Character dossiers.

[Bramandin]

I guess one technique for getting to know your characters is to ask them a bunch of questions like what their favorite food is. On the surface, it looks pretty dumb, but then with looking at very few, I found that some of the questions are worth answering.

When describing how they dress and what sort of shoes they're wearing, it might not be that important to actually describe their shoes, but their grooming does indicate what sort of person they're appearing as to the world. If there is an external influence on how they normally dress, it might also be helpful to figure out what they would wear if they could choose for themselves. (One character got into an argument with his caregivers about how the school dress-code does not require them to wear shoes.)

One thing that really stood out to me as helpful is examining what your character thinks about the world and how they would view a perfect world, especially if they have different ideas about it than the author does. I did have a bit of trouble with their beliefs and why they have them because all but one character is entrenched in their default cultural values and they haven't questioned them much.

Since my characters are young, there are questions that don't apply yet. I'm not sure that I really need to give each of them a dark event yet, or a standout injury, or have suffered a disappointment that shapes them.

 

[sknox]

I have tried doing that sort of thing multiple times. I never get very far because I can invent just about anything for just about anyone, and none of it means anything yet.

Where my characters start to form is when I start putting them in scenes. In the actual story. I usually start with a vague notion (sometimes a few vague notions) about a character, just enough to get going. Only when that character has gone through events, dealt with other characters, do I start to get new ideas and the shadow character starts to gain substance.

I don't recommend the approach. It is vague and ill-disciplined and I can't really even say it works for me. It just appears to be how I work. All that is by way of saying: go ahead and try various approaches. Some will feel wrong. Abandon those. Some will feel right. Adopt those.

 

[tinkerdan]

There are things about your characters that are things you need to know. So such a thing might prove to be of value.
To chart out your character motives and triggers that make them act or react in specific ways and where these are strength and where they are weakness. Such can help chart how the character improves or perhaps just changes from the beginning to the end and then you might be more aware of the need to show how that process evolves: in the writing.

 

[Bramandin]

I have tried doing that sort of thing multiple times. I never get very far because I can invent just about anything for just about anyone, and none of it means anything yet.

Where my characters start to form is when I start putting them in scenes. In the actual story. I usually start with a vague notion (sometimes a few vague notions) about a character, just enough to get going. Only when that character has gone through events, dealt with other characters, do I start to get new ideas and the shadow character starts to gain substance.

I don't recommend the approach. It is vague and ill-disciplined and I can't really even say it works for me. It just appears to be how I work. All that is by way of saying: go ahead and try various approaches. Some will feel wrong. Abandon those. Some will feel right. Adopt those.

I start with a concept and feel them out as I go as well. However, I think that challenging the characters in ways that the plot wouldn't allow, possibly using dossier questions as inspiration, might be a good exercise. I can't remember which youtube it was, but someone mentioned that most characters have had things happen to them before the story begins. I'm wondering if I can suss them out better if I write more stories from their childhood.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Character Dossiers sound like an interesting approach. I feel that the key to characters is that each character has to be interesting, behave consistently, and be different from the other characters in the story. Some people may be able to do all that in their own head, I like to create a spreadsheet of the various characters and keep bullet point lists about each named character. I haven't done a full dossier type thing, but if it works for you do it. There's not one way to attack the challenge of creating and writing about characters, so do what works for you, but don't be afraid to experiment if something isn't working. Good luck with the character dossiers. I'd be interesting to hear how they work for you.

 

[Swank]

I think, and only think, that people generally don't come with cogent philosophies in them. Characters have velocity - a tendency to go a certain way or obstinately hold fast. They don't know that they hate commies until there is a commie in their way to hate.

The problem with dossiers is that you are writing it down, so the way you are defining the character is in very specific series of verbal labels. And that can be confining. Which is why I used the word velocity earlier - sometimes it is better to picture your character in a non-verbal way. Think of them moving through a crowd, reacting to bad news or trying to open a locked door. These little animated moments will often tell you more about the way the character will deal with the events of the plot than a pensive reflection on whether they approve of lawyers or not.

I would rather have these little animations of the characters trapped in my head, and answer for specific conflicts or wardrobe choices as they come up. I'd rather not be confined by what I pre-decided what the character should do, because I don't believe fictional characters have a shape that suits the plot - they are the plot and will do what is best for the plot as it is created.

