Character Questionnaire

I  completed a 30-day version with the two main characters of Victims of the Bridge, and, although there were many interesting questions, there are obviously a lot more my characters could bear to answer for me. As such, I decided to put together a few more questions for the lot of us to enjoy.

1. What does your character like on his/her omelettes?
2. How important does your character consider his/her heritage to be?
3. How many volts would he/she go to if he/she had been a teacher in the Milgram experiment?
4. Describe your character's typical scent.
5. What kind of video games does/would your character play (puzzle, first-person shooter, etc.)?
6. What is your character's preferred style of footwear?
7. How does he/she feel about musicals?
8. What breed or kind of dog is his/her favourite ("dog person" or otherwise)?
9. What's your character's favourite smell that brings up memories?
10. What's your character's favourite smell that doesn't bring up any particular memories?
11. If your character were forced to start a triathlon, how far would they end up going?
12. How short a skirt (if any) would your character wear?
13. If your character had the chance to buy everything from a single store, what store would it be?
14. How many minutes early or late does your character intend and/or tend to get to scheduled events?
15.  What is your character's ideal vacation environment?

Making a Character Kernel in Three Easy Steps

This certainly isn't a complete guide to putting a character together, but it might be an interesting method if you don't know where to start.

Step One: Typification

In one or two words, what is your character's role? Interpret that however you like. Archetypes, occupations, whatever you neeed a character to do or whatever you happen to come up with.

Examples:

• The mentor
• The rogue
• The murder investigator

Step Two: Contradiction

What is the opposite of the role you just put? What is a quality someone is such a role couldn't or shouldn't have? Assign that quality to your character.  (The same one it doesn't fit.)

Examples:

• The inept mentor
• The loyal rogue
• The softhearted murder investigator

Step Three: Reconciliation

We kind of made everything a mess in the last step, so let's put things together a little more. Is what you put really a contradiction? I'll tell you right now: no. It isn't. Now you tell me, why isn't it? How can those two seemingly opposite things coexist in the same person? Is one of the two aspects not quite what you may have thought it was? Does one side override the other most of the time? What conditions bring the other side to the forefront?

Examples:

• The inept mentor is the most leader-like individual thrown into the situation. Everyone in the situation has to figure out certain skills; our mentor is no exception, but he takes it upon himself to teach the others regardless.
• The loyal rogue is only a rogue as far as skill set is concerned; she's sneaky, prefers to work on her own, and knows all of the best pickpocketing techniques, but she still has friends, and she'll put her neck on the line for them.
• The softhearted murder investigator is usually one or the other. Her default is softhearted, but she steels herself for her detective work. Of course, she's not living altogether separate lives—the more grotesque murders still shake her up and haunt her sleep, and she can shut off her sensitive in her daily life when those situations become bleak.

Now you should have a good starting place. I've heard the main difference between round and flat characters is a sort of inner conflict—and most characters made with this method will have that from the get-go.

What do you think? A worthwhile tool for your writing arsenal?

"30 Days of Character Building," Part 1

It was a challenge on HabitRPG.com, and I decided to go for it with the two main characters of my weird little ghost story. I did it by day, as suggested, but here's the first half of the exercise.

1. Describe your character’s relationship with their mother or their father, or both. Was it good? Bad? Were they spoiled rotten, ignored? Do they still get along now, or no?

Becky: She chafes against her parents about as much as she does everyone else. She’s been rather spoiled by them in the past, mostly from her father (who likes to think of himself as the cool dad). Her mother doesn’t spend much time with her but does care about her and expect great things from her.

George: Easiest part: No, they don’t really get along now because they’re all dead, and he’s the only ghost. Ahem. He was totally a mama’s boy, although his father would still come to his baseball games. He got along with each of his parents better than they got along with each other, and they didn’t divorce until he was out of the house.

2. What are your characters' most prominent physical features?

Becky: Does her glare count? Probably not. Er… Her hair’s nice? It’s really curly… I don’t know. She doesn’t stand out much physically.

George: Probably just his size. He’d be pretty intimidating if he wore a big trenchcoat or something. Unfortunately, he’s kind of stuck in his T-shirt and jeans, so it’s easier to tell that he doesn’t really have any muscle to go with that big-bonedness.

3. Name one scar your character has, and tell us where it came from. If they don’t have any, is there a reason?

Becky: If she does, it’s probably from a hair straightener or something. She’s never been very athletic, and her life is pretty sheltered in general. She could potentially have some cutting scars, but probably not. In that case, they would be more like hesitation marks than anything else.

George: He has one on his forearm from an open fracture when he fell off a tree. He’s gotten himself into all kinds of trouble and injuries, but he’s had good medical care, so there wasn’t much scarification. There’s that fatal car accident, but wounds don’t stick around once you’re a ghost in this story, so he doesn’t have any physical scars from that (even his clothes got out unscathed).

