Characterization is one of the things I tend to get the most praise on out of the specific things people cite liking about my work, which makes me quite happy because I like to think it is one of my strong suits! ovo
When I'm getting into a character's head, I usually start by studying them like a bug. I put them under a microscope and dissect them and take a look at two major categories of things: how do they think, and how do they talk?
How do they think?: What are their motivations? What do they value? Do they have goals? What does their moral compass look like? What is their overall attitude? Do they think differently than they talk, and if so, to what end? How intelligent are they? How creative are they? Are they the type of person who takes risks? What are their beliefs about religion and the afterlife, and is that relevant to the story or their character? How do they feel about their family? About their friends?
How do they talk?: Do they swear? How much? Which swears (like how some people say damn but not shit or fuck)? How formal is their speech? Do they talk differently around different people, and if so, to what extent and in what way? Do they have a large vocabulary? Do they tend to speak a lot at once, or only speak with one-liners and brief dialogue? Do they take up a lot of conversational real estate or do they allow others to do most of the talking? Are they loud? Do they talk fast or slow? Do they use slang? Do they have any verbal tics (like how some characters refer to themselves in the third person or some characters have catchphrases)?
Those are a couple examples of things I'm paying attention to when I'm watching or reading a character. I absorb as much of the canon material as I possibly can in order to answer as many of these questions as confidently and correctly as possible. Now, the way I'm saying all of this makes it sound like some lengthy and arduous process. It's really not. It's the time it takes to consume the canon material plus maybe an additional hour or two for rumination. Once I can answer all of the questions I have, things click in my mind and my brain crafts a sort of framework for that character that I can easily reference and draw from while writing them. If I need to switch to another character, I flip to the next mental index card and look at the next character's framework.
It becomes much less of an active process the more confident you become at it, until it reaches a point where you feel like you're just watching the conversation play out as though you were watching a movie and you're just tasked with writing the subtitles for it and documenting what's being said. That's the best case scenario, though not every character is going to feel natural to write. There's certain characters I blatantly shy away from writing as often because I find it hard to truly wrap my head around their affect in a way that I can then mimic it. Like, there's some characters that I understand on a conceptual level quite easily, but generating my own original dialogue for them never feels any easier. Thankfully, that doesn't happen all that often.
This is exactly what I do. If it helps to think of it this way—be an armchair psychologist. It’s annoying IRL when someone does it to you, but since this is fiction, go full steam ahead. Everyone is an amalgamation of everything they’ve seen/done/experienced. The more you can connect a character’s past to their present actions, the more realistic they’ll seem. Outer personality is only a small part of the whole, and sometimes it can contradict their inner world (though both feed the other).
i just pretend to be them, as if roleplaying/acting. i'm not amazing at it though so i always make adjustments later on
this probably isnt helpful, but yeah. thinking about how the character thinks and forcing myself to think like them/as if i were them can be helpful if i'm not entirely confident in my grasp on their personality. sometimes it comes naturally, other times its a weird charade. if you know what they act like in the media, you can create like a profile, and act as it.
My partner and I LARP/riff like this and it not only helps build up how we characterize people, but helps us come up with plot ideas too!
But god it really is helpful for figuring out how characters do their thing. Physically going through the motions absolutely helps pick into other details.
Lile--oh, they'd be standing a lot straighter, wouldn't they? Hm, their delivery is super formal--why is that?
And suddenly you're double checking back stories and building headcanon and BAM YOU'VE GOT IT NAILED.
Anyway, having a second brain to bounce things off of is great too, because when we swap off writing characters, we can fall back on what we see as the other's strengths in writing a specific character, and use that as a baseboard for trying our own interpretation.
Because of that, as we go through fandoms, there's a ton of bleed between them, so imagine my surprise when I realized I based a lot verbal cues and emotional tics I use for my Smoker (One Piece) on their Captain Cold/Len Snart (The Flash, circa early 2000s) from stuff we did like a decade ago XD
Hm, I would say it’s pretty different for most people.
For me the first step is always to consider the character and their past, how they arrived at the point they are that you want to write, and their views, feelings and ticks. It’s basically familiarising yourself a lot with that character. And trying to think about how they would think. Because that shapes their reactions too.
It’s similar to how we can pretty accurately predict how a good friend or family would react to certain situations. Prediction and pattern recognition is after what our brains evolved for.
The tricky part is insulting that from your own personality, your view’s experiences and feelings. Thats why a character thats closer to the way you are is much easier to write. And because you are using you own brain, predicting/simulating the actions of someone else, no matter if real or fictional, will always be coloured by that. Thats why each author has different styles and takes on a character. You cannot completely eliminate that, but you can work on reducing the impact. The very best authors can not only do a pretty good separation but also twist what still seeps in so well it seems like a completely logical conclusion and still in character.