Aragorn doesn't choose to become the king until he chooses to become the king, and not a moment earlier. When he does, it is not because the nobility boiled up out of him, or because he had been carefully considering it. He chose to become king because he's a man who does what's necessary, and always was. The plot events required it of him.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Since my characters are young, there are questions that don't apply yet. I'm not sure that I really need to give each of them a dark event yet, or a standout injury, or have suffered a disappointment that shapes them.

Not disagreeing with your actual point here--in fact, I suspect you could create any number of great characters without figuring out any kind of dark event/standout injury/disappointment that shapes them--but I'd like to suggest it's entirely possible for children also to have experienced something they personally consider a dark event, well before they're teenagers or young adults. It might well be smaller than the things we as authors typically look for, of course. It could just be a tiny betrayal by someone they'd considered a friend, or a relatively mild incident that made them realize their own mortality, or something else fairly benign by anyone else's standards. The point is that the scope of the question doesn't have to be only major events in order to be important to the character.

I think we sometimes miss that, as authors of thrilling adventure stories. We start to think of particular characters as boring or underdeveloped if they haven't had something dramatic, tragic, or traumatic happen to them in the past, but our definition of "tragic and traumatic" is actually too extreme. I've fallen into that trap before. We start to miss the less drastic, but no less meaningful, tragedies and traumas that people really do consider important in real life. Small events can shape people into being kind or nasty, too--children no less than adults.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I guess one technique for getting to know your characters is to ask them a bunch of questions like what their favorite food is.

I originally did this, but IMO it's the wrong way to develop characters because all you end up with is superficial detail. It's the internal conflicts that drive characters and their stories, not their favorite color.

 

[Bramandin]

I think, and only think, that people generally don't come with cogent philosophies in them. Characters have velocity - a tendency to go a certain way or obstinately hold fast. They don't know that they hate commies until there is a commie in their way to hate.

The problem with dossiers is that you are writing it down, so the way you are defining the character is in very specific series of verbal labels. And that can be confining. Which is why I used the word velocity earlier - sometimes it is better to picture your character in a non-verbal way. Think of them moving through a crowd, reacting to bad news or trying to open a locked door. These little animated moments will often tell you more about the way the character will deal with the events of the plot than a pensive reflection on whether they approve of lawyers or not.

I would rather have these little animations of the characters trapped in my head, and answer for specific conflicts or wardrobe choices as they come up. I'd rather not be confined by what I pre-decided what the character should do, because I don't believe fictional characters have a shape that suits the plot - they are the plot and will do what is best for the plot as it is created.

Aragorn doesn't choose to become the king until he chooses to become the king, and not a moment earlier. When he does, it is not because the nobility boiled up out of him, or because he had been carefully considering it. He chose to become king because he's a man who does what's necessary, and always was. The plot events required it of him.

That is a good point. Things that are relevant might not come up until they come up. It might be better to back-fill their childhood as those experiences become relevant to the plot. Even if I lay out details, they may have to change if something works better.

I like the idea of giving them telling moments. Sometimes it's very easy to steal them as well. I can't give one character this exact scene because technology doesn't work that way on her world, but she is very much like Susan Calvin from I Robot.

That does give me an idea to go find a sitcom or kid's show and try to put them into that plot. It might not be something that actually happens to them, but it's a generic enough situation that it can give insight. As the main characters, the real plot should serve them as long as they're not always getting what they want.

 

[Bramandin]

Not disagreeing with your actual point here--in fact, I suspect you could create any number of great characters without figuring out any kind of dark event/standout injury/disappointment that shapes them--but I'd like to suggest it's entirely possible for children also to have experienced something they personally consider a dark event, well before they're teenagers or young adults. It might well be smaller than the things we as authors typically look for, of course. It could just be a tiny betrayal by someone they'd considered a friend, or a relatively mild incident that made them realize their own mortality, or something else fairly benign by anyone else's standards. The point is that the scope of the question doesn't have to be only major events in order to be important to the character.

I think we sometimes miss that, as authors of thrilling adventure stories. We start to think of particular characters as boring or underdeveloped if they haven't had something dramatic, tragic, or traumatic happen to them in the past, but our definition of "tragic and traumatic" is actually too extreme. I've fallen into that trap before. We start to miss the less drastic, but no less meaningful, tragedies and traumas that people really do consider important in real life. Small events can shape people into being kind or nasty, too--children no less than adults.

