don't know them and that kind of thing.
You could potentially even use it to help you see, or guess, how a potential audience, if you had one, night react.

 

[Arielcat]

I've just now seen that there's a thread titled "How do I portray a character differently through someone else's point of view?"
That's somewhat similar to what I mean.

 

[BunnyJen90]

Thanks I never really thought about doing this but might be a good idea for me.

 

[Moore_Attuned_Ed]

I don't do any of this. No character interviews, no detailed character sheets, not even any notes on the characters. Part of that is because I'm dyslexic, but mostly it's because I don't write like that. I start with an idea for the story, and write the key scenes. Then I join those key scenes together and in the process the characters develop. Keeping character behaviour consistent isn't something I've ever had a problem with in my writing, for me the characters are just there complete in my head and I can write the story.

Of course, my post was just one way an author might go about characterisation and wasn't intending to be prescriptive – anything that works for you is what works best. As you said, you have character consistency on point by the sounds of it, but for those that struggle with this, knowing this much detail about their characters 'off the page' may help. I can imagine it'll be useful for long series with loads of characters, too. And the list can be as extensive as you like.

There could be a happy marriage of those ideas – write your story and let the characters organically develop and just keep a few notes on key characteristics.

Another type of list I feel isn't mentioned much is one that's set up as a table, one side having traits and emotional reactions on one side, and 'How I will show this in scenes' on the other. this would be a good way to ensure characters have enough differences.

 

[Moore_Attuned_Ed]

For me, I start with the character's wants and why. It's usually a couple of paragraphs at most, and I find the rest along the way. Plot on the other hand, I go quite in-depth with. Also, for me, I don't frame things the same way. I don't strive for realism. I strive for believable. I can't remember where I got the phrase from, but story is life with all the boring bits taken out. Story is the illusion of real, so that's what I aim for. In some ways it's like stage magic. We all know it's not actual magic. We know there's a trick to it, but the performance and presentation is such that it convinces us to suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride because it's fun.

Agreed there, perhaps I should have used 'believable' rather than 'realism', which is more of what I'd meant! aha

I've just now seen that there's a thread titled "How do I portray a character differently through someone else's point of view?"
That's somewhat similar to what I mean.

Your idea about pretending to be someone who's just met your character and seeing them through their lens is such an interesting way to go about it. I can imagine using both POVs could help shape characters even more, since portraying how characters A, B, and C react to D is another way to strengthen D's characterisation, too. So, interviewing them 'yourself' to better understand your character, and exploring other's first impressions could go a long way.

Interviewing a character always feels silly to me. They're made up characters. Anything I make them say is somethig I've made them say. Like skip.knox I feel that any situation I give them might as well just be a situation in the story I'm writing, since that's what actually matters.

What I have found is that while writing a character, I always come across some random statements by them (or about them) which color their character for the rest of their story. For instance, it might be a remark about how they lost their mother and don't feel worthy to fill her legacy.

Fair enough, everyone has their own views. The way I see it, is characters are similar to worldbuilding – you never want to throw EVERYTHING you know about your story world onto the page. Ideally, authors should know more about their world than what's every put into the story itself, as including everything would lead to tripling the word count! So, by knowing the characters more than what's portrayed, you'd be able to craft believable characters that remain consistent to themselves, mainly because it can be difficult to track everything they've said/each value they've upheld throughout the story, and this can easily lead to contradictions. But of course, some writers have no problem with this, while I've read some books where I think 'well this character certainly wouldn't act this way', breaking my suspension of belief.

 

[Arielcat]

I don't know about you interviewing your character as yourself.
My point there was more, that I've never needed to.
Although I should say here that potentially *all* your characters *could* be actually just different parts of yourself.
Including a possibly unnamed and unknown reporter for the imaginary local paper.

 

[Arielcat]

My idea about having someone interview your character (or your pair of characters, perhaps) came partly from an exercise in a writing class where the teacher wanted us to each examine a different picture from a magazine and tell the class a different invented story or background about the person in whichever picture each of us got to look closely at (chosen for us by the teacher, of course, more or less at random, I think) and also from ideas that you could take a closer look at, or have someone else take a closer look at, something you see every day, like your hand, or your pet, or your relative.
My usual main characters in the modern time period actually have a theater, so they could be being interviewed by their local paper about one of their upcoming productions, for instance.
Somebody else's character could maybe be interviewed for somebody else's other reasons.

 

[Arielcat]

I often find, when getting to know actual people in real life, that the particular complexities or particular kinds of complexities about a person, can sometimes be things that I really just wasn't at all prepared for.
Getting to know your characters.
It's usually about ten times easier/simpler than getting to know another person's actual personality.
That's not guaranteed, however.
Even though your characters are actually part of you, it isn't likely that you already know every single little detail about them.
Maybe *almost* every, but probably not *every*.

 

[Arielcat]

Agreed there, perhaps I should have used 'believable' rather than 'realism', which is more of what I'd meant! aha



Your idea about pretending to be someone who's just met your character and seeing them through their lens is such an interesting way to go about it. I can imagine using both POVs could help shape characters even more, since portraying how characters A, B, and C react to D is another way to strengthen D's characterisation, too. So, interviewing them 'yourself' to better understand your character, and exploring other's first impressions could go a long way.


Fair enough, everyone has their own views. The way I see it, is characters are similar to worldbuilding – you never want to throw EVERYTHING you know about your story world onto the page. Ideally, authors should know more about their world than what's every put into the story itself, as including everything would lead to tripling the word count! So, by knowing the characters more than what's portrayed, you'd be able to craft believable characters that remain consistent to themselves, mainly because it can be difficult to track everything they've said/each value they've upheld throughout the story, and this can easily lead to contradictions. But of course, some writers have no problem with this, while I've read some books where I think 'well this character certainly wouldn't act this way', breaking my suspension of belief.

Yes.
At the same time there are also other factors that are possible.
For example, if a particular character is actually supposed to be acting out of character, then you'd better make sure that the audience knows that, because otherwise the desired impact upon the audience isn't going to happen, and the emotional impact upon the audience will be practically none.
And you should certainly know more about your characters than you're telling.
That's what makes the story interesting.
My characters each say what I believe each would say.
I don't consider them to be exactly "just made up" and they certainly aren't just the author's mouthpiece.