Character Questionnaires
Jan. 1st, 2022 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mobiusstripperI had a conversation the other day with my mutual (see: one of my two lovely mutuals) about the difference between drama/tragedy and melodrama, and I remembered the quote that in drama, the characters drive the plot, while in melodrama, the plot drives the characters.
I am just gonna go ahead and say it: I love characterization, and I am BAD at plot. So I almost never run the risk of the plot driving the characters (except sometimes in fanfiction when the plot is pre-fabricated, where my job becomes to flesh out the characters in order to justify the plot - one of my all-time favorite writing hobbies). Now anyone who has talked to me for five minutes knows that I am a theater geek. My mother is heavily involved in the theater scene in the city I grew up in, and I have seen hundreds (maybe even over a thousand) of plays in my life. I've worked crew, I've been in the ensemble, I've done design stuff for shows, I've taken workshops, I've hung out with (and been babysat by) dozens of playwrights and directors and producers. I never aspired to be a professional actor, but it was something I really enjoyed as a teenager, and all the youth workshops I attended + my time at a performing arts high school transformed me from a shy, anxiety-riddled, quivering chihuahua of a child into an assertive woman who can at least fake confidence.
I've never actually studied characterization as a writer, so I don't know how much the average writer's approach to characterization differs from the acting approaches I learned in my teens, but those are the ones I still use for writing. I actually think this is especially effective in fanfiction, when you are approaching an existing character, because that is very similar to what an actor has to do: the plot is already there, but you need to create the character in a way that justifies it. You need to build your character's motivations in a way that everything they do to move the plot forward stems naturally from those motivations. When I'm writing, it's the advice of my old acting teachers that plays back in my mind: the summer workshop teacher who told me "never judge your character," the high school drama teacher who asked me who my character really was "in the dark, with the lights out" when he felt I was taking her too much at face value, the other high school drama teacher who made me fill a composition book with the entire first-person back story of Gertrude from Hamlet.
Now when it comes to writing original fiction, I've taken to developing my characters first and letting them lead me to the plot. Because, as I said before, I'm shitty at plot. I almost never, ever just have plot ideas. Instead I imagine different people and how they would behave in different situations. That's probably one of the reasons I love TTRPGs so much. You provide the character, the GM provides the circumstances, and then the resulting choices become the plot.
I actually never played a TTRPG until April of 2020. When I created my first (and favorite) character, I was completely overwhelmed by the creative freedom I was being given. So I went online, and I started filling out a long-ass character questionnaire like my high school drama teacher (the "who you are in the dark" one) used to make us do. For the base questions, if I couldn't make up my mind, I rolled the dice. Then, as the foundation came together, it became easier to answer the more in-depth questions because I had something to build on. Suddenly, I had a fully-developed character with a detailed history and a shit-ton of WORLDBUILDING that had sprung up around her. World-building has always scared the hell out of me because it's completely overwhelming, but by starting with a single character and really fleshing her out, suddenly I found I'd also build a lot of her environment. Because so much of who we are *is* our environments. And that's when I realized that to tell an amazing story, it's best to start with an amazing character and let everything follow naturally.
What I'm getting at here is that I've been filling out characterization questionnaires for the past week and haven't actually written any content, but my answers are getting increasingly fascinating, and I'm optimistic that, by the time I'm done, I'm going to have some really interesting stories that have already largely written themselves.
I am just gonna go ahead and say it: I love characterization, and I am BAD at plot. So I almost never run the risk of the plot driving the characters (except sometimes in fanfiction when the plot is pre-fabricated, where my job becomes to flesh out the characters in order to justify the plot - one of my all-time favorite writing hobbies). Now anyone who has talked to me for five minutes knows that I am a theater geek. My mother is heavily involved in the theater scene in the city I grew up in, and I have seen hundreds (maybe even over a thousand) of plays in my life. I've worked crew, I've been in the ensemble, I've done design stuff for shows, I've taken workshops, I've hung out with (and been babysat by) dozens of playwrights and directors and producers. I never aspired to be a professional actor, but it was something I really enjoyed as a teenager, and all the youth workshops I attended + my time at a performing arts high school transformed me from a shy, anxiety-riddled, quivering chihuahua of a child into an assertive woman who can at least fake confidence.
I've never actually studied characterization as a writer, so I don't know how much the average writer's approach to characterization differs from the acting approaches I learned in my teens, but those are the ones I still use for writing. I actually think this is especially effective in fanfiction, when you are approaching an existing character, because that is very similar to what an actor has to do: the plot is already there, but you need to create the character in a way that justifies it. You need to build your character's motivations in a way that everything they do to move the plot forward stems naturally from those motivations. When I'm writing, it's the advice of my old acting teachers that plays back in my mind: the summer workshop teacher who told me "never judge your character," the high school drama teacher who asked me who my character really was "in the dark, with the lights out" when he felt I was taking her too much at face value, the other high school drama teacher who made me fill a composition book with the entire first-person back story of Gertrude from Hamlet.
Now when it comes to writing original fiction, I've taken to developing my characters first and letting them lead me to the plot. Because, as I said before, I'm shitty at plot. I almost never, ever just have plot ideas. Instead I imagine different people and how they would behave in different situations. That's probably one of the reasons I love TTRPGs so much. You provide the character, the GM provides the circumstances, and then the resulting choices become the plot.