4. How vain is your character? Do they find themselves attractive?

Becky: No self-esteem here. She doesn’t think she’s ugly, per se, but she’s well aware that she’s overweight and not particularly attractive. She doesn’t really care about that. She’s not generally vain in other areas, although she does default to believing she’s more intelligent than others.

George: Yeah, he thinks he’s attractive. It’s within reason, but he probably has slightly too high of an opinion on himself in that aspect. Otherwise, he knows he’s a loser. He tries not to worry about it too much.

5. What’s your character’s ranking on the Kinsey Scale?

Becky: This is romance stuff, so I have no idea what I’m talking about, but… I dunno. 0, I guess. She’s dated a few boys unsuccessfully. She’s just not really a romantic person, especially at this point in her life when she’s pretty much done with everything.

George: Hm. Well, the love of his life was female, but he may not be entirely straight? At the same time, I can’t see him ever being seriously attracted to a guy, so probably 1. Maybe 2? I’m bad at this. This is why I don’t really put any romance into plots.

6. Describe your character’s happiest memory.

Becky: It was another lonely Valentine’s Day at her high school. As she rushed between classes, she kept passing a student government-sponsored stand selling a variety of plushies. Although she’s not very girly, she does have a sense for the cute, and she fell in love with an adorable caterpillar plushie. She didn’t have any money, though, so she walked straight past. After another class passed, she considered asking her father, who taught AP Biology at the school, for some cash, but when she next saw the stand, the caterpillar was gone. Nothing else at the stand compared, so she just sighed and went on to lunch. It was just a dumb plushie, anyway. She didn’t need more useless stuff cluttering her room. A smiling little caterpillar face wasn’t going to make everything better whenever she looked at it, either. No big loss. Just another of life’s disappointments.

At least, it was until she got home and found that her father had bought the caterpillar for her during his planning hour that day. She considers it all a little silly, but now the caterpillar is like her symbol of things somehow going right sometimes, so it’s pretty important to her.

George: Well, it’s got to be something with his girlfriend Elise. I don’t know if he would really rank the memories, though. And the positive ones would basically all be the same. Cutesy stuff, George does something dumb and embarrassing, Elise cleans up after him, and then more cutesy stuff. 

7. Is there one event or happening your character would like to erase from their past? Why?

Becky: Hm. Well, if she was actually given an opportunity, she’d be the type to avoid messing with the space-time continuum and all that jazz (even though she’s fine with messing with the material world when she’s in ghost form, but that’s different…?). Assuming the change wouldn’t mess up anything… I don’t know. She tries not to dwell on the past much, so it would be hard to determine what change would do her the most good. I don’t think she’d end up going for it.

George: I hope it’s not cheating to say his death. He died pretty young, which is bad enough, but as a ghost he ended up seeing how hard it was on all of his loved ones. Not to mention basically putting his girlfriend-eventually-fiancée-someday-hopefully in despair for fifteen years and then seeing her find another guy. It’s been kind of rough for him, especially since he has no way of interacting with the human world anymore, not even to give a hug or make his presence known.

8. Day of favourites! What’s your character’s favourite ice cream flavour? Colour? Song? Flower?

Becky: Chocolate chip cookie dough, scarlet, ??? (I feel like she’s not a huge music fan in general. She might have a song she associates with good times, but it’s probably something modern, so I wouldn’t know it.), those purple-budded weed things.

George: Vanilla I guess? (He’s not big on ice cream, but he doesn’t mind sundaes, so that counts as vanilla, right?), yellow, “Runaway” (he basically has my music tastes but is a huge fan of Bon Jovi rather than Journey), crepe myrtles maybe? (I wouldn’t think he’d pay much attention to flowers, but then again he worked as a landscaper).

9. Who does your character trust?

Becky: Apparently she trusted George enough to risk killing herself permanently, but she was also kind of in the mood for that, anyway, so I’m not sure if that counts… The people she trusts the most are probably her online friends. She shares a lot more with them than her parents, that’s for sure. She’ll tend to follow instructions from authority, but she doesn’t really trust them to guide her down the best path, either. Or she just thinks the best path is still too dismal to be happy about.

George: He’s the kind who will trust most people to a certain extent without really knowing them. That can still be broken or strengthened, though. As for people in particular, there really aren’t any options other than Becky seeing as no one else seems able to detect him. So he does trust her, although it’s more out of necessity when things are just starting.

10. Can you define a turning point in your character’s life? Multiples are acceptable.

Becky: It’s a little hard to say. Probably the biggest influence on her depression was giving up on trying to be an original watercolour artist as an occupation. It was her dream for some time, and she had certainly been improving, but she finally decided it just wasn’t realistic and that she’d do med school like her parents wanted. But she also gets a positive turning point in the course of the story. No need to spoil it just yet, though.

George: Hm. He honestly does more running in circles than anything; he’s not that dynamic. I think his outlook on life was really too gradual to attribute to any turning points. Aside from that, he’s had all of the basic schooling, he played baseball for a while, he got a job landscaping, and he got a nice girlfriend. And then he died, but he didn’t change too much after that, aside from giving in to the sadness for a while. So no, I can’t really define one.

