How much research time do you ...

[gauchecritic]

for me, characterisation comes from what they do or say, in much the same way that how well I know anyone in RL comes from what they do or say.

My first impression of someone is through the eyes. If I speak to them then I get a feel for their intellect, If I stand close I get an impression of their smell and maybe touch.

This is how I build characters too. They come alive as I write.

If I meet someone in a pub say, and my first impression is that they are young, energetic and sociable I may ask if they want to go clubbing.

I write a character who is young, energetic and sociable. My plot point has them going to a club.

In RL the person that I met has to be up at 5 o'clock in the morning for work and so declines the offer of clubbing.

If I've defined my character so closely that they can't go clubbing how am I going to get them to follow the plot?

My research for characterisation comes from what they do and say, shortly after or during what they do or say.

 

[oggbashan]

I totally get that, Og. Do you do more thinking about the round character before and during the story, and what research considerations might you do along the way that you would bypass for a flat character?

Round characters develop and change during the story as they interact with the other characters and deal with the situations they encounter. I am constantly thinking about the round characters as I write.

If, for example, one of my round characters was a hairdresser, I would read books on hairdressing as a business IF the fact that she/he was a hairdresser was significant to the plot.

A flat character only needs enough viability to be a foil to the main characters - an extra in movie terms, who might have a speaking part, but has no chance to develop beyond the minor role. There is no development necessary for flat characters - unless it happens offstage in another story occurring in the same time frame. However, unless the other story is written as an actual sub-plot, then the flat character's development could be distracting to the storyline.

The flat character might be a round character in another story, or may interest me enough so that a story is written just for that character in which they are one of the stars. For example Sheila appears in my Silverbridge stories as a flat yet starts to develop as a round character in Scarf Dance and stars in Damp Start. Sheila and her boyfriend will reappear in future.

I can see Sheila as I am writing this post. I know what her reaction would be to certain situations and how that reaction could impact on other characters. Yet that wouldn't stop me giving her a minor role in another story when I need a spear-carrier, a messenger, an interrupter of an argument etc. in a Silverbridge story.

Lisa, another of my round characters and a major player in my Silverbridge series, appears as a flat character in Scarf Dance. The other characters accept Lisa as she has been shown elsewhere. Lisa's impact on the story is small but effective...

Sometimes flats force me to make them round. When they do, the original story is scrap and has to be rewritten from the beginning.

Og

 

[capecodmercury]

. . .my characters dictate the entire story, more often than not. I can say, "Okay, here's the basic premise," but the premise is carried from one point to another through the characters. When I begin to write, I know what the plot it (seldom do I have what I would consider a theme) and a few of the things that will happen along the way.

. . . I have what's in my head, and I know that the character has usually been through something just before the story starts, or at least something that still strongly drives or affects them when the story starts regardless of how long ago it was, and that, meaning the struggle that experience has created, is what drives the character through at least the first so many words, if not the whole story. After that one struggle is decided, I let the character react to it, internally and through behavior, to decide one thing at a time that might affect his/her reactions.

Q_C

I think you just described my method pretty closely. My characters (and my plots) tend to evolve as a story develops. I'll start off with a simple premise and a rough outline of a character and as the story gets written down, the character grows in my mind.

Am I the only one here who has character's argue with them? I can't tell you how many times I have changed a story drastically because the character I write is not the same one I originally envisioned. I'll start writing and the character just won't behave how I want.

Naughty Character!

Seriously, the more I think about my characters, the more life they take on in my imagination until it gets to the point where I'm forced to change the story line because so and so just wouldn't act that way.

As to adding flaws, of course they have to have flaws. Perfect people are no fun! To me, the flaws are what make the character come alive.

CCM

 

[Darkniciad]

All my characters are meshes of people I know, movie characters, and who knows what else has lodged in my subconscious. I don't really research the characters, because they more or less write themselves. I know direction a story will be going, and the ultimate conclusion, but the characters get it there. I open up a situation, or a place, drop the characters in it, and let them decide how they get from A->B.

I'm probably a little off my rocker, but all these people live in my head. They surprise me often by developing quirks I had never considered. Most of my characters were developed over years in the game, those are easy. They still jump out and surprise me, though. I only found out while writing Blackhawk that Christi can't cook worth a damn. Edible she can accomplish, beyond that it's a coin toss. Christi has been wandering around in my head since the late 80's and she just pops up and lets me know this after all this time. I see her shrug and she lets out a little snort before informing me, "Wasn't important."

