McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Hark! (Characters)

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Lord Arioch:
I also seem to suffer for Adams-isms.

I started a story where I created the most evil being I could... and thusly named him Christian Blessings (hey, irony ;) ).  Well, part way thru chapter 2, I killed him off and turned him into an undead avenger.

Of course, I later saw a similar idea in a book and then a movie based on the book.  Only Jimmy Cuervo wasn't all that evil. ;)

Mickey Finn:
They come to me. Not whole, I discover things about them as we go along (which would irritate me on MUSHes, where, to apply for a character, you sometimes had to write pages and pages of backgrouns...even for mortal characters).
But they appear with plenty to work with.

Of course, if something changes, a rewrite may be in order. The characters don't speak to me or anything, they just show up, and I tell them what to do. ;)

Kali:
Difficult to answer, for me.  Mostly, I get a vague idea of what sort of person the character is, something stereotype.  I drop into that mindset, and then stuff just starts happening.

For instance, I wanted to create a character who was a killer.  She killed because she didn't grasp the "wrongness" of it.  I knew she was quite emotionless, but very clever.  I knew she liked pain because pain was one thing she could feel that she couldn't hide from.  Then I started to write, 3rd person but her PoV.

Now she has all kinds of traits I didn't set out to give her, but they're inherently there when I write her.  Some of them, I didn't even realize she had until someone else pointed them out to me.   For instance, when I write her, she never names anyone.  She doesn't think of them by name.  She thinks of them by the function they serve in her life.  So there's Cigarette Man (the state psychiatrist who gives her cigarettes to get her to respond to him), there's Painter (a prison guard whose hobby is painting), the Voice, the Preacher.  I didn't plan to do it that way, hadn't even really realized I was doing it.  I was "in her headspace" and it turns out that's what she does.

That's how all my best characters function.  The bad ones are work.  The good ones are all about getting out of my headspace and into theirs.

Danielle/Evie:
I'd not dare call myself a "writer", either, but I'll toss over a penny anyway.
When I write, I start of just writing. Usually, whatever plot I started out with is NOT the plot I end up with. Same with my characters. They develop as I write them. After that first draft, I go back and slash big red lines over everything, and make it work. That tecnique worked a lot better for me then anything else..but that's only for the few short stories I've written. I'm still trying to figure out how the heck I'm going to do that novel...

WonderandAwe:
I usually get inspired by something to create a character.  Either a song, someone I know in real life, random person on the street.  This is the spark in a sense.

Then I figure out where I want the character in the story.  What does he need to bring to it.  I give him some very basic traits based on that.

I give him a background.  I use the background to give him a base for the traits I need him to have.  I try to give him a realistic background.  Based on this, all the other traits my character needs fits into place.

Though sometimes I come up with a character first.  Then I create the world that this character lives in.  From that I can usually find some sort of conflict in it. :)

Disclaimer: I write alot in my head.  Not good at the getting down on paper yet.

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