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Character Questionnaires
Jan. 1st, 2022 09:39 pmI 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.
