Understanding my characters

Serious question: I don't know what I would do in almost any given situation. How am I ever going to figure out what my characters would do?

For instance, I was trying to set up a scene with a friend. A lot of it is NSFW, but the gist was that I had a character that I've had for years. I had him in a situation, but couldn't for the life of me think of who would put him in such a situation, why he would be in such a situation, or even where.

And in the course of the conversation, I learned that apparently, if you go into a shoe store, the salesman will often let you walk out of the store wearing the shoes you just bought. Or that people can do humiliating things if they lose a bet with a friend. Both of these concepts were totally foreign to me.

Said friend has also pointed out that, since I'm a shut-in who lives in BFE, I don't get much social interaction. But I do have an Internet connection and a Netflix account, so I should get to watching.movies and TV shows for inspiration. He's thrown a ton of stuff at me, but so far, nothing has sunken in and made me go, "okay, I want something like that."

tl;dr: What's wrong with me?

You need to go outside more often.

Yeahhh. I don't want to come off as being rude, but you might just need to get out more. Put yourself in some new situations that, while they me new and strange, could help you get inspiration for your stories and characters Just watching TV and Movies might not help, because to be honest, I very rarely get inspiration from other sources of fiction unless I feel like making an expy of a character and changing them enough to, well, make them less of an expy. One of the best places to get inspiration is the real world, and you might just need to spend a little more time there, just observing, learning new things and returning to write only when you're inspired and refreshed.

Edit: And another idea that came into my mind. If you yourself have never experienced/knew a certain fact before discovering it, maybe make that part of your character. Like a quirk. Like they were so sheltered that not knowing about doing embarrassing things for losing a bet is a natural extension of that.

In other words, maybe just learning a new fact can add to a character; as in, "I may have not known about this, but _____, who is very street savvy, would!" Or, "I had no idea about this, so ____ doesn't either."

edited 14th Aug '14 9:38:06 PM by Sibuna

I live out in the sticks. There's fuck all to do here; everyone's elderly, redneck, or both; and I have no means of getting to a better place.

If you don't mind some practice, we have a thread for this exact sort of thing. But anyway.

You're in TV Tropes. We're a worldwide community of students, artists, writers, programmers, teachers, physicians, pilots, soldiers, sportspeople and much, much, more. We have a bigger, stranger, richer set of backstories and personalities than any work of fiction could ever hope to match. We come from every walk of life bearing our very own stories, and by the strange magic of the World Wide Web, we're all a few clicks and taps away from any shared discussion we could ever wish to join.

Go to a thread you frequent and ask someone how their day went. You'll find characters, you'll find conflict and resolution, you'll find the odd MacGuffin and distinct locales. Heck, have you talked to all the elders and rednecks in your towns? Maybe some of them fought at Hastings or built silver nanodecahedrons for NASA or took the hobbits to Isengard or whatever, and are just itching to tell someone every last larger-than-life detail. The more you do that, the easier it is to think of your characters as living, breathing people with their own unique way of living out the story you're writing out. All of my most thoroughly-developed characters are inspired by real people to varying extents, and I do believe that when it comes to inspirations, the more, the merrier.

TL;DR: There really is nothing to say that you don't know already. If you're looking to develop characters, get to know the ones around you - and everything should fall in place soon enough. Good luck and have fun!

Some thirty years ago I had a chance meeting with an elderly woman outside a store and got to chatting and she told me wonderful stories of when she lived in South Africa some fifty years earlier.

It's not every day you get to hear about 1930s South Africa from the point of view of someone who lived there.

You never know what gems people might be harbouring in their memories.

I've talked to quite a lot of characters. I have a cousin who's in her 50s, and her parents are in their 70s. My cousin's grandfather built the first airport in the county after serving in WWII, and worked at the second one when it drove his first one out of business after only four years. The cousin's parents used to work the rodeo circuit, and have spent a lot of time adventuring in Alaska when they were younger. The cousin herself owns several houses in town that she rents out to people of various reputes. All well and good, but that gives me nothing to work with. None of my characters are WWII-era pilots, rodeo stars, adventurers, or landlords.