It's one of the reasons I write. If all these people in my head don't have an outlet, they get rather cross with me, and I'm not really ready for another several days of them singing the theme to Gilligan's Island in a neverending round because they're irritated.

 

[AchtungNight]

Ever notice your characters becoming serious liars, exgaggerating some of the experiences in a joking manner? Or the type of people who summarize their backgrounds and leave out stuff they find unimportant to the moment that later pops up and gives you an intriguing idea that makes sense? It happens for me.

 

[scheherazade_79]

See?

Thanks love, you have said some amazing things that I might even heed!

I'm still not sure what I said makes sense, but thanks, Charley

 

[MagicaPractica]

I typically do quite a bit of research for my stories but I haven't for the ones on Lit until now. (I only have one posted but I have one submitted and three others with editors.) The current one I am working on requires the feelings a woman experiences when she thinks she will never be able to have kids and that is important to her. I have experienced this but I am reading other woman's experiences for more ways to phrase it. I want my character to be a sympathetic figure even though she cheats on her husband. I think that deserves research.

 

[kiwiwolf]

None at all. My characters are all based on real people; friends, lovers, aquaintances and even enemies. All I have to do to know what they would wear or eat in a certain situation is close my eyes and access my memory.

The only research I do is locational and political. I write about what I know so I rely heavily on my own experiences for the rest.

 

[cantdog]

I've done this at least three different ways.

I wrote a couple of farces, for instance. In farces, the lead characters have to be people the readers can be charmed by, so they will sympathize as the difficulties develop. They can't be masterminds or supermen, so that they will be helpless and human enough to tumble into the soup. Farces are all about the characters, who are shining and accessible.

Then you plunge them all into hot water and watch them flail around trying to extricate themselves. You keep them true to themselves, maybe even more true than real people tend to be, because we all want them to be as they are, even, especially, when it pushes them deeper into difficulty!

So for those, I really did have to go out of my way to encounter people of a sort I don't mingle with daily. Might be research; it depends on what you include in that category. But I would go places to see that sort of person, and then pay extreme attention to their talk and their modes of expression and all that. Sucking up a gestalt of them. For a farce you could read in two sittings, I may have spent seventeen evenings or afternoons soaking up locales and people in places I went to for the purpose. Gestures, yeah; but more importantly by far were the preconceived ideas these people held. Their talk let me see that they took certain "facts" about men, say, or about women, or about toffs, for granted, and based their little schemes and expectations on those ideas. I love writing that into my characters and then having their predictions fail, betraying them into the difficulties of the farce.

For my shorts, and I do set out to do a one-lit-page story quite often, I can't recall any actual effort to research, unless you count Old Weird's method of drawing on fifty years of people watching. In my shorts, we are right up close in the character's heads, and there are maybe as many as three of them, only. Limits.

Those people are right from the gut. The first were me, if kinds of people. I mean, I know me, if you follow. But the character isn't me, but me, if some key thing about me had been different. That was the first ones, but I find the central characters in short stories now come to me from some other place. They ring true for me, or I stop writing, but they have no discernable relationship to my own personality, and I could not tell you where they come from.

Then there's the plotted ones, and I really haven't come round to publishing any of those. There is something missing. But the characters in those arose from the plot. Maybe that's the rub. Maybe research would help. I have concluded only that distance would help, and I have put the plotted ones aside to get some distance on 'em.

 

[Oblimo]

You hit it on the nose for sure in my opinion 3113 - but then why (and this is just a question to everyone, not to you specifically) why do people spend more time researching settings or era's than their characters, who, I assume, are much more important to a plot and conflict than a setting (with exception)?

I think that for many writers, their characters are just themselves with a hat or wig on. This can actually work quite well for stories that are introspective allegories. The (miserably sexually dysfunctional) couple from Norman Mailer's infamous Time of Her Time, for example, are both Mailer -- his animus and his anima.

 

[3113]

I think that for many writers, their characters are just themselves with a hat or wig on. This can actually work quite well for stories that are introspective allegories. The (miserably sexually dysfunctional) couple from Norman Mailer's infamous Time of Her Time, for example, are both Mailer -- his animus and his anima.

On the negative side, it can become really repetitive is all an author does is dress themselves and their wife/husband up in different clothes for each new novel.

I notice that comic book artists sometimes do this as well. Not the really good ones, but the ones that are not so good with drawing people. Every guy looks like the artist, and every girl looks like their girlfriend.