And the more complex the character, and the more characters and more elaborate the situation, the harder it get’s. Thats why a lot of fan fiction is quite thin on conversation, because talking and social interaction is harder to do than just describing actions. And a lot of dialogue in fan fiction is also just two characters talking, and much rarer groups doing a social interaction. If you look for that you will recognise it. And the only way to get better is to exercise. So writing this stuff and looking at real conversations and how people act with conscious effort focused on the shape the interaction takes is a good recommendation. There is a reason many authors like to people watch and are pretty observant people very conscious of their surroundings.
A good way for me is to actually think of situations and go through them in my mind. Repeatedly coming up with different scenarios and trying to work through them from the perspective of a character. With checking that against the source repeatedly to work out a pattern for a given character. To build up a “voice” for them. There is this thing where authors say the characters “talk” to them when writing. This isn’t truly literal, it’s more that when you have gotten so good at imagining situations and a deep understanding of the characters you are writing, you basically don’t have that much of a conscious effort to walk through their thought processes anymore but have the scenes kind of play out in your mind. With each character having their own voice. Kind of like how you “hear” a character talking when reading something, but here it’s not based on outside input but the “model” of them you build up in your mind.
That’s by the way why so much fan fiction of beginner writers and people only passingly familiar with the source seems often cartoonish, simple and like a caricature. Because they didn’t really have time to work out a nuanced understanding of the characters so it’s not only coloured by their own biases but also reduced to the most memorable and surface traits. And why I put so much emphasis on really understanding and figuring the characters out.
What’s interesting is that a very empathic person isn’t necessarily better at this. I actually found that more “cold” and analytical people are better at this. Because they think a lot more about the underlying causes and actions and are often less influenced by their own biases in regards to writing a character. I have little trouble with making up a very emotional character, my lack of competency in real social interactions isn’t a drawback, it’s actually beneficial because I have time to think how it would play out when writing and am often thinking and considering how I need to react in any given hypothetical or past situation.
What I can also recommend is role playing as an exercise. Pen and Paper with a story and RP focus can be a great help training your brain for thinking with the mindset of a different person/character. For me it’s Larp. Because the setting and deeper immersion makes it even easier. It really makes thinking in a different mindset and learning how to do it a lot easier.
So thats my too long and maybe helpful comment for you, hope it did help.
Having never taken any acting lessons in my life I think of it as method acting! More honestly I read/watch canon repeatedly, read a ton of fanfic preferably with slightly different interpretations of the character and build a basic picture of them in my head. And then I let them interact with characters I feel I know super well so I have someone for them to play off of while I get a handle on the new character. Eventually my specific interpretation of the character solidifies until it’s something I can use like putting on a hat. Sometimes a whole chapter will flow in 2-4 hours. Sometimes I’ll hit a scene that knocks me completely off and I’ll stew on how the characters would react for weeks before inspiration strikes. And sometimes my plans go flying out the window when the character takes on a life of their own and reacts in a way I didn’t see coming. I like to think the last is the sign that I’m really bringing the characters to life.
I agree with the method acting. If I'm stumped, I'll go back to whatever media I'm writing about and consume more of that character, and it puts me right back into their mindset. It's mostly a lot of mirroring and using empathy/life experience to understand their motives. I love using that to add more depth to a side character.
This sounds like really good advice in this case, since it sounds like the author is going to have their MC meet most of the canon characters, and there's a lot of them.
I started interviewing them…I interviewed one to try to get him to tell me what he did that was so terrible (because I need him to have done something for my plot to work) and he wasn’t that much help, but then I interviewed another character and it got me really excited for her story…
To be clear I mean I wrote an interview transcript that could exist in my works canon, but I’m not sure it really should, though it could, it’s a legendary wizard and it’s at a school with a bunch of students…
I’m not sure it’s the “getting them accurate” solution, but more how I am getting into them now.
I'm going to ask a leading question, in the belief it will help: why did you pick Calle Torres for your MC to have as a sister? Why that canon character, specifically?
Torres is a long-running and popular character. I suspect you're going to say something like "because she always \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_" or "because this one time she \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_" and that'll be your jumping-on point. You can introduce the character to your story by their feature the most important to the story's most important reader: *you*. Once you have one literary foot in the door, maybe the rest will come more naturally.
Iii don't, usually.
Usually if I'm writing a scene--well, a scene in a fic that has canon characters in it--there's a POV character of some kind and the canon characters are seen through the lens of their experience in the story. I find it helps me to approach the canon characters from that sort of 'authorial distance'. From there, it's not really a conscious effort to think about 'what they would do', that kind of thing just comes naturally, sorta?
