Character development
Wednesday, March 23, 2011

There is one more thing I will do before I start writing on To Be and that is one final and thorough work through of the characters.

I need to give them names, of course.

I will write that intro text describing a character first time he or she appears.

But I also need to consider how they talk. Often I get a big pause in the flow when I come to the first line of a character.

I also think I will do a major character study of all the characters. I haven’t so far, but in my experiences good ideas reveal themselves in this phase.

The characters I see before me are real enough, but I don’t really know them that well. It’s like a colleague across the desk: I don’t really know more than I’m told. So to get to know all my characters all the way inside their brains I need to do some analyzing. This also includes contemplating me, to find something to use from my own soul for each and every character.

When I’ve find the real, true core of what drives the characters through the story I’ll start writing. Now, I just have some vague idea of this: He wants to get famous; she wants to be “unfamed”. That is no strong foundation; that is a card house.

I need to find the complexity, the reasons and the networks to be able to use the character.

Some say that it is a waste of time to write favourite colours and worst memories, and it is, if all you do is doing just that. It could however be a start to find the essentials within a character.

And I think it is important to have this on place before doing the real writing. If I’m writing an emotional scene, lets say a man sitting in front of mirror, crying, I should know on beforehand why he cries in front of that mirror; I shouldn’t make it up when I write the scene. If I create my character as I write I risk shaping the character after what is needed for the scene; then the character may appear unrealistic and do things that are not according to character.

Since a story is told through its characters it is important that the characters shape the story. If a character needs to act differently than realistic according to the character written, because of the story’s needs, then the character needs to be rewritten.

It is your story and your characters and you can rewrite as much as you like; they are not real characters and you do not need to be considerate to their emotions. But the result must be realistic.

So far what I have is just sketches of characters. Now I need to find out what takes them from A to Z in this story.