Character Creation

[Mythos]

How do you go about doing this? Does the plot come firs, or do the characters? Can you *see* your characters, or do you have to work at describing them?

For me I usually get a plot idea first along with a vague idea for a character. I then start expanding my plot, and my character begins to form because I find more thing he or she will do. For some reason I can never truly picture my characters. I get vague outlines and important features, but I can never really describe down to the smallest detail.

 

[Ophiucha]

I tend to think of plot and characters in tandem. I say "I want a story that focuses on a quest for a jewel" and I already have a character who must be questing for it. I need characters who act as their follies. I might need an antagonist. It all sort of comes naturally, and as I flesh out the plot, the characters incidentally follow. I don't do much beyond what I write up for the story, though. If it isn't important to the story, why would I know what hair color they have? If it isn't important to the story, why would I know where they went to school? And so on and so forth.

 

[Donny Bruso]

I generally create my characters to support my plot, but sometimes they develop in tandem. The story I wrote for NaNo last year was only supposed to have one POV character, but my plot twisted on me, and I needed a second to become an antagonist after events ran their course. That required a supporting cast member to step up and take the role, and she developed into it quite nicely. Or rather is still developing. I kinda burned out my inspiration on NaNo and haven't done much with it since.

I generally find a picture of someone, usually a celebrity since they are easiest to find, that matches the description of my character, and that becomes their face. The more real I can make the character, the easier it is for them to direct my writing their chapters.

 

[Ravana]

Depends on the story–as usual. I've done both, though usually it's the plot that starts me off, since for me it's generally the story I want to tell, and I need to find characters that are able to tell it. On the other hand, the only thing I've written to date that constitutes a "series" began with a character; everything that's followed so far has been in response to the question "What kinds of situations is this guy going to find himself in?"

I suspect that most character-centered series such as Elric, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes or Doc Savage began with character concepts (I can't see the last of these starting from anything but a character concept: it's far too dependent on Doc's unique attributes). Conan, on the other hand, I can see as potentially being an outgrowth from the first story he found himself in. Most superheroes were pretty obviously developed as characters prior to their appearances… I would venture a guess that Watchmen was story-driven, and is the exception that proves the rule. So that might be a sort of answer in itself: if you're writing with a particular "hero" concept in mind, the character will probably precede the story.

 

[Ophiucha]

@Ravana; I don't know, I write character-driven stories, and I think the characters still come at best in tandem. I mean, I'll start out with "I want to write about a villain who watches from his palace as the hero quests to defeat him," and while the story focuses on the villain, inevitably I'll still plan out (a) what he did to deserve being hunted, and (b) the hero's motivation for hunting him. In short, the plot. It often isn't until I am well into the planning stages, sometimes even into writing itself, that I develop the villain's personality and oftentimes personal motivations.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

characters... you can have no plot if you have no clue as to who the story is about. My characters were created when I was 7.. my plot took 20 years to begin formulating in my brain as to what I wanted these three strange people to do. So I began writing the prologue. Which was the foundation for the entire book. Once the prologue was on paper, the ideas and plot fell into place as to why everything that was to happen was happening to begin with. so yes, I believe firmly that the characters need to come before the plot, they are your heroes, your villians, your sufferers, they are the reason you have the plot. they are your plot your story is built around their lives

 

[JCFarnham]

To be honest the thing that comes to me first nine times of ten, is a simple line a hero might throw at a villian. So neither plot or character haha. For example, I have one line in particular floating around my head at the moment that I want to use in one of my SF storys ["So you're the guy who turn the earth into a giant billboard. Now all travellers think of the Earth is 'last stop before proxima'!"] It would be a shame not to use such a line, but unfortunately it doesn't fit into anything I have going at the moment. It is this kind of situation that often fuels before plot and character creation for me. I know already that it needs to be set early on in my SF universe, since we're talking about the Earth, There needs to be a clear cut hero and villian, with the villian being some kind of business man... and so on and so forth.

Sure the above example isn't Fantasy, but it can be applied in the same way to that area of my fiction too in a way.

Very rarely will a character come to me fully formed--I'm always dubious of people who say this about their characters in a way, and yes I'm looking at you Rowling--I'll have say one of the aforementioned lines, and that will suggest a certain personality in a way, but then I definitely strive to make characters believable no matter how important, or conversely not, they are and that means making sure all the characterisation that does make it into the story is sensible [yes even in fantasy this goes] that a reader can believe it, maybe even sympathise with it. But a character wouldn't really exist without a plot and it is the plot that does most of the shaping of characters sooo..

