Scott at 2012-09-18 21:24:44:
This surprises me, no one speaks up for the value of character interviews. I think sitting down with characters is an incredibly important tactic. It can give you more of a sense of a character, allow you to hear their voice, and surface important insights. Here is a simple technique: Go to your work station, shut the door, turn off your phone, cut off web access, open a Word doc, put your fingers on your keyboard, close your eyes, bring the character to mind, take a deep breath and start 'talking' with them. 30 minutes. No stopping. Your mind may wander. No problem. Just come back to the interview. Don't worry about correcting typos or even checking what you're typing. You're going for a direct download from whatever cognitive state you have where characters come to life. Do this with every primary character. I'll bet you will benefit from the exercise greatly.
eveningstardir at 2012-09-19 07:06:20:
I've been trying different ways to develop my character. Well, this morning I tried this technique. I found out that my character was a slacker and has a "thing" about driving. Thank you Scott.
Piotr Jamróz at 2012-09-19 15:52:54:
I like to interview my characters with freewriting to get some fresh ideas about them. I don't take serioulsy everything from an interview and just keep interesting parts. It's good to extract the background. I also like to put my characters in concrete scenes and see how they will behave in same situations. For example, a scene "X get stuck in an elevator with attractive man/woman. What will X do? Keep quiet? Start a conversation? How?". And then replace X with following characters to see how they differ. Sometimes it shows that characters are (too much) similar or produces ready-to-use scenes.
SabinaGiado at 2012-09-20 02:46:55:
First of all, I'm a little late to this party, but I'm here finally. Sup peeps - how's the Questing going? Wow, you guys are doing some pretty amazing work. Kudoes. I'm going to try and catch up, but I want to give my work the time to percolate. Characters. When I was in uni, I was given an obscenely long list of questions to ask my characters before writing a novel about them. It was detailed to the point of exhaustion. And that's right. I got exhausted. I would write 20-30 pages, single-spaced, on each character and felt like I didn't know them at all. In fact, I'd even hate them and think they were super-boring. So now I've decided I'll take a different approach. I'll listen to them really. Watch them. Watch the way they move. I mean body language is the most inspiring thing to me about the way people communicate. I will also listen to their stories and the way they talk about them. I'll perhaps read their mind a little and figure out what they're hiding. So it's (going to be) a combination of interviewing and mind-reading. P.S. I've found Nancy Kress' Character and Viewpoint really useful in asking pointed questions.