11. Is there an animal you equate with your character?

Becky: I hadn’t really thought about it. And nothing really comes to mind. Depressed and snarky animals… Yeah, I don’t know. So no, there isn’t.

George: Um, fainting goat. Yeah, why not? He does tend to be out for the count every time things get dire.

12. How is your character with technology? Super savvy, or way behind the times? Letters or email?

Becky: She is totally savvy. She can’t program or anything, but she can basically work whatever fancy computers and lab tech you want her to. Definitely email.

George: Considering he hasn’t been able to actually interact with technology in the last thirty years, he’s a little behind. He’s at least familiar with those fancy smart phones and such and such, but only what he knows from observation. He definitely never owned a computer, so snail mail.

13. What does your character’s bed look like when he/she wakes up? Are the covers off on one side of the bed, are they all curled around a pillow, sprawled everywhere? In what position might they sleep?

Becky: She’s a side sleeper, and a slight insomniac. She’ll wake up with her sheets either off the bed entirely or in such a mess she doesn’t even bother to properly make it up. She would be curled around a pillow, though.

George: Well, as a ghost, he doesn’t get much sleep these days, but when he was alive… I feel like he would nearly always be exhausted when he finally hit the hay, and he’d just flop onto the bed and sleep. Back sleeper. Probably forgot to pull the covers over him half the time. He did roughly make his bed every morning, though.

14. How does your character react to temperature changes such as extreme heat and cold?

Becky: Well, she hates them. Cold more than heat. If it’s that extreme, she won’t even step outdoors/approach it.

George: He’ll tough it out. He’ll get uncomfortable pretty quickly, but his job entails a lot of outdoor work, so he’s learned not to throw in the towel in such situations.

15. Is your character an early morning bird or a night owl?

Becky: Neither, really. She tries to get as much sleep as possible. Given the choice, she would rather wake up early, though.

George: Definitely an early-bird type. He’s kind of awake all of the time these days, but he's still freshest around dawn.

Put a Face on It

It has come to my attention that relatively few of my stories have actual antagonists established. This seems like a bad thing.

Now, some I just wouldn't want to state outright because it would spoil a lot of the story. But I can only think of one of those cases where I know the mysterious antagonistic force itself.

This is probably indeed a bad thing. Granted, I don't have all of my story ideas fully developed; that would take a ton of work for a lot of ideas that won't ever really insist on being written. But it seems like I leave out the antagonist disproportionately often. Even when I don't know the "Other Main Characters" well, I'll at least hack out a basic description. The bad guys? Not so much.

There are a few reasons why. One: I'm lazy sometimes. It's hard avoiding that when it comes to story ideas that just sort of showed up and didn't demand to be taken anywhere. Two, and hopefully the more major reason: there isn't always a distinct antagonist. Particularly in my favourite types of stories where all of the characters are at some point enemies, it's hard to specify exactly who should be labeled the antagonist. There are also times when it's more of a manner of survival—then who's the bad guy? Nature in general? Infectious bacteria? Large rocks?

Do I need more distinct driving forces all of the time? Is it more acceptable to wait for the evil masterminds to show themselves than the rest of the cast? How important is a real antagonist, anyway—as a symbol? As a finite force to be dealt with? Do you ever find yourself skimping on the real masterminds during the more up-front struggles of your stories?

Applied Physics

Despite my deep loathing of the subject, I've found that physics can, in fact, be useful. Even to writing. More specifically, I found the explanation of elasticity to be quite relatable to how I tend to develop my characters. Here's a lovely illustration for those unfamiliar with this concept:

[image from http://www.tutorvista.com/content/physics/physics-iii/solids-and-fluids/elasticity-modulus.php]

At the beginning, the stress (basically, force or pressure) gets added to the object, and the strain (stretching or compression) of the object increases proportionally. So, when the story just starts out and the character's troubles have only begun, he can adjust to the stress put on him and grow without being harmed too much.

Once the elastic limit is hit, things start to get weird. No longer is the relationship between stress and strain so simple. The object can still stretch and compress, but it doesn't take much more stress, and, once the stressor is removed, the object can't return to its original state; it is permanently deformed. So, once our main character reaches a certain amount of stress or trauma, it just isn't something he can adjust to. He can indeed rise above the circumstances, but he has to stretch himself too much to do so, and he'll just never be able to go back to the person he was.

Last but hardly least is the fracture or breaking point. What happens to the object there should be obvious. The character, likewise: whatever he used to be before, he is now but a broken shell of a man.

Exactly how much stress you want to put on a character, or how much he can handle before hitting one point or the other, can and ought to vary from author to author, story to story, and character to character. Want to break everybody? Go ahead. Just warp them? Sure. Break a few, warp a few, and just stretch the others a little? No problem. It just depends on what kind of story you want to tell and what kind of characters you want to deal with.