How much do you know about your characters?

[Chicklet]

When I started writing erotica I began to write extensive biographies on my characters. Now, I'm lazier, and I don't really do that.

What about you guys? How much do you know about your characters? What do you think the most important things to know about your characters are? And where do you draw the line before becoming a compulsive, neurotic freak?

 

[oggbashan]

I have a cunning plan ...

When I plan my stories I have an idea of some of the characters.

Some are "round" or three-dimensional, some are "flat" or two dimensional. The rounds carry the story; the flats are bit players who interact with the rounds to help the plot.

Once the story begins to take shape, the round characters take on a life of their own. Once that point is reached my plan gets trashed by them. They develop their own characteristics and interact in ways that I didn't plan. They become real to me and wouldn't do "X" because it isn't in character.

Sometimes the flats become round as well. That could lead to a sub-plot or a story for the newly created round characters. If a flat was a bit player in an earlier story, then becomes round, the earlier story has to be revised to fit in with the new characteristics.

I started writing biographies for all my round characters but that became too unwieldy. The biographies became longer than my stories and generated so many possible story threads that I would need to write for 100 years to cover them all. It doesn't help that I started with a Ladies Soccer Team of eleven players plus substitutes, and a men's team as well so about 50 "main" characters. So far I have only really begun to develop about 10 of them. Even if I don't attempt the other 40, I could write about 5 or 6 novellas just with those 10.

Help!

Og

 

[Chicklet]

Re: I have a cunning plan ...

Once the story begins to take shape, the round characters take on a life of their own. Once that point is reached my plan gets trashed by them. They develop their own characteristics and interact in ways that I didn't plan. They become real to me and wouldn't do "X" because it isn't in character.

I hear that!

I had two characters who "wouldn't" sleep together cause they hated each others guts! "WHY ARE WE EVEN TOGETHER?!" they kept saying to me. I was torn up over it, really I was.

 

[Alex756]

What about you guys? How much do you know about your characters? What do you think the most important things to know about your characters are? And where do you draw the line before becoming a compulsive, neurotic freak?

a compulsive, obsesive, neurotic freak

No, seriously I think I have always since way back in elementary school writen up long mental stories about characters ever before putting an iota of their existence to paper. Even going back farther than that all my toys had histories. But before people get too freaked by that I do tend to think for a bit about what kind of person a character is and what her past is like, even bit characters.

My obsessivemness is normally not that documented though (thankfully) and I keep most of it mental. For example, I did a little short erotic couple story, I could be quized on a million non-important things to the characters that never would show up in the writing. The story is basically a 15 minute interval from when the main character gets home to when her love interest logs onto him computer. From what kinda car she drives to if there are dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I can answer. Doesn't appear in the story at all. What she does, what her office at work looks like, what her assistant looks like and is named (Beth fyi) none of it appears but I know it.

I don't know if thats weird or if thats normal, or what I just know its always how I've operated. Stories tend to percolate in my mind, and most of what I write is character driven so there are alot of characters brewing in there.

alex756
http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/memberpage.php?uid=177120

 

[Sabledrake]

I do the occasional detailed background for a character, if it's a main character. Usually, though, I prefer to make things up as I go along and as they become needed in the story. This makes it difficult to keep track of sometimes, and it's a habit I need to either break, or amend with a new habit -- keeping side notes on all those little informational details as they come up.

I think the most important factor of all is motivation. What drives the character? (especially for a villain; the villain is the _active_ role, while the hero's entire purpose is reactive to whatever it is that the villain does). My educational background is in psychology, so I spend a lot of time thinking about why a given person behaves a certain way.

As for becoming a compulsive, neurotic freak ... it's probably not when you know the character's birthday or the character's pets, but when you celebrate the character's pet's birthday

Sabledrake

 

[silversword]

I must admit that I do write biographies and histories surrounding characters and settings for my non erotic writing. I haven't taken such a serious approach to my erotic stories, perhaps I should.

On a fantasy story I was/am/will be working on I have written exentive character histories and biographies as well as cultural and mythological backgrounds to the whole story, some of these writing would constitute stories in themselves.

In that regard you only have to look at someone like Tolkein to see how extensive his background writings were. The Silmarillion (excuse the spelling) for example was a mythological story in the Lord of the Rings but was an extensive novel in its own right.

different approaches for different people I suppose

Silver

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I write biographies for those of my characters that I really care about, those who might end up in a bookstore with my face on the cover. The people in my jerk-off stories, on the other hand, are strictly ONE-dimensional.

 

[TheEarl]

All of my characters start off as 2D. Then they tell me what I need to know about them during the course of the writing. Anything else seems to be superfluous.

The Earl

 

[Chicklet]

Re: Re: How much do you know about your characters?

... all my toys had histories.

like the blow up doll who really wanted to be an actress but could never get a break? (wink)

 

[Chicklet]

So, now...