I actually never played a TTRPG until April of 2020. When I created my first (and favorite) character, I was completely overwhelmed by the creative freedom I was being given. So I went online, and I started filling out a long-ass character questionnaire like my high school drama teacher (the "who you are in the dark" one) used to make us do. For the base questions, if I couldn't make up my mind, I rolled the dice. Then, as the foundation came together, it became easier to answer the more in-depth questions because I had something to build on. Suddenly, I had a fully-developed character with a detailed history and a shit-ton of WORLDBUILDING that had sprung up around her. World-building has always scared the hell out of me because it's completely overwhelming, but by starting with a single character and really fleshing her out, suddenly I found I'd also build a lot of her environment. Because so much of who we are *is* our environments. And that's when I realized that to tell an amazing story, it's best to start with an amazing character and let everything follow naturally.
What I'm getting at here is that I've been filling out characterization questionnaires for the past week and haven't actually written any content, but my answers are getting increasingly fascinating, and I'm optimistic that, by the time I'm done, I'm going to have some really interesting stories that have already largely written themselves.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-04 08:44 pm (UTC)While I've done some theater (and also have some family tradition there), it's not to the same extent, but it's the kind of approach I take too; I think of it as getting into role as a character (I gravitate toward a stanislavskian approach though it's tempered by me being too lazy). Though it depends what I'm doing and I'm interested in the idea of doing different things with the camera, to mix metaphors; I like the idea of sometimes staying on the outside, keeping it non-naturalistic, moving characters around like toys, and then sometimes doing the full 'what was their childhood like?' and working from there, working out their parents, their parents' parents, their school life, their friends, etc. Just every detail of their life, from the start, and living in their head for a while. I'm curious about how much of the approach to characterisation can be detached from genre and how much of that composes genre. I think about it a bunch because my writing tends to either be dark, or comedy, and I've discovered I really do need to decide on the bounds at the outset or I will get something jarring that starts off perky and then goes SUDDENLY SERIOUS and grim. xD I take a very cartoony approach to writing in general; I start out with a sketch and then try to make it as extreme as possible, whatever that means within the style. I try to make characters pass the silhouette test, and I guess that goes for their stories, too, unless I'm going to draw out a parallel for some reason instead.
I'm quite happy to judge characters but it doesn't *matter* that I judge them; I can still like them, and I suppose there's another level on which I don't judge them since I think people are products of their environments (but I'm happy to say 'she's wrong' or 'he's being a dick', even if I see no way they couldn't be). I generally do a scene first, then if there's something that sits ill with me, rewind, pick another option that feels plausible and branch off again and see where that ends up, repeat. So that hopefully it doesn't feel suuuuuuuuper contrived while still keeping in line with whatever I wanted to do. I think of it a bit like the paths and conversation trees in Westworld, which I guess is why the writers used that metaphor, and also maybe the only way it *can* work. I drop things into the mental simulator and find out what's down the branches of the tree until I end up on one I like (or hate less than the others T_T). I need things to feel true but I think little details can make a big difference to how things go, and I can drop those in so the characters react differently while staying true to themselves. And that can include random things that are anchored within the character like 'got a good night's sleep' or 'is hungry' or 'misremembered something'.
I enjoy worldbuilding. I get overwhelmed but I love it and just get lost in nonfiction. I take the opposite approach there; I take a longdistance view, starting with environmental factors, then zoom in. I have to try not to read too much or I learn all the reasons my idea won't work. :P And the instant I have one detail, stuff soon exponentially increases in complexity, but it is fun. Plus once you've done that work for one fictional world, it's much quicker to call up little details for another, where you just want to give a feel of a fleshed out world but you're happy for the audience to do the real work there >:P (and again, it's a question of setting bounds before starting imo, and knowing what you need to know and what can be left as TBC or never decided. I like to have enough for an aesthetic. my mind goes to Shadow of the Colossus; the world needs a feel, but it doesn't need everything explained though some easter eggs are nice.) I think if I'm starting from scratch, my characters come from their worlds and situations, and I think this feeds into not judging them. My main issue is that if you leave me with something for long enough, I give everyone a tragic backstory, including any characters who were supposed to be background plot devices, and then it fucks with the tone.
Plots tend to be very conscious. Occasionally I have daydreams that work as-is, but normally I don't come up with much naturally, so I have to fake it. Again, it's that game of 'what would be the worst thing that could happen? now make it worse.' and so on. (and decide where to do the opposite if it's supposed to be serious and dry, where it's almost 'what's the most subtle way to convey this? make it subtler') Add bits over time, try to slot things in in parallel. Get pissed off because details clash. Come up with handwaves. Sometimes end up with a better plot in the process. And yeah, I use a lot of stuff from theatre in that. I try to choreograph things to use different levels, dynamics, movement. Keep visual and auditory interest, I guess. There's always more to do on this...
no subject
Date: 2022-01-05 04:58 am (UTC)I won't lie; I judge THE HELL out of my characters. I just don't do it when I'm *in character.* I have to make sure I'm keeping my judgements separate from how the characters view themselves.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-05 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-13 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-13 12:02 pm (UTC)When I try to write characters without first sketching the full shape of them, I find the result is flat and unsatisfying. I am also much more likely to introduce plot holes because the characters' motivations become muddled as I have to keep guessing what they will do next. Once I have a full 3-D model of a character in my head, it becomes easy to then present them from whichever angle I want to. I can show some things and hide other things, but there is a sense of object permanence. Even if something about the character isn't explicitly discussed, it's still *there*, underpinning everything they do. If I know the character like I know myself, I immediately know exactly what they would do or say in any situation and why.
I have joked that fiction writing is a form of alchemy, and fictional characters are homunculi. So when I do character background work, I think of it as crafting the homunculus' body and then when I write, I breathe the life into it. But if I don't craft the character thoroughly before I start writing, I end up with an animated half-formed sock puppet that keeps saying "kill me."