My mom is a retired schoolteacher who grew up in poverty. Okay, well, none of my characters are schoolteachers and I can't picture any of them having grown up in poverty.

My problem is that I can never seem to find a Real Life person who has anything in common with what I want to write. And with that in mind, I don't fully know what I do want to write, just what I don't.

It feels to me like you are looking for specific details, for specific character types and jobs. I wouldn't do that if I were you. Instead, just try and get bits and pieces. Maybe your character is not an adventurer, but would like to be or had some childhood fantasy of wanting to be one. Maybe they aren't a WWII soldier, but have a deep interest in the war (or whatever war you want to substitute for your world and story). Personally, I feel like it's these little things that really serve to show you who a character is, and how'd they react in certain situations. Maybe the adventurer would be hotblooded or excited for a chance to go on a 'real' adventure, even if they don't admit it. Maybe in a time of desperation, the war enthusiast would act like a soldier, barking orders and making strategies that won't actually fit their situation, and confuses everyone else, but he believes it would work.

What I'm trying to say is, don't look for things that will fit the exact character mold you are looking for, because you will never find the perfect one. Use a blend of everything, even what you think has no chance of fitting, because you could be surprised at what one tiny, random detail can do for your character and story.

edited 18th Aug '14 9:51:50 AM by Sibuna

Even those don't fit though. No one I know displays any similarities to any of the characters I'm trying to build except gender.

Could you give a SFW example of a character you're having trouble with? Some situations a character gets into just won't translate well to real life.

edited 18th Aug '14 2:04:24 PM by UmLovely

That's what I'm saying. You're looking for specific things that fit perfectly but that won't happen. You need to think outside the box. People do have quirks and interests that seem odd for their personality, job or whatever, and it's perfectly natural. You shouldn't be thinking, "No, that won't fit them at all," because sometimes that one out of place quirk can really make them more interesting and easier to write.

I'm not saying that you should just give them a bunch of random, unfitting traits, but one or two? It'll round them out.

Married man, wife is a hotelier. They live together in suburbia in a semi-utopian future.

Dont be afraid to make shit up. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm getting a vibe that you may be afraid to develop your characters because you dont want to get any of the details wrong. Do not be afraid of this. Go ahead and write the characters any way that makes sense to you, then, your beta readers will tell you what does and doesn't work, and then it's only at that point that you start changing and improving things. If you worry too much about writing well in the initial stages, you most often end up not writing at all. As a general rule, it's better by far to write garbage than to write nothing at all. Poorly written characters you can fix- characters who are never written you cant.

BTW- I am not personally offended by NSFW material. The way to share such things is to set up a page at Wikidot or someplace similar, and then provide a link to anyone who is willing to read it.

I don't know what I want to make up.

Then engage in some writing exercises. In the course of creating something according to someone else's directions, you will discover what you like and dont like.

How is writing about a beautiful place (implying that I've seen a beautiful place to begin with) going to help me write characters?

Because writing about characters is about being able to express yourself first. Then you either filter it through the character's differences from you or crawl inside their heads and do it over from their perspective.

Here you are.

Maybe you're overthinking things? Don't spend too much time trying to make every detail perfect. Some of my best characters come when I just think of a trait or quick randomly and stick with it. Once I gave them random family lives, (after already coming up with their personalities) and used each home situation to explain their personalities and give them backstory.

I have some ideas of personalities. Character X is polite and submissive; character Y, his wife, is an assertive businesswoman. Everyone Has Lots of Sex because in-universe reasons dictate it.

