Crafting characters
Jan. 24th, 2021 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkBack in early December lannamichaels wanted to know if I have any thoughts on how I craft characters or how I approach writing them. Interesting question that I never really consciously thought about before. Disclaimer, this naturally varies to some degree from fandom to fandom and story to story etc.
The conclusion I came to is that I usually start with trying to figure out what the character wants. Not in the concrete sense, like a specific achievement or plan (though that too can be very convenient), but something more general/long-term, like working in a specific field, or that fewer people would be eaten by monsters. It can even be something very general, like their entire family living well, but that only works well if there are concrete reasons why that outcome is threatened.
It's pretty much just the classical writing advice of "what do they want, and why can't they get it?" I don't remember where I first read that but it's a good starting point.
The story doesn't have to be about what that character wants. I often write shorter fics and there wouldn't even be time and space for that, especially when it's something big. But until I know what a character wants, I find it very hard to get a mental grasp on their thoughts and priorities and them as a person. (Having characters who don't know what they want (and either are or aren't aware of that), or who think they want one thing but actually it's something else, or who aren't even aware that there is something they could want, sometimes makes it a bit trickier, and sometimes more interesting.)
Looking back, for some fandoms this explains quite well why certain characters were my favorite, namely when I struggled discerning the motivations of the other characters. Or why I became less fond of certain characters over time, namely when at first I thought we would find out what their motivations are and that was very intriguing but then we never did and after a while I lost interest.
Then once I have their main goals figured out, I think about their relationships to the important people in their life, and sometimes about what they value in the more abstract sense. For shorter stories, I often stop here.
As the next step I go back through everything we know about their history and background and consider how that specifically shaped their perspective, worldview, values etc. This step is a lot easier when writing SFF, because for obvious reasons it's much easier to come up with such things for a fictional world than to do a lot of research into other places/times/groups in this world. Looking back, the only fandom set in this world I wrote a lot for was Hockey RPF, and often I tried to avoid that problem in various ways, like making them secret aliens etc.
But even when writing TMA fic, someone growing up in the UK has a different cultural background than I that I don't know much about. But it's similar enough, and there's enough canon and I know enough about the UK and British people and read stories by British people, that I'm mostly confident writing fic regardless. (Though, depending on the story, I probably wouldn't write a fic about a PoC main character without additional research, and then it depends on how badly I want to tell that story that way and why. And I rarely want to write a story badly enough to want to do additional research in general.)
All of this was writing-specific. When it comes to D&D/RPG characters… kinda similar, but sometimes I start in different places, e.g. for Reya I really wanted a character with a large family and many friends in different places (best backstory bonus) so that came first.
lannamichaels wanted to know if I have any thoughts on how I craft characters or how I approach writing them. Interesting question that I never really consciously thought about before. Disclaimer, this naturally varies to some degree from fandom to fandom and story to story etc.The conclusion I came to is that I usually start with trying to figure out what the character wants. Not in the concrete sense, like a specific achievement or plan (though that too can be very convenient), but something more general/long-term, like working in a specific field, or that fewer people would be eaten by monsters. It can even be something very general, like their entire family living well, but that only works well if there are concrete reasons why that outcome is threatened.
It's pretty much just the classical writing advice of "what do they want, and why can't they get it?" I don't remember where I first read that but it's a good starting point.
The story doesn't have to be about what that character wants. I often write shorter fics and there wouldn't even be time and space for that, especially when it's something big. But until I know what a character wants, I find it very hard to get a mental grasp on their thoughts and priorities and them as a person. (Having characters who don't know what they want (and either are or aren't aware of that), or who think they want one thing but actually it's something else, or who aren't even aware that there is something they could want, sometimes makes it a bit trickier, and sometimes more interesting.)
Looking back, for some fandoms this explains quite well why certain characters were my favorite, namely when I struggled discerning the motivations of the other characters. Or why I became less fond of certain characters over time, namely when at first I thought we would find out what their motivations are and that was very intriguing but then we never did and after a while I lost interest.
Then once I have their main goals figured out, I think about their relationships to the important people in their life, and sometimes about what they value in the more abstract sense. For shorter stories, I often stop here.
As the next step I go back through everything we know about their history and background and consider how that specifically shaped their perspective, worldview, values etc. This step is a lot easier when writing SFF, because for obvious reasons it's much easier to come up with such things for a fictional world than to do a lot of research into other places/times/groups in this world. Looking back, the only fandom set in this world I wrote a lot for was Hockey RPF, and often I tried to avoid that problem in various ways, like making them secret aliens etc.
But even when writing TMA fic, someone growing up in the UK has a different cultural background than I that I don't know much about. But it's similar enough, and there's enough canon and I know enough about the UK and British people and read stories by British people, that I'm mostly confident writing fic regardless. (Though, depending on the story, I probably wouldn't write a fic about a PoC main character without additional research, and then it depends on how badly I want to tell that story that way and why. And I rarely want to write a story badly enough to want to do additional research in general.)
All of this was writing-specific. When it comes to D&D/RPG characters… kinda similar, but sometimes I start in different places, e.g. for Reya I really wanted a character with a large family and many friends in different places (best backstory bonus) so that came first.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 03:41 am (UTC)(Having characters who don't know what they want (and either are or aren't aware of that), or who think they want one thing but actually it's something else, or who aren't even aware that there is something they could want, sometimes makes it a bit trickier, and sometimes more interesting.)
Definitely more interesting! (And also trickier). Challenges for the writer: figuring out what the character actually will end up wanting, getting the character to figure it out likewise, deciding when and how the reader is going to perceive it too, ... ;)
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Date: 2021-01-25 08:15 pm (UTC)Ooooh, this is such a great way of looking at it.
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Date: 2021-01-25 09:51 pm (UTC)Yes. (And then sometimes you think that there will be a slow development of the character and/or the reader figuring out what the character wants, and it just never happens and the character is just there for their role *sigh*)
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Date: 2021-01-25 11:06 pm (UTC)