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Biographies
I’m not exactly sure how my sisters go about doing this, but I feel a much better connection with my characters if I write a biography on them. I do a pretty extensive job of it, too. I will find picture of people I think they look like, or just pictures of eyes, hair, or in one unsettling example, a cleft chin. It may look a little stalkerish, and someone might worry if they stumbled upon my computer notebooks and didn’t understand. But, nevertheless, it helps me. I have pictures of anything relevant in their lives: their ship, the family crest, the motorcycle they ride, whatever. Additionally, during the writing of the book, character traits come up, physical descriptions, and other things you’ll want to note in these “biographies”. Trust me, seventy pages later you don’t want to have to try to remember if the eyes were blue with green flecks or green with blue flecks.
What have the rest of you writers done out there?
When I do writing workshops (mostly in schools, or for teachers) one of the exercises we do is character development. I tell them that you need to know everything about your character, even if you don’t put it all in the story. It helps maintain consistency in your story, plus it helps make the person more alive both to you and your readers. I have a set of 30 or more questions we use. The questions include: where in the world they live, with whom (including pets), what sort of residence they have and the setting, etc. But we also ask ourselves: what is their favorite food, movie, book, sport, past-time, hobby, area of interest, color, etc., etc. And we go on to ask, if they could be/do anything, what would it be; what do they dream about at night; are they happy, sad, active, lazy, messy, neat, smart, ignorant; what is their pet peeve, etc. All of these questions can be answered (at least the quick version) in minutes, when done as an oral exercise. When it’s a written exercise, I offer an array of provocative photos from newspapers and magazines for them to choose a character from, and the answers need to fit the person in the photo on some level. I also love to collect photos of potential characters for my own writing to help me with descriptions, since I’m not especially good at visualizing from my imagination.
Yes, that is really helpful, and there are all kinds of psychological tests you can find on line to assist with this. Some are more esoteric than others and what you suggest is very practical. I say, whatever you use, stick with it and remember the little details about your characters.
Keep writing.