 

[Nikasha]

My characters tell me who they are after I put them on the page. They tend to show themselves to me as I write, a bit at a time, and they frequently surprise the hell out of me. Which I love! I figure if I wasn't expecting it, then neither will my readers (having readers is a surprise in and of itself).

Occasionally, my characters do/say things that throw up a red flag. WHY would he do that? WHY isn't she worried about it? That tends to put the whole story on hold until I can puzzle it out. Sometimes I have to use hubby as a sounding board, to make sure I"m not completely out in left field with the reasoning. And then it's as if the characters are shouting in my head, trying to get their story out, and I'm typing as fast as my fingers will fly.

So, I don't research them as much as I wait to catch a glimpse when they're not looking. And forget about plot outlines-- I never know where the story is going!

 

[Aurora Black]

As far as characters go, the best description if I 'accrete' them. I have a pretty clear idea of who they are when I first conceive them. Then I 'attach' things to them as the story goes on, to fill them out.

Characters are a lot easier for me than just about anything else. If I get them right the first time (and don't realize later that they are completely wrong for the story--which happens all too often!), then I usually know a lot about them. Their favorite color, ice cream flavor, neat or sloppy.

The research for them comes, most often, with occupation.

I concur with Rob and 3. When I develop a character, I live and breathe them for a while before I actually bring them to life in a story. I take my characters very seriously, and I take the time to visualize them fully the way they deserve.

Amongst other things, I do research about a character's profession and what it entails. The most recent case of this was with my upcoming Halloween story, in which the two main characters are a lawyer and a nurse.

As for time and place, most of my pieces don't depend on that (with the exception of my Shakespeare chain story for obvious reasons).

 

[Oblimo]

There are other shortcuts to characterization (especially in television and film) that also start getting really painful once you recognize them. For example, the Family of Three, seen in movies like Speilberg's War of the Worlds. The father, daughter, and son in WotW make up a single character: the daughter is the Id, the son the Ego, and the Father the Super-ego.

Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are used instead of "real" characterization all the bloody time. Jackson's King Kong? The writer is the Super-ego, the director is the Ego, and the 800 ton gorilla is the Id (all of which are just parts of Jackson with different wigs and hats on). And don't get me started on The Incredibles.

Three women? Always, always, always (well, almost always) Mother (redhead), Maiden (blonde), and Crone (brunette): Rachel, Phoebe, Monica; Roseanne, Becky, Darlene; Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup; [nerd] Crusher, Yar, Troi; Janeway, Kes, Torres [/nerd] .

 

[Aurora Black]

Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are used instead of "real" characterization all the bloody time.

Gotta love the classics.

 

[gauchecritic]

There are other shortcuts to characterization (especially in television and film) that also start getting really painful once you recognize them. For example, the Family of Three, seen in movies like Speilberg's War of the Worlds. The father, daughter, and son in WotW make up a single character: the daughter is the Id, the son the Ego, and the Father the Super-ego.

Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are used instead of "real" characterization all the bloody time. Jackson's King Kong? The writer is the Super-ego, the director is the Ego, and the 800 ton gorilla is the Id (all of which are just parts of Jackson with different wigs and hats on). And don't get me started on The Incredibles.

Three women? Always, always, always (well, almost always) Mother (redhead), Maiden (blonde), and Crone (brunette): Rachel, Phoebe, Monica; Roseanne, Becky, Darlene; Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup; [nerd] Crusher, Yar, Troi; Janeway, Kes, Torres [/nerd] .

Very interesting Ob. The power of three. Are you a fan of 'Charmed'?

 

[Svenskaflicka]

put in for a character. I'm not talking about research about a particular era for setting, but when it comes to your characters what sort of research do you do for them?

I research (sometimes - not always - depending on a story and how much importance I invest in it) my characters choice in colours, clothing, furniture in their living room and even get down to the nitty gritty of plates and silverware when the story begs for it. I want my characters to be 3-dimentional, which is why I sometimes do unnecesary research that I don't always use, but how about you?

I suppose this is more a question of how detailed your character sketches are for a sex story or any other story, and whether or not you research for place and time only, or also for your characters.

I do research for NaNo-stories. I write each character's bio, and make notes about scenery, costumes, and trinkets. I do this atleast one month in advance. I want to really KNOW what I'm writing.

For a story for Lit, howevrer, I just write down a fantasy. It doesn't have to be mine, even. This is just for fun.