Exactly. Like in my own past, getting lost in a patch of woods about ten football fields long was bad enough to teach me to be careful about keeping track of where I've been. I could do the same thing to my characters, though having the lord of that forest show up in wolf form might cause a slight plothole. Heck, I could give them some bad run-ins with geese.

 

[sknox]

>It might be better to back-fill their childhood as those experiences become relevant to the plot.It might be better to back-fill their childhood as those experiences become relevant to the plot.

Yes, this. I do a lot of back-filling as I develop the story. I have a character, for example, who generally dislikes and mistrusts the nobility. I threw that on him like one throws on a new coat, just to see if it fit. It felt right after a while, seemed useful in story development, but then I had to ask *why* the character had that attitude. I found a historical event that seemed suited to the purpose and had a noble cause the death of someone the MC respected and admired. A classic case of noble privilege doing damage.

I'm still fuzzy on the details of exactly what happened, and how close to the event the MC was (did he witness it? hear about it?), but I tend to address such details as I need to in order to move the story forward. I should add that this doesn't necessarily mean as I'm writing the story. Sometimes such back-filling happens as I'm thinking and taking notes--sketching with words. Sometimes the details never even make it into the story, but they form the weave of what makes the character, so when I come to write a scene, it's there to inform the character's actions.

I think one reason why I never found character sheets, in all their various forms, to be helpful is because my process is so iterative. It's primarily a dialectic between plot and character, with setting and theme sometimes chiming in. Whether it's outlining the story or making a character dossier, doing all that up front never seems to survive even the first chapter or two of actual writing. That said, I recognize there are others who make detailed sketches of their characters.

If I were a playwright, I'd have characters come on stage and then everyone on stage would have to take a few moments deciding on the newcomer's name! I'd make a terrible playwright.

 

[Toby Frost]

I have tried doing that sort of thing multiple times. I never get very far because I can invent just about anything for just about anyone, and none of it means anything yet.

I agree. I think it's more important to know the general rules by which this character operates - the way that they'll approach a problem - and a few small details. This is where rough (accurate) generalisations come in.

So, Giulia Degarno, who I've written two books about, is quite a lot like a private eye in temperament. She's a loner, an only (surviving) child, and approaches things with a mixture of caution and cynicism. The only event in her past that really matters is when Publius Severra's men nearly killed her, because she means to kill him in in revenge. Otherwise, you can pretty much guess that her past would have involved poverty, thievery, and that sort of thing. There's one more bit of backstory, to explain why she has one of her friends - it would seem strange otherwise. (It also means that I can invent old acquaintances as needed to help with plotting.)

However, to stop her being just a generic PI in a fantasy world, she's also interested in reading and (comparatively) very clean. Hobbies and interests help a lot here, I think, and can imply interesting quirks about a character. That's all I really needed.

It's worth mentioning that there are details that the reader doesn't need to know and you might well not need to know. There's a desire among fans of series to know every single bit of backstory about a favourite character (Star Wars is particularly bad for this). It makes money, but often it's better to keep things vague and mysterious.

But, as ever with writing, different things work for different people.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I believe that for most people--most real people--their personalities and central beliefs are not created by one single experience but by a combination of many. I mean, someone who grew up in an abusive environment didn't suddenly wake up one morning and think, "wow, yesterday's abuse has crystalized my thoughts and values." That would imply that everything that happened to them before, all of the previous cruelty and suffering, didn't really matter. The same for someone who grew up in grinding poverty. Their core beliefs about the world are based on the personality they were born with combined with the experiences, good and bad, of day after day after day after day. And if that is true for real people, then why should it not be true for fictional characters? I think it's an over-simplification to rely too heavily on one single event. (A single event might be the inciting incident that pushes them into action at a particular point in the plot, but that would be because their sense of right and wrong, what they believe in and what they are highly skeptical about, etc. etc. has already developed. Of course, the events and circumstances of the plot might change them in some ways--ideally it would--but that would also be a combination of experiences, too, not just because of one thing that happens. That's too much like melodrama, or one of Shakespeare's tragicomedies, where the villain sudden reforms and embraces the brother he has hated up until that point. It might have worked for audiences in the 16th century, but modern readers expect more realism.)

