I’m gearing up to write something new—you know, when life with a new baby and adjusting to three children all settle in. But even the gearing up phase is going slowly, because I’m feeling like I have to get to know the main character inside and out before I start writing. Before, we’ve looked at creating sympathetic characters, but now I’m just thinking about creating characters themselves.
I know some people do just that—spend hours, days or even months designing a character and bringing him or her to life, tweaking every last nuance of his or her backstory, weaving it into the plot outline, crafting quirks, homing in on weaknesses—all before they start writing a word of the first draft.
And then there are people like me, who outline characters in broad strokes and then launch into a draft. I edit and add to my characters’ life stories as I draft—and often don’t actually create those histories until I have something come to me in a stroke of genius, which usually requires some rewriting of the draft to that point.
Then I get to the end of the draft and have these characters that have evolved over the course of the draft. Even their voices have developed and been refined, until at the end of the draft, they have more distinctive voices, and going back to the beginning, I find bland, voiceless narration.
“Fixing” all that, and further refining and defining my characters, can be a lot of work. That’s part of the reason I wanted to try to get all that figured out in advance. And while I’ve definitely worked to develop my new character, her life story and her personality (with some ideas from The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley), I’ll find most of who she is and how she sounds in the writing, and for me, can’t be found any other way.
When do you do most of your character crafting—before, during or after drafting? What are your favorite ways to get to know your characters? (Warning: awesome responses to the second question just might be “foreblogged”!)
Photo credit—Michal Zacharzewski
All I have to do is load the dishwasher or mow the lawn, and my characters tell me everything about themselves. The only way to shut them up is to sit in front of the computer with a blank Word document on the screen.
Hey, welcome back! Maternity leave over already? 😉
You might want to consider drafting a few “throwaway” scenes with your character to get to know them.
The thing is, though, that I never really understand my character until the end of the book, because their true character is revealed in the end, when they have to make the final choice. Then I find out what’s most important to them.
My stories usually begin with an image… a mental picture of somebody doing something. The image keeps returning and I beginning questioning who this person is and what is he or she doing, and why. When I finally start writing I really don’t know my MC very well. It’s a learning process along the way. During the first revision I have to reassess how he or she is acting and reacting and whether the actions are consistent with the personality that’s now familiar. It sounds much like your process.
I have a general idea about the main characters when I start my rough draft, but don’t build a character sketch until I’ve written a few thousand words of the story. By that time I generally have the basics of the plot figured out and can adjust my characters to fit the needs of the story. It’s hardest for me to figure out the antagonist in my stories as I really want to like everyone, and I’m not good at making likeable villains. Or maybe it’s that I’m not good at making likeable characters villains.