I think I place so much importance on Characters because I've been creating them long before I got that serious about their plots. They are, I'm sure everyone can agree, what make a piece of writing a story rather than a speculative essay haha

 

[Chilari]

I tend to start with a scene, and then built the characters and plot up around it. This time I started with a scenario - I decided I wanted to write a story about a group of survivors following a virus that killed loads of people. I also had a character I couldn't quite work into another story who I decided to put into this one. Then I decided I wanted one of my POV characters to be an older woman (mostly protagonists are either young or male or both). I wanted a location to be a key part of the story, so thought of ways to get characters to deliberately go there by creating interlinked families. Then I split some of the families up and deleted some other characters to keep the cast list down so it was more streamlined and easier to keep track of main characters. Then I worked on the geography and political landscape of the area, and used that to build up a plot. Then I developed the characters more. I wrote a few scenes. I changed the plot based on how characters would act. I brought in some adversaries for my characters to have conflicts with. Now I'm working through the plot again, thinking about how characters would react to various situations and groups of outsiders.

So neither plot nor character comes first, really. It all sort of forms organically.

 

[Falunel]

My stories tend to draw heavily from actual historical events, so I'll usually start by making up a culture, and then think about its history. Once I find an interesting event, I'll start thinking up the characters and how their actions shaped the event. So for me, the setting tends to come first, and the story and characters come in rapid succession.

Often, though, I'll come across a concept or trait, and create a character based on it. Only after I spend a lot of time thinking and shaping that character will a story come to me. This usually holds true for recurring characters, who I've had for many years but haven't been able to use in any plots yet.

 

[Mdnight Rising]

My method is very similiar .. i go with basic plot and then basic character creation and then go back and refine the character and then the antogonists and then let the story flow

 

[Mythos]

Do you guys ever try character questionnaires? I'm still trying to decide wether I like them or not. Lots of writers say they are helpful. Another character development strategy that sounds interesting and fun is actually interviewing your characters. I've never actually tried it, but I like the idea.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

What's a character questionnaire?

 

[Mythos]

Here is an example: http://www.suite101.com/content/developing-memorable-characters-a52915

 

[Mdnight Falling]

Thank you.. I've never heard of this before.. But like I always say.. You learn new things every day >^.^<

 

[Mdnight Rising]

NO i have never used them but i have heard of them

 

[Ravana]

Not a bad starting point. No, I don't use questionnaires… too "structured" for me: half the questions I'll never need answered, half the questions I do need answered won't be there. (A couple I couldn't even answer about myself!) But very reasonable to use as a checklist, once you get going, to see what you might have left out. Well, except for the final one on that particular list, which is pretty stupid. ("Write one additional thing about your character"? Come on. If you don't already have several, you might as well just be rolling dice.… ) Still leaves 44 good ones.

 

[Ophiucha]

I don't care for them; most of the questions they ask don't help me.

 

[At Dusk I Reign]

How do you go about doing this? Does the plot come firs, or do the characters?

My characters tend to present themselves to me before any plot. I picture a person, then their circumstances. Are they poor, are they rich? Happy or sad? If either, why? Although I have an overarching angle in the back of my mind, it doesn't count for much unless the character fits it. Plot is important, but I've always found characterisation moreso. Once the character is resolved the plot will fit itself around like an old cloak. This is only a personal opinion, though, and won't work for everyone. Brains are complex and one size doesn't fit all.

 

[Amanita]

For me, it's a mix of both. In my "modern" story the characters have already changed along with the world and of course the plot a few times. I don't even know anymore how exactly I came up with them in the beginning.

For the stories set earlier I start out with historical accounts during the modern times, there were the company founder idolized by the inhabitants of the city founded by him and the man who abused his magic and his knowledge (ans his wife) and disgusts the main character but is respected by her mentor. And there was a great and terrible war between two neighbouring countries.
Than I've started tryng to figure out why they've acted like that, what they did during that war and why they did it and how his relationship with his wife really was. Now I have an interesting (but rather dark) story about the three of them that has changed the history told to the later main character quite a bit.

World and cultures definitly exist before the characters do in my stories though. I'm deciding what kind of cultural, environmental and magical background I want first and think of characters that can live there and plots that might happen there later.

Character questionaires aren't really helpful to me either. I don't create characters as a set of flaws and strenghts which have to balance each other out, therefore I couldn't even name stuff such as their greatest flaw or their greatest strenght. (I couldn't do that for myself either.) Many things can be helpful in some circumstances and extremely problematic in others.

 

[Digital_Fey]

I'm pretty character-focused; usually I'll think of a scene and the basic type of character that would fit within it, and then I develop the story from there, adding detail to both plot and character as I go. Although character questions are boringly formulaic at best and hopelessly over-detailed at worst (do I really need to know what kind of toothpaste my elvish character prefers?) I do find it helpful to answer some questions as part of the character building process. Forcing myself to think about a character's parentage, childhood, education and friends can open up parts of their personality that I didn't see before, as well as substantiating their motivations and showing possible plotlines that might be worth exploring. The more info I have on a character, the more grounded they become in the story itself. Obviously, since I enjoy drawing, I tend to get quite involved with things like hairstyle and eye color, but I try not to ramble too much about that when writing