Where Do Your Characters Come From

[AoNoDoY]

Where Do Your Characters Come From?

It seems to me the possible ways to develop characters can be broken into categories:

1. Write about yourself, or break a part of yourself off and make that the kernel of a character.

2. Write about people you know with different names.

3. Steal a character from another author (or from a movie, or painting, or photograph, or whatever).

4. Start completely from scratch, don't think much about yourself or people you know. Pure intuition, free association, imagination.

So what do you do? Am I missing any strategies? What works best? Has the way you deal with characters changed over your career as a writer? Have you heard of other strategies?

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Most of my characters are pastiches of people I know in my life. Sometimes I'll put someone I know directly in a story (under a different name), but usually not without asking them first.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I start with a possibility and let it grow. My style is 'reasonable, logical people doing extraordinary things'. At least it has been. I got this Goldilocks and the BDSM bears thing creeping around my head that I may give a try to.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

I start with a possibility and let it grow. My style is 'reasonable, logical people doing extraordinary things'. At least it has been. I got this Goldilocks and the BDSM bears thing creeping around my head that I may give a try to.

The first choke collar was too loose...

 

[voluptuary_manque]

The first choke collar was too loose...

I figure that they tied her up while she was sleeping in Baby Bear's bed and then put him in. And now that he's asleep, it's time to play!

 

[Darkniciad]

Everywhere. There's sometimes a bit of me in characters. Sometimes it's bits of me and someone else. Sometimes it's a tossed salad of quirks/appearance/personality from a half a dozen people. Sometimes it's me casting Clint Eastwood in a role and imagining how he would have played it.

For my fantasy world, I'm cheating in a way. The largest part of those characters have existed in my head since the 80s. They've developed live through interactions with other people over the years as I role-played them. They have what amounts to an actual history that I've lived, after a fashion. Makes it easy to toss them in new situations and have them react naturally.

That's as close as you get to having voices in your head without a clinical diagnosis

 

[TE999]

I conjure situations from real life and create characters to interact in them. Quite often fantasy has a basis in fact, no matter how outre'.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Sometimes I dredge up a scene from a porno movie I saw, and incorporate that into a character's actions. I download short video clips or pictures from some of the sites that are accessible from the Lit. home page and watch them, giving myself an idea. I also use those clips to inspire me before I resume writing.

Sometimes readers suggest a story line, often including something they like to do or fantasize about doing. Sometimes I get a plot bunny from something that is said on this forum or another.

Mostly, I just have a dirty mind.

ETA: A few of my stories are partially based on experiences I had or might have had.

 

[Jack_Samuel]

I find it incredibly hard to do #4 particularly in a story with any actually story thread or character development but that may be more of a reflection on where i'm at as a writer. Unless you have a fully fleshed out and realised character the reader wont believe the in the character.

Which is why i normally take someone i know and just add a couple of gimmicks or interesting aspects to them. Basing them on a real person gives me some consitency.

 

[AoNoDoY]

I agree J_S. I think the other methods make characters feel more believable.

 

[OzArrian]

Some of my characters are probably drawn partly from pop culture (with some changes), perhaps riffing off archetypes seen in anything from a TV show or a porno movie. I was working on a post-apocalyptic story which was inspired by the mutants in "The Hills Have Eyes 2" but somehow that story just didn't worked (partly because I couldn't bring enough belief to my characterisations).

I also drawn on friends for my characters, though they are usually online and not people I meet in real life. I've got 3 stories on the boil at the moment and each of the female leads are based on women I've cybered with. How much of their personality may leak into the characters would arguably be little at best...these are after all my creations and not a psychologically faithful non-fiction viewpoint.

My suggestion for what it is worth is always go with your own experiences when writing as the basis for your characters. It always seems to me that the best writers of any fiction always leave a little of themselves in their characters (such as Austen, Dickens, Lawrence).

 

[AchtungNight]

I think about people I know or have heard much about and ask myself "what would I want this person to be like in my fantasy world?" The answer serves as inspiration for my tales.

 

[tickledkitty]

Most of the time, the story comes to me first, and then the characters just sort of develop from that. It's not something I give a lot of thought and planning to. It just comes to me. I know that's not a very good explanation.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I custom design my characters to fit the plot, so I use lotsa stereotypes.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

Hmmmm. I guess my characters are an amalgam of me (or aspects of me), people I've known or dreamed about, fictional characters I've encountered in film or literature and the ancient muse whose name I do not know.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Neptune... or thereabouts...

 

[GingerJess]

I have only written one story so far, but I mine involved me and my boyfriend, I just changed the names.

 

[freshface]

I'm with tickledkitty. The story comes to me first. The characters are drawn to tell that story most effectively. They tend to evolve as the story develops.

 

[TxRad]

A lot of my stories come from a single picture so i have one character right before my eyes. The rest sort of creep in from my dirty mind. The story dictates who and what they are.

 

[neonlyte]

Most of the time, the story comes to me first, and then the characters just sort of develop from that. It's not something I give a lot of thought and planning to. It just comes to me. I know that's not a very good explanation.

Yup. Mine grow out of a situation, usually the kernel of the story, they expand, develop, and bring along buddies as the story needs. Names matter... can't think why.

 

[snar]

Nearly all of my characters have traits of real life people but are not inspired by a single person (they're usually combination of people plus things that I just dream up). Ditto for the situations the characters find themselves in. The characters/situations are based enough on real people/experiences that they are realistic (I'm simply not creative enough to dream up a completely fictional universe and make it sound believable), but not so unimaginative that the story reads like a biography. After all, it is fiction and meant to be entertaining.

 

[CharleyH]

It seems to me the possible ways to develop characters can be broken into categories:

1. Write about yourself, or break a part of yourself off and make that the kernel of a character.

2. Write about people you know with different names.

3. Steal a character from another author (or from a movie, or painting, or photograph, or whatever).

4. Start completely from scratch, don't think much about yourself or people you know. Pure intuition, free association, imagination.

So what do you do? Am I missing any strategies? What works best? Has the way you deal with characters changed over your career as a writer? Have you heard of other strategies?

The better question is: what's the story? Characters can come from anywhere. They can be anyone and come from RL. A good story never comes from character alone.

 

[Liar]

Norway, for some fucked up reason. At least more of them than what's demographically defendable.

 

[gauchecritic]

A good story never comes from character alone.

Names matter... can't think why.

The only two things that you really need to know about writing a story.

Things happen, but a story is only a story when things happen to people.

A rose by any other name is not "a rose".

A very rough remembrance by way of explanation:

There was a pot on the sill. It wasn't actually a pot but the quality of potness hovered about it and would neither settle nor withdraw.

 

[OneLustyWench]

Honestly? When I try to write, they are based on people I know, things I've done.

When I don't try and the muse is in action, I get full technicolor dreams that don't stop until I start to try to get them down on paper. Of course the muse only gives me the first couple of chapters and major storyline....the bitch. The rest is hard work.