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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37237
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37237
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In my mind's eye, the characters I write about are "real people": I do not ask myself what _I want_ them to do. I ask myself what _they would_ do in the given situation. I know their fears and their desires and their quirks, I know how they would respond to events, what they would want to say in a situation and what they would actually say. I can recognise when they are acting "out of character", and when they are being stilted puppets, and I rewrite both.

I like playing a little game with myself: when I go to the theatre or the cinema, or I read a book, I ask myself "what this character of mine would say about this play/movie/story? What would be their experience of it if they were sitting right beside me?"

I do not know _every single thing_ about my characters, but then I do not know _every single thing_ about my real-life friends either. I still know what they would enjoy, how they would respond to things. In fact, if you think about it, you should know your characters better than your friends, since you can get into your characters' thoughts.

How do you reach that level of character development? How do you make your characters "take a life of their own"? You ask all those questions: why they're doing this, how, what they want to achieve, what are their misconceptions, what are their little quirks, how they would respond to situation X. You can think of it as dating your character, getting to know them, exploring, finding out what kind of people they are.

To clarify, you needn't sit and fill in the sheets of trivia you can find on the web, with questions like "what is this character's favourite colour". But when you write, ask yourself all the "why"s and the "how"s, and when you're doing day-to-day things, put your character in that situation. Very quickly things fall into place, you get the "feel" of the character, you know them.

Once you know your character _that_ well, questions about "why character X would do A,B,C" answer themselves.

Original score: 31