Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Character Profiling

I read a pretty cool blog post this morning by Suzette over at QueryTracker.net Blog where she gave a list of questions you can use to interview your characters and get to know them better.

I've done this sort of thing when writing stage plays, but I haven't done it for my screenplay or novels. I'm pretty confident in my screenplay characters, so I don't really feel the need to interview them.

My novel, characters, however, are a different story. Because I'm writing a trilogy, and there are multiple characters involved, it can get tricky keeping them all straight and making them behave in a way that's consistent with their personalities. Hence, a good reason to do a character profile.

Now that I'm starting the editing process, I'm making all kinds of notes to myself to follow my characters' threads all the way through and be sure they react appropriately to situations and each other. Then, of course, I have to make sure they change and grow in some way throughout the story, but in a way that's still consistent with their character.

It can be a challenge! But definitely a fun challenge.

How do you keep track of your characters and make sure they don't become caricatures? Or that they don't all just collapse into the same character and become indistinguishable from one another?

2 comments:

Tahereh said...

nice! sounds like a great idea!

i don't really have a system. my characters just reveal themselves to me when they feel ready. sometimes it takes another character to ask the right question -- then all of a sudden i've learned something about my MC i wasn't even aware of!

(i realize this makes me sound a little insane. lol.)

best of luck with your writing!

Terri Tiffany said...

Good thoughts here. I guess that can happen, can't it? I better watch that I don't!