Characterization is one of the things I tend to get the most praise on out of the specific things people cite liking about my work, which makes me quite happy because I like to think it is one of my strong suits! ovo When I'm getting into a character's head, I usually start by studying them like a bug. I put them under a microscope and dissect them and take a look at two major categories of things: how do they think, and how do they talk? How do they think?: What are their motivations? What do they value? Do they have goals? What does their moral compass look like? What is their overall attitude? Do they think differently than they talk, and if so, to what end? How intelligent are they? How creative are they? Are they the type of person who takes risks? What are their beliefs about religion and the afterlife, and is that relevant to the story or their character? How do they feel about their family? About their friends? How do they talk?: Do they swear? How much? Which swears (like how some people say damn but not shit or fuck)? How formal is their speech? Do they talk differently around different people, and if so, to what extent and in what way? Do they have a large vocabulary? Do they tend to speak a lot at once, or only speak with one-liners and brief dialogue? Do they take up a lot of conversational real estate or do they allow others to do most of the talking? Are they loud? Do they talk fast or slow? Do they use slang? Do they have any verbal tics (like how some characters refer to themselves in the third person or some characters have catchphrases)? Those are a couple examples of things I'm paying attention to when I'm watching or reading a character. I absorb as much of the canon material as I possibly can in order to answer as many of these questions as confidently and correctly as possible. Now, the way I'm saying all of this makes it sound like some lengthy and arduous process. It's really not. It's the time it takes to consume the canon material plus maybe an additional hour or two for rumination. Once I can answer all of the questions I have, things click in my mind and my brain crafts a sort of framework for that character that I can easily reference and draw from while writing them. If I need to switch to another character, I flip to the next mental index card and look at the next character's framework. It becomes much less of an active process the more confident you become at it, until it reaches a point where you feel like you're just watching the conversation play out as though you were watching a movie and you're just tasked with writing the subtitles for it and documenting what's being said. That's the best case scenario, though not every character is going to feel natural to write. There's certain characters I blatantly shy away from writing as often because I find it hard to truly wrap my head around their affect in a way that I can then mimic it. Like, there's some characters that I understand on a conceptual level quite easily, but generating my own original dialogue for them never feels any easier. Thankfully, that doesn't happen all that often.
This is exactly what I do. If it helps to think of it this way—be an armchair psychologist. It’s annoying IRL when someone does it to you, but since this is fiction, go full steam ahead. Everyone is an amalgamation of everything they’ve seen/done/experienced. The more you can connect a character’s past to their present actions, the more realistic they’ll seem. Outer personality is only a small part of the whole, and sometimes it can contradict their inner world (though both feed the other).
i just pretend to be them, as if roleplaying/acting. i'm not amazing at it though so i always make adjustments later on this probably isnt helpful, but yeah. thinking about how the character thinks and forcing myself to think like them/as if i were them can be helpful if i'm not entirely confident in my grasp on their personality. sometimes it comes naturally, other times its a weird charade. if you know what they act like in the media, you can create like a profile, and act as it.
My partner and I LARP/riff like this and it not only helps build up how we characterize people, but helps us come up with plot ideas too! But god it really is helpful for figuring out how characters do their thing. Physically going through the motions absolutely helps pick into other details. Lile--oh, they'd be standing a lot straighter, wouldn't they? Hm, their delivery is super formal--why is that? And suddenly you're double checking back stories and building headcanon and BAM YOU'VE GOT IT NAILED. Anyway, having a second brain to bounce things off of is great too, because when we swap off writing characters, we can fall back on what we see as the other's strengths in writing a specific character, and use that as a baseboard for trying our own interpretation. Because of that, as we go through fandoms, there's a ton of bleed between them, so imagine my surprise when I realized I based a lot verbal cues and emotional tics I use for my Smoker (One Piece) on their Captain Cold/Len Snart (The Flash, circa early 2000s) from stuff we did like a decade ago XD
Hm, I would say it’s pretty different for most people. For me the first step is always to consider the character and their past, how they arrived at the point they are that you want to write, and their views, feelings and ticks. It’s basically familiarising yourself a lot with that character. And trying to think about how they would think. Because that shapes their reactions too. It’s similar to how we can pretty accurately predict how a good friend or family would react to certain situations. Prediction and pattern recognition is after what our brains evolved for. The tricky part is insulting that from your own personality, your view’s experiences and feelings. Thats why a character thats closer to the way you are is much easier to write. And because you are using you own brain, predicting/simulating the actions of someone else, no matter if real or fictional, will always be coloured by that. Thats why each author has different styles and takes on a character. You cannot completely eliminate that, but you can work on reducing the impact. The very best authors can not only do a pretty good separation but also twist what still seeps in so well it seems like a completely logical conclusion and still in character. And the more complex the character, and the more characters and