Character or just you??

[honeydevil]

hi, I'm not a writer, i'm afraid i'm bad in writing, but i've got a question. I was thinking about that...
How do you get your characters for your new piece?? I'm not sure if you discussed that earlier, if not, maybe you can help to get my confusion under control!!
so how do you choose your character?? do you go to public places and study the people?? and then you try to puzzle a live in their face or do you just take the person you would love to be as your hero and the person you are as the villian, okay maybe only parts out of yourself??
how do you do that??
have a nice day

 

[Eugen]

How do you get your characters for your new piece?? I'm not sure if you discussed that earlier, if not, maybe you can help to get my confusion under control!!
so how do you choose your character?? do you go to public places and study the people?? and then you try to puzzle a live in their face or do you just take the person you would love to be as your hero and the person you are as the villian, okay maybe only parts out of yourself??

Hi Honeydevil,

My characters are purely imaginative. I may listen to conversations around me in a restaurant, how people speak, exactly how they say it and what makes it sound real and not stilted, not something lifted off a Victorian era. A normal phrase in a different context could be a stunner. Your buddy on the phone, yapping away about baked beans, could give you a winner for a murder scene. This has helped me overcome dialogue difficulty, not putting people to sleep each time the hero open's their mouth to speak.

I have an idea of the characters' physical attributes at the start, but how they talk or dress or act is dependent on the background created for them. Are they single, divorced, clingy, independent, cold, affectionate, vindictive and why? What they are is crucial to the storyline and, though they may shadow a dream, a past, an image, imagination runs riot to play the final role.

 

[Cathy C]

A lot of times I'll use a situation, honeydevil. For example, I was in the grocery the other day, and the woman in line in front of me was a tiny, shrunken old thing with a bad hump from osteoperosis. But she was happy and smiling and friendly to the young clerk when he messed up her order and charged her twice for something. That lady had a story, but it wasn't mine to ask. But it COULD make a super character for a book!

Most characters start with "what if?" What if the old woman used to be a dancer and had been 5'5" before old age and disease set in? How would one stay happy all those years? Was she pretty, did she have lots of men friends, how did she spend WWII? All of these imaginings will create a truly memorable character! Just look around you and play games of "what if?"

 

[K-Dawn]

Usually a character just pops into my head. I'll get my plot and setting down and then think of a character that would go good with what I've already got. Or else I'll just think of a character that I want to write about and go from there.

 

[Prolixic]

Sometimes the character shapes the scene and sometimes the scene shapes the character. Most of the time I get an idea for a character and its just dialog for awhile and the setting just sort of shapes it self around the character(s) discussion. Its as if the circumstances and the setting of the story demand a character be a certain way.

Cathy C is dead on about every day encounters and happenings. Something as simple as opening the mail or cleaning out a closet or something as complex as a large rambling family and its interactions can spawn a huge story. I've got one I'm about to send off right now that started from something written on an old envelope. *shrug*

Keep your eyes open. There's no telling where your next bestseller will be hiding.

 

[honeydevil]

that sounds cool!! maybe i will try again to write something, i mean i love to study people and i mostly have a good imagination, and thanks for all your help!!
enjoy the day

 

[Eugen]

Something as simple as opening the mail or cleaning out a closet or something as complex as a large rambling family and its interactions can spawn a huge story. I've got one I'm about to send off right now that started from something written on an old envelope. *shrug*

Good luck on what you're sending off, Prolixic! Want to share some of it or the idea behind it on the forum?