A Question of Character

So one of the things I get asked about my writing is do I base my characters on people I know. And the answer to that question is no, but I do occasionally write about the situations my friends find themselves in. Today I'm showing how I work up my characters.

 

So the first thing I have to decide is the character a major or minor character. This may sound easy, but frequently it isn't. That's because I have cool ideas swirling around in my head all of the time and I like to play with my characters a bit before I start writing them. It is perhaps a compulsive need to write back story left over from my theater days, but I digress. Let me show you how I begin.

 

I consider my genre. I write across several, including the one that has a certain guy I know quaking in his black Nikes, but I won't discuss that here. I play a version of the game twenty questions. Here are mine, you choose yours.

 

1) Are you a male or a female?

2) How old are you?

3) Where were you born/raised?

4) Do you have siblings (brothers or sisters?)

5) What is your birth order?

6) What season were you born in?

 

 

After these questions are answered if I haven't done so already, I will choose a name. Now names come from one of a few places. Sometimes I type in baby names on Google and see if there are any cool baby name sites up. I've visited them all and I search through them to search for relevant names. Sometimes I name my characters on a theme, sometimes by sound of the name, but most frequently if I'm writing in a contemporary genre I go to www.ssa.gov and go through their name data base. I pull up the year my character was born in, the sex of my character and then I roll the dice to get a number off of the list. (I find a number of the 20 sided dice they use for D & D role play to be the best.) I use that name unless it's a repeat from another book.  Now things get fun, I dig into my character's life and I find out everything I need to know about them.

 

7) What are your religious/philosophical beliefs?

8) What is your best trait?

9) What is your worst trait?

10) What do you think is most important about your physical appearance?

11) What would you most like to change about yourself?

12) What is the most important thing in your life?

13) What is your greatest hope?

14) What is your deepest fear?

15) Who is your best friend?

16) What part of your moral/religious beliefs would you be willing to sacrifice for the people you love?

17) What is the wildest thing you have ever done?

18) What is your biggest vice?

19) What are you looking for in a mate?

20) Are your parents still alive?

 

OK, as you can see at some point along the way your character is going to have an interesting answer to one of these questions. If your characters don't, scrap, start over. Seriously this is the time to be evil. It's better to be evil on paper than in real life.

 

Love,

 

Melanie