Who wants to give links to stories where the characters took over or had huge histories? I'd like to read and compare them to others.

This is the story where my characters had major issues: End Game

 

[flawed_ethics]

My original draft and outline for Christian Loving included an extensive history for the stepmother. Friends, parents, workplace, husband's friends, etc... At the rate I was going, the story would have been finished in, oh, September 2028.

It's much more trim now, but I've left a fair chunk of history in the first two chapters to make her a boring person. I think it makes the other five chapters all the better.

 

[Croctden]

Character bios

Usually I just start writing, as a story develops I start to think about the characters and maybe add a few rough details to their histories, I don't write them down.

 

[oggbashan]

Re: So, now...

Who wants to give links to stories where the characters took over or had huge histories? I'd like to read and compare them to others.

This is the story where my characters had major issues: End Game

Almost any of my Silverbridge stories, for example:

The Cage Crinoline

The Bridesmaids' Revenge

Beware! Both of them are long ...

Og

 

[Invid Writer]

Well for every character (anybody with a single line of dialogue) I answer these three questions:

What do they want?

What will they do to get it?

What will others do to stop them? (This question is the hardest but once you get the hang of it it works well.)

For major characters I have a complete description in my head. I know where they have been, where they are, where they will be. (the last one is most important to me as that's what I'm writing towards.)

But on the other hand, I'm writing a very long epic (now writing page 124) so I know more about many of them than I normally would about a character.

As for a link... I'd love to! But I haven't finished writing that chapter yet They've really started to take over what they're doing in chapter 6 but I'm only about a quarter of the way through. I'll be sure to post the link when it's done though!

 

[jfinn]

I have a form I got off the net that I use for character's biographies. That sucker is six pages long! I use if for virtually all my main characters in my series stories and to a lesser degree in my short stories.

Who wants to give links to stories where the characters took over or had huge histories? I'd like to read and compare them to others. Chicklet

This happens to me a lot, lol. Both of my series, Amy's Smile and The Human Condition are chock full of huge histories though I think HC actually takes the prize for unresolved angst from past misdeeds. For that one, I even have a folder with all sorts of bits and pieces of conversations where my characters talk about things that they experienced earlier in my lives.

Jayne

 

[Guest]

How much do you know about your characters?

Hardly even their names, but they know all about me so I just given them my paper and pen and they tell me when the story needs to be typed. They're so good to me, sniff, sniff...

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I have a form I got off the net that I use for character's biographies. That sucker is six pages long! I use if for virtually all my main characters in my series stories and to a lesser degree in my short stories.

Jayne

Where can I download it?

 

[jfinn]

Where can I download it?

Here you go. Fiction Writer's Character Chart

Jayne

 

[pop_54]

Well

I know everything I need to know about my characters often before putting fingers to keyboard, sometimes I commit the crime of chucking in an unknown person to spice a story up a bit.
You know, half way through and not enough characters to keep it flowing, so in comes a stranger, a pure invention on the spur of the moment.

Details and history of characters and their make-up within the tale, well some, but maybe not enough at times for serious reading.

I've sat and written several pages of build up and history, who they are, why they are like they are, fine detail right down to how many hairs on the end of their nose, (never cock size, or tit size in measurement though, strictly taboo with me).
Then having written this long and detailed resume I sit and look at it spread over the several pages and think, 'what the fuck am I doing, this is Literotica not Blackwells bloody book shop and publishers'.
Then I delete about three quarters of it knowing that although other authors and serious readers may appreciate it, the average Lit redneck reader will hit the back button after 3 paragraphs if sex hasn't been performed violently at least three times by then.

pops.........

 

[Guest]

red in other places

. . .if sex hasn't been performed violently at least three times by then.

pops.........

Like your style, are you that way in RL? Umm, umm. . .

 

[Rainbow Skin]

So far the stories I've written here are small and independent. Two of them have the same characters, but apart from that they're self-contained.

They're short stories. You have to start from nothing, like your reader, and tell not all their history or all their personality or all their wishes, but those brief snaps of history, personality, wish, that crystallize around a particular seed in the action of 1000 or 2000 words of story.

My stories have to be interesting to the reader. It doesn't matter how much (or how little) I've thought of my people, it's what comes out somehow, openly or allusively or tantalizingly, in what I write and post. The background isn't the real person. Fictional characters come alive when they're published. Other people -- not the adoring author -- see them and their actions and their words. What's real of them is all in there. Anything else is what I'm just toying with.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Here you go. Fiction Writer's Character Chart

Jayne

Excellent. Thanks, Jayne!

 

[deliciously_naughty]

I don't write character bios (for the most part) but I generally have most of it stored in my head. Their history, motivations, etc.

 

[Chicklet]

Here you go. Fiction Writer's Character Chart

Jayne

this is excellent

thanks jayne = )