Imagined Conversations and Character-Building @ Sinister Design

Also from Craig Stern at Sinister Design comes this piece about developing characters through "pretending to have conversations with them":

The wrong way: outlining characteristics

“Fleshing out” is a good metaphor for the goal of character-building: we start with a skeleton, a character composed of bare bones. Then we add meat.

But this metaphor is a terrible description of the actual process of developing a character. Try this exercise: think about someone who know personally in real life, someone you enjoy or find interesting. Think of four or five adjectives to describe them. Now, think about what it’s like actually being around that person. Think about their views, their mannerisms, verbal tics, the kind of jokes they tell. Those adjectives you picked don’t really convey all of that all that well, do they?

Adjectives are brushes that lay down broad strokes. You can decide some general features of your characters that way, but you still won’t know what your characters are like–what they talk like, what they’re like to interact with, what they think about. Characters sketched out via a top-down approach tend to come off flat and inorganic. Luckily, there’s a better way.

The right way: imaginatively interacting with your character

Now think about that person you picked again. Remember how you actually learned what they were like? Here’s a magic trick: I know. I know how you learned about them because the answer is basically the same for all people, all of the time. People learn about other people by spending time with them and by talking with them. If you want to get to know your characters in a way that goes beyond the superficial, you have to go through this same process.

“But Craig,” you say, “my characters don’t exist. How am I supposed to spend time with them?” That’s easy: use your imagination. Think of a character, then imagine yourself having a conversation with that character. Afterwards, take notes on what they said. Later, if you want to develop a relationship among multiple characters, imagine them talking to each other.