I have heard that it's really good to create your character profile/sheet before beginning the book.
I myself haven't done this for I started writing long before I began to read good tips on writing.
But, once I learned the importance of live characters, I knew I wanted to make my characters as real and memorable as I can.

Here's an example I read in a book; readers won't care for a character who lacks dimension and traits and... character. It will be like reading a book about a puppet or a stick figure.

If we read that a character was hanging off the edge of the cliff, and that character didn't have... character, then we'd be like, "So what? It's just a fictional character."

We don't care for the characters because of how they look but because they have feelings and passions themselves.

Remember Tom Sawyer? He had a pretty unique character. So does Sherlock Holmes. And so does the Doctor(in Doctor Who).

So I looked online for lists of many many questions to 'ask' your characters, and find out the answer yourself and write it down as if it were the character writing it down in their own character.
And I made up a few of my own questions for them too. Right now I have a hundred and eight questions(I know, that's a lot) written down on paper, to ask each character.

What do you think?
Do you have any tips yourself on creating vibrant characters?

That's really cool! I'm going to start something like this too, hopefully, because one of my main struggles in writing is character building. I'm planning on forming a counsel that will quiz and interrogate, drill and strain my characters, forcing them to show their "true colors", each counsel session will (theoretically, hopefully) be the equivalent of a hilarious short story, I have like five of the counsel members semi-figured out, but their characters will have to build somewhat as well, I probably won't have them figured out until they've done a few interviews...
That's really all my thoughts on the subject right now, except maybe figure out the environment your character is going to be in, then ask yourself (or your character) "Where do you spend your time, why? What do you do for your job, what do you do for fun? Do you and your family do things together? Where? Why? When?" Things like that.
You could even try forming your own band of fictional character interviewing fictional characters!
I hope these ideas help...

I use the character fractaling system that's in Character Development, and I'll probably figure out some questions of my own as well.

A technique I'd use is to psychoanalyze them, or interview them in a psychotherapy session. A bit odd, I know.

I think it's not so important that the characters be "interesting", particularly in the superficial sense that a lot of these questionaires and such assume, but rather that you find them interesting, and (and this is why such things are still vauable) that you know them well enough to convey this.

For example: Before their adventures begin, Bilbo Baggins is not very "interesting" (and would prefer to remain that way), and Frodo is really only "interesting" because of his connection to Bilbo.

I think I get what you're saying, kingjon, but I would say rather, that Bilbo was not very exciting. Hobbits are interesting creatures, and though at first I was thinking 'this guy's boring', I was still interested in their strange culture, etc until the adventure actually started.
So in summary, Bilbo was interesting, but at first wasn't very exciting at all. I hope that makes sense.

Yeah it makes sense.
I think that Bilbo was meant to be boring in the beginning to those readers who wanted adventure, yet people who don't want adventure in real life would understand his wanting peace and quiet.
I like how the author made him unique.
I think that writers should make characters so that readers can relate to their emotions and feelings in some way.

One thing you need to consider is, if your reader is not in LOVE with your character, he won't care what happens in your book.

I've occasionally attempted to fill out a questionaire (and I started a character fractal once...should try to finish it) but I often run into a simple problem; I don't know the answers. Maybe if I was asking the character more directly, things would be different. On the other hand, I'm not too worried, since at least one of my characters apparently succeeded in being memorable without my interrogating him or anything. For me, though, I think I prefer a more...natural?...way of developing characters; by thinking through the story, playing scenes out in your head, and pondering how their pasts affected them.

Yeah, sometimes it is hard to answer a question in a list of questions because your mind goes blank. But if you make it more direct questions - like "Is he/she confident? Is he/she clever? Does he/she hide their fear behind hate or does it just not show when they are afraid or are they not easily scared?" etc. - It's easier for you to answer based on their past or their friends or their beliefs.

That's very helpful advice!

Love isn't necessary; fascination will suffice, as all the stories with anti-heroes show. But this point is a good one: in some circles in fandom the "Eight Deadly Words" are "I don't care what happens to these people!" (usually followed by the book at least figuratively hitting the wall).


I think that my point was that some aspects of this discussion seemed to be assuming a perhaps implied requirement that "interesting" or "memorable" characters have to be (superficially) "exciting" (for some definition of "exciting") or "unique".

Another example to consider (not fantasy, and I'm not sure which side of the argument this would support): When I was young, I had bounced, hard, off of Understood Betsy, probably within the first chapter. It took my dad declaring it "family reading" and reading it to us (will or nil) at dinner for a week or two to get me to ingest it (so to speak), but thereafter it's one of my absolute favorite books.

And another: In The Magic of Recluce (the start of the thought-provoking series by L. E. Modessit), the protagonist and primary POV character, Lerris, is exiled from Recluce (which supposedly does this ---albeit with generous terms including training, equipment, and supplies---to everyone who fits into its completely-ordered society sufficiently badly, though it turns out later it's not that simple) because he finds order (in Modessit's cobha's sense) boring. This boredom isn't conveyed all that well, and mostly serves to make him less interesting, at least to start with.

The trouble with all these "character development" methods that require lots of facts about the characters is that a) they seem designed to appeal to writers whose idea of descriptive characterization is to insert "infodump" blocks of such facts, and b) facts about the character aren't directly relevant to whether the character is interesting (or memorable) to the reader; it's the portrayal that makes a character interesting and memorable. These methods are like "random plot" generating tools ... sometimes useful for some authors, sometimes if they're suffering from "writer's block", but not useful enough for me to recommend as a general tool for the writer's toolbox. The superficially-unique-character hook is one that some authors use to great effect (the mystery writer Dick Francis, I'm told, makes each protagonist have a different, usually odd, profession; many of the characters in the two books I've read by Nevil Shute are similarly interesting even superficially), but other authors make their characters perfectly ordinary with just as much success. (That Kipling quote I brought up in another thread seems apropos here too: "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays / And every single one of them is right!")