Even just something basic, I get stuck. "Your main character has invited you to lunch. Where does he/she meet you? What is ordered? What do you talk about?" Hell if I know. What does what they eat have to do with their personality? Characters X and Y aren't even human and are never in situations where they would meet one. I don't have an antagonist, so anything antagonist related goes out the window. Flat tire in the rain? I don't think they'd have "tires" since I imagine the world to be futuristic and semi-utopian.

edited 20th Aug '14 10:44:20 PM by Twentington

Well, with the restaurant idea as an example, you can tell a lot about a person by what they eat. Do they enjoy meat, and lots of it? They could be some sort of loud, adventurous type. Do they just want a light salad? They are calmer, or in a rush, or on a diet. Chocolate? Immature or in touch with their inner child, or a Sweet Tooth. Of course, these aren't solid rules and sometimes you can defy expectations by, say, having some sort of badass Blood Knight being a vegetarian, adding some character depth or something.

So yeah, it actually would help you think of your character a bit more. Just a bit...on a sub-textual, never-getting-in-the-actual-story way.

edited 20th Aug '14 11:44:02 PM by Sibuna

I think you're overthinking this. Your characters don't have to start out as the world's most developed characters, just as someone. They don't need to be extraordinarily special or insanely exciting; in fact, trying too hard makes for some pretty bad writing, in my experience.

All questionnaire questions are not created equal. You're not required to answer every single one. I'm obsessive over backstories (all the way down to people who'll only be in a scene for a minute) and some questions regularly stump me. Fill in what you feel comfortable with and go from there.

edited 21st Aug '14 12:06:22 AM by UmLovely

You are supposed to answer those kinds of questions because little details like that are used in-story to symbolize non-visible aspects of their character. If they are an adventerous persson, they will prefer exotic food, things like that. In other cases, the situation is supposed to represent a challenge or a problem, and you are supposed to let the character deal with it exactly as they would a more serious crisis. Will they think their way through the flat tire? Scream and kick the car? Call for help? Steal another car? Whatever they end up doing will represent the character's general approach to any problem. And by knowing these things about your characters, writing them into any scene should be that much easier.

That's the point: You know you understand your character if you can answer questions like "Where would they meet you?" and "What do they like to eat?" If you can answer those sorts of questions it means that you have a well-developed vision of who they are, and should have correspondingly less problems with dialogue and so forth. Of course, it's not a requirement, it depends on what type of story you are writing- if your story is very highly plot-driven then "Polite and submissive" might be enough. To the extent that it's more character-driven, you may well need more than that.

As for the fantasy elements, you should try to imagine how your character would react if they were running around the real world. Presuming they could taste our food with human-like taste buds, what type would they prefer?

For things like your problem with flat tires here, try something like this: What exists in your world that would be the equivalent of a flat tire? How does transportation work, and how would it break down? Coming up with things like that would both make it easier to work with exercises like this and give your world more detail and thus give more context to work with your characters in.

This is the point of the "Questions for your character" thread to which the OP was pointed during an earlier thread of the "I don't understand my characters" ilk, likewise it is the point of the "What would your character do in the above situation?" thread (and why "Well, Fribnitz comes from a world without cars, so the situation wouldn't happen" style posts are considered bad form).

Twentington:

Writing anything at all about your characters in a hypothetical situation is a start. If you don't know what the character likes to eat, select something at random - it's not like the universe (ours or the story's) is going to come crashing down if the character likes jacket potatoes with grated cheese on top or Lobster Thermidor or jacket potatoes with Lobster Thermidor.

Then you can mix it up a bit. The waiter delivers the wrong meal or the steak is under/over done or whatever. How does the character react? Eat it anyway? Get angry?

Once again, if you don't know, choose a random reaction, run with it.

It's not set in concrete, you can always go back later and decide that the reaction would be more interesting if the character did something else.

Fuck it, just write two or more versions with different reactions and see which is the most interesting - play the "multiverse": in this universe the character quietly eats the underdone steak without a word, internally vowing never to frequent that restaurant again; in that universe the character has a screaming fit at the waiter and demands to see the manager.

It doesn't matter "what" you write, it matters that you write. Later on, take the most interesting ideas for the character and go with that. Voila, you have an idea of what the character likes, how they react to situations.

Throwing up your hands and saying "I don't understand the character" or "I don't know what's the 'right' reaction for my character" won't help you.

Just write something. Whatever it is will be "right" and it'll help you understand the character.