As to dossiers, or character questionnaires, or whatever you want to call them: in my own writing, I always feel that by the time I have spent enough time working with a character, I ought to know them well enough that for any question that might come up, I instinctively know what they will say/do/think. (Or if I don't know it consciously, my subconscious will take over and it will happen anyway--sometimes much to my astonishment, though I will feel a little, pleased, shock of surprise, because however little I was expecting it, it will feel utterly right when it happens. Even something as trivial as their favorite color, if it actually came up in the story, I ought to be able to know the answer as soon as the question occurs. Yes, at the beginning of the work, I am still learning about them—and that's OK, because I revise enough as I go along that in the first drafts I can change anything that turns out to have been a misstep--but later, if I have to look up an answer in a dossier or on a character sheet in order to proceed, then something is very wrong. I should know them better than that!)

For someone who is not the type of writer that does multiple revisions, then my approach might prove a disaster, but it has always seemed to work well for me.

 

[Astro Pen]

Ask yourself how much you know about James Bond's childhood?

 

[Bramandin]

but then I had to ask *why* the character had that attitude.

I think this might be the most important bit. You can throw traits at a character to see what sticks, but the why is what really cements them into something cohesive and believable. Sometimes you need something to hang their values from even if the reader never sees it.

I hope whatever your character's personal stake in disliking nobility turns into a juicy tidbit.

I think that it's fun for one character to be stubborn and feel that her way is the best. She has faith in science and it makes her act like the type of 'Christian' that people complain about. (There's those types in other religions, I'm sure.) If she's going to go against her beliefs, maybe I should figure out if there's a good reason she got so hidebound in the first place. (Maybe she just acts that way, but I still have to think up a reason.)

One character needs to assume a role that was traditionally filled by a paladin, but he grew up with the sense that being a paladin was bad. He didn't realize that the "might as well be Worf's idea of Klingons" culture he grew up in was trying to make him into a different sort of paladin. (I wonder if that entire race is so fanatical about being irreligious.) The why he's like that is pretty clear in that his beliefs weren't challenged because he didn't see it.

 

[Bramandin]

I believe that for most people--most real people--their personalities and central beliefs are not created by one single experience but by a combination of many. I mean, someone who grew up in an abusive environment didn't suddenly wake up one morning and think, "wow, yesterday's abuse has crystalized my thoughts and values." That would imply that everything that happened to them before, all of the previous cruelty and suffering, didn't really matter. The same for someone who grew up in grinding poverty. Their core beliefs about the world are based on the personality they were born with combined with the experiences, good and bad, of day after day after day after day. And if that is true for real people, then why should it not be true for fictional characters? I think it's an over-simplification to rely too heavily on one single event. (A single event might be the inciting incident that pushes them into action at a particular point in the plot, but that would be because their sense of right and wrong, what they believe in and what they are highly skeptical about, etc. etc. has already developed. Of course, the events and circumstances of the plot might change them in some ways--ideally it would--but that would also be a combination of experiences, too, not just because of one thing that happens. That's too much like melodrama, or one of Shakespeare's tragicomedies, where the villain sudden reforms and embraces the brother he has hated up until that point. It might have worked for audiences in the 16th century, but modern readers expect more realism.)

As to dossiers, or character questionnaires, or whatever you want to call them: in my own writing, I always feel that by the time I have spent enough time working with a character, I ought to know them well enough that for any question that might come up, I instinctively know what they will say/do/think. (Or if I don't know it consciously, my subconscious will take over and it will happen anyway--sometimes much to my astonishment, though I will feel a little, pleased, shock of surprise, because however little I was expecting it, it will feel utterly right when it happens. Even something as trivial as their favorite color, if it actually came up in the story, I ought to be able to know the answer as soon as the question occurs. Yes, at the beginning of the work, I am still learning about them—and that's OK, because I revise enough as I go along that in the first drafts I can change anything that turns out to have been a misstep--but later, if I have to look up an answer in a dossier or on a character sheet in order to proceed, then something is very wrong. I should know them better than that!)

For someone who is not the type of writer that does multiple revisions, then my approach might prove a disaster, but it has always seemed to work well for me.

One of the videos I watched described how a character doesn't always have that one moment, but it could be a slow drip.

My paladin character got a broken arm while sparring. He comes back into the hunting cabin and he's feeling a little embarrassed, but he's not making a fuss about his injury. He's not trying to hide it or call attention to it. At that point I was just throwing in "what would Worf do" but it does fit for him to treat a training accident as routine. His race even has bone-menders so it's not like an injury ever put him out of commission.