I think that the idea is, that at least some authors need that info about their character just to "get to know" them...which in turn helps them portray them well.

My characters are a reflection of myself, in one way or another, so I do not need such systems to understand them. However, I can see such system being good for certain types of writers. I think it depends on your needs as an author.

I think that's a good point...I tend to not have any idea what my characters are like, and they are so flat you can't see them from the side. So the more stuff I have to think about them, the more questions I have to ask myself about them (or ask them), the better! But there are others that go about it a different way, and that's partly because everyone thinks differently, and has different 'needs'.

Well, having your characters be an extension of yourself is... uncomfortable, for many writers, because that means that even your villains come from a part of you. So my writing style is not for everyone.

I've found I have too many action heroes to really make them an extension of myself.

The one in the dreamworld though, I think there'll be quite a few characters whom I see lots of myself in.

That will be fun to read, then.

Interesting, at least, yes, especially once I figure out how to integrate the world-building elements (Such as being able to fly, reflecting the real world, etc, but especially flying ) and their effects on character life. For being fun, I think it's a bit early to tell yet. I haven't had the character psychoanalyzing sessions yet.

The character fractal is really helping with this project though, more so than the others I've tried. It's making me ask a lot more questions about why they're like that, why they act that way, and what caused the causes, plus what planted the seeds that would cause them to grow and change through the story, and I'm really enjoying that part.

Even though I see myself in them, they're still individual people.

Yes, I know what you mean. My characters are not the same, but they each are a reflection of me.

Yup.

I agree with that idea ... but the impression I got (to some extent even in this thread, but even more so in the wider world of aspiring authors), to which I was responding, was closer to "if you know all these random facts about your character, she will be interesting" or "you have to be able to fill out this dossier on your character before you can write about him properly" than "some writers may find these exercises helpful."

I agree that those things are not necessary, nor will they guarantee a memorable character, Kingjon.

Ok, I see what you mean now. Good thoughts.

Most of mine are a reflection of me too from different angles and personalities, but somewhere I read that some of your characters should be totally different from each-other/you so that the reader can tell them apart.
So I try to go through some of my characters and ask myself if there could be anything about them that is different from my personality, and how they are different from each-other. That way, they are all different.
Although my main character still reflects me in a small way. But their emotions are different because of their backstory sometimes.

I use common fears and obsessions to make my characters more realistic. Tight spaces, fear of war, loyalty to his brother and anger management are the basic ones that I have for Tadix, my MC. However, I mix anger with the fear of war with loyalty to his brother and Tadix now has a fear of his brother going to war then dying during a battle. This causes anger when his brother joins the military, as well as sorrow.

Plus, one thing else I use is thoughts. Tadix has a major event where everything is going wrong in his life: the reader can see his thoughts, making his anger and sorrow more believable.

Just use what works best for you though. That helps a lot.

Yes. The characters should be different. My characters are all different, but that still doesn't change the fact that they are an expression of myself. After all, my MC is nothing like my villain, but they both still draw from me. Readers will get bored if everyone is the same.

Sometimes when I see some unrealistic movies(like the 'new' Three Musketeers' which wasn't that great a movie and had American accents???) where like the main characters take out many many more people than would be possible, I feel like rolling my eyes. Unless God is helping out in some way(like in the story of Gideon), men couldn't take out that many people.

There are some really really good authors(like Jeffrey Overstreet for example) who go to a coffee shop or somewhere and just watch people with a pen and a notebook/journal. I saw some people at the park just the other day that stood out to me. I had to describe them, write them down. So I took out the bookmark of a library book(it was a receipt), and a black marker and wrote as much as I could. I think I just found out who someone in one of my books is.

I'm utterly unfamiliar with The Three Musketeers (the original and all adaptations), but throughout history there have been many warriors who killed "unbelievably large" numbers of enemies in battle, and pushing the title characters of The Three Musketeers a little farther toward that threshold might be a reasonable application of artistic license. I also have some suspicions about how the technology of the book's millieu might affect plausibility of casualty ratios, but I'd rather leave consideration of that issue to someone more familiar with the book and its era than I.

Sergeant York being an excellent example of that.

I suspect Emilyn might attribute that to "God ... helping out in some way"; from what I've read, he certainly did .

Yes... but... well, I see it as two-fold, I guess. While God did help him, York was also a legend in his hometown, before he ever became the man we know him as today. He had skills. Serious, mad skills, as my friend would say. It's not the same as a miracle, if you know what I mean. The man himself still had phenomenal skills as an individual. God did help him, no doubt. But York was also an equipped individual.

"There are miracles, and there are miracles." I agree that Sgt. York was, as you put it, "an equipped individual." But (assuming I'm remembering the right story ...) what was particularly attributed to God's help was his survival. And on the gripping hand, my point was that he isn't a clear counterexample to the principle underlying her objection.

Yes, I agree.

I sort of do an "exercise" when I'm out of the house. I just see random people (some I know others I don't) and try to describe them in my head. It helps me with finding the right words. I also do the same with places, situations, feelings, etc.

I posted a game/list of quirky characteristics here, for people to find or pick or make quirky characters that may help writers looking for traits to give their characters. I've seen it done on a different writer's forum and they came up with some pretty hilarious quirks.
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