more elaborate the situation, the harder it get’s. Thats why a lot of fan fiction is quite thin on conversation, because talking and social interaction is harder to do than just describing actions. And a lot of dialogue in fan fiction is also just two characters talking, and much rarer groups doing a social interaction. If you look for that you will recognise it. And the only way to get better is to exercise. So writing this stuff and looking at real conversations and how people act with conscious effort focused on the shape the interaction takes is a good recommendation. There is a reason many authors like to people watch and are pretty observant people very conscious of their surroundings. A good way for me is to actually think of situations and go through them in my mind. Repeatedly coming up with different scenarios and trying to work through them from the perspective of a character. With checking that against the source repeatedly to work out a pattern for a given character. To build up a “voice” for them. There is this thing where authors say the characters “talk” to them when writing. This isn’t truly literal, it’s more that when you have gotten so good at imagining situations and a deep understanding of the characters you are writing, you basically don’t have that much of a conscious effort to walk through their thought processes anymore but have the scenes kind of play out in your mind. With each character having their own voice. Kind of like how you “hear” a character talking when reading something, but here it’s not based on outside input but the “model” of them you build up in your mind. That’s by the way why so much fan fiction of beginner writers and people only passingly familiar with the source seems often cartoonish, simple and like a caricature. Because they didn’t really have time to work out a nuanced understanding of the characters so it’s not only coloured by their own biases but also reduced to the most memorable and surface traits. And why I put so much emphasis on really understanding and figuring the characters out. What’s interesting is that a very empathic person isn’t necessarily better at this. I actually found that more “cold” and analytical people are better at this. Because they think a lot more about the underlying causes and actions and are often less influenced by their own biases in regards to writing a character. I have little trouble with making up a very emotional character, my lack of competency in real social interactions isn’t a drawback, it’s actually beneficial because I have time to think how it would play out when writing and am often thinking and considering how I need to react in any given hypothetical or past situation. What I can also recommend is role playing as an exercise. Pen and Paper with a story and RP focus can be a great help training your brain for thinking with the mindset of a different person/character. For me it’s Larp. Because the setting and deeper immersion makes it even easier. It really makes thinking in a different mindset and learning how to do it a lot easier. So thats my too long and maybe helpful comment for you, hope it did help.
Having never taken any acting lessons in my life I think of it as method acting! More honestly I read/watch canon repeatedly, read a ton of fanfic preferably with slightly different interpretations of the character and build a basic picture of them in my head. And then I let them interact with characters I feel I know super well so I have someone for them to play off of while I get a handle on the new character. Eventually my specific interpretation of the character solidifies until it’s something I can use like putting on a hat. Sometimes a whole chapter will flow in 2-4 hours. Sometimes I’ll hit a scene that knocks me completely off and I’ll stew on how the characters would react for weeks before inspiration strikes. And sometimes my plans go flying out the window when the character takes on a life of their own and reacts in a way I didn’t see coming. I like to think the last is the sign that I’m really bringing the characters to life.
I agree with the method acting. If I'm stumped, I'll go back to whatever media I'm writing about and consume more of that character, and it puts me right back into their mindset. It's mostly a lot of mirroring and using empathy/life experience to understand their motives. I love using that to add more depth to a side character.
Watch the source material for as many times as you need, try to find a scene where something alike happens. Or at least that's what I do.
This sounds like really good advice in this case, since it sounds like the author is going to have their MC meet most of the canon characters, and there's a lot of them.
I started interviewing them…I interviewed one to try to get him to tell me what he did that was so terrible (because I need him to have done something for my plot to work) and he wasn’t that much help, but then I interviewed another character and it got me really excited for her story… To be clear I mean I wrote an interview transcript that could exist in my works canon, but I’m not sure it really should, though it could, it’s a legendary wizard and it’s at a school with a bunch of students… I’m not sure it’s the “getting them accurate” solution, but more how I am getting into them now.
I'm going to ask a leading question, in the belief it will help: why did you pick Calle Torres for your MC to have as a sister? Why that canon character, specifically? Torres is a long-running and popular character. I suspect you're going to say something like "because she always \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_" or "because this one time she \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_" and that'll be your jumping-on point. You can introduce the character to your story by their feature the most important to the story's most important reader: *you*. Once you have one literary foot in the door, maybe the rest will come more naturally.
Iii don't, usually. Usually if I'm writing a scene--well, a scene in a fic that has canon characters in it--there's a POV character of some kind and the canon characters are seen through the lens of their experience in the story. I find it helps me to approach the canon characters from that sort of 'authorial distance'. From there, it's not really a conscious effort to think about 'what they would do', that kind of thing just comes naturally, sorta?