There's also opportunities to discover a trait that fits a character and the detail didn't exist until it was needed. My mind is hung up on Worf; restraint became part of his character once the writers developed him, but the detail about him accidentally killing another teenager didn't come up until late into DS9.

I'm not really concerned that I can't answer the question of what each character's favorite color is, there is only one character that has a reason to have a particular favorite color. Well, for another character the color should obviously be a shade of green that's common in the spring. Another question is what a character's favorite toy was. Sometimes it matters, like I guess an attraction to wheels could be an autistic trait, but other times it could be somewhat arbitrary beyond whether they like toys that you sit with quietly or toys that encourage moving around.

But as far as looking up their dossier, if I have to sit and think about what a character's favorite color is when the question comes up, having answered that question at creation doesn't help any better than reaching into my marker box or using some other sort of randomizer in that moment.

 

[Bramandin]

Ask yourself how much you know about James Bond's childhood?

The only one I watched completely through is the one where they visit his childhood home. Sorry, not a Bond fan. I have heard that in-universe it's been part of the job title and more than one person has been James Bond.

 

[Bramandin]

It's worth mentioning that there are details that the reader doesn't need to know and you might well not need to know. There's a desire among fans of series to know every single bit of backstory about a favourite character (Star Wars is particularly bad for this). It makes money, but often it's better to keep things vague and mysterious.

I agree that relevance plays a big part in what the reader knows about a character. Exciting things might have happened to them, but a writer has to ask themselves if it's relevant to the story.

One character also has a vampiric aunt that she's never met, but her older sister is a clone of the aunt. It's a nice detail, but what are the chances that either of them is going to matter to her story? The same for another character's younger (half?)sister who I don't know if they've ever been introduced to each other and I won't know myself unless the plot requires it. Will they ever laugh over a recounting of the time that a character and his brother started screaming the first time that their mom tried to get them to eat fish?

 

[Swank]

The only one I watched completely through is the one where they visit his childhood home. Sorry, not a Bond fan. I have heard that in-universe it's been part of the job title and more than one person has been James Bond.

James Bond is one character, not a series of them. The point made about Bond is the same point that could be made about Han Solo or any character that we come to mid-stream: They don't need to have a 'background' that either explains or controls their actions.

Sometimes everything we need to know about a character is what they are doing right now, as long as that behavior is consistent with the rest of their actions later on. Someone may suddenly act against injustice - it doesn't mean that they have become fed up after a lifetime of injustice, it just means that the events they are witnessing line up for them in a way that spurs action.

And really, that's what a good character is about - not how their past wound them like a clock to produce the current behavior, but how their current behavior becomes what they are about. Han Solo is a pretty uninteresting putz before becoming involved with the Rebels. His emerging character traits since then are what his story is about - and why we pay attention.

I would much rather read about a character that had almost no defining life before the plot starts than one with 'important' back story. Watching a character make decisions about who they are is a much better use of the plot.

 

[Bramandin]

James Bond is one character, not a series of them. The point made about Bond is the same point that could be made about Han Solo or any character that we come to mid-stream: They don't need to have a 'background' that either explains or controls their actions.

Sometimes everything we need to know about a character is what they are doing right now, as long as that behavior is consistent with the rest of their actions later on. Someone may suddenly act against injustice - it doesn't mean that they have become fed up after a lifetime of injustice, it just means that the events they are witnessing line up for them in a way that spurs action.

And really, that's what a good character is about - not how their past wound them like a clock to produce the current behavior, but how their current behavior becomes what they are about. Han Solo is a pretty uninteresting putz before becoming involved with the Rebels. His emerging character traits since then are what his story is about - and why we pay attention.

I would much rather read about a character that had almost no defining life before the plot starts than one with 'important' back story. Watching a character make decisions about who they are is a much better use of the plot.

Ah sorry, now it's clearer. You're making a good point about coming back to what's important to the story. People didn't need to know why Solo was a scoundrel to enjoy him as a character. All we got were hints to his past and that he had a backstory, but it pretty much just added detail until it bit him in the bum and that subplot doesn't even take up that much time over three movies. Mostly it's just there for the writer to be able to make informed decisions about what the character would do, and there are other ways to get consistency or explain lack of consistency.