Yes, I keep a character fact sheet. It's a very helpful too in learning and keeping a handle on your characters, or their attributes may disappear from your mind.

 

Sorry.  I posted this yesterday but have been advised that I need to insert a copyright protection on it as it is an edited extract from my new book Screenwriting They Can't Resist. Apologies to anyone who has already read it!

 

I think a really detailed character worksheet is indispensible not just for layering the character, but for how and why the character is generating the story. I call mine a Character Workout because I think it helps to feel that I’m creating my character organically as a living, breathing person. I always suggest to students and my writers that they dig a lot deeper than the writing manuals suggest.

It’s not just a question of what her/his favourite movie is, or their birth order, or what food they like. These often lead to merely superficial traits or contrived ‘pegs’ you plonk onto the character. A really useful character sheet is one that focuses on the emotional needs of the character – that’s why I suggest delving into ways the character would have responded emotionally to events in their life. And why I call the central imperative of all storytelling ‘Emotional Pull’. In every great story it’s the character’s emotional needs which drive the story.

Exploring what they were like in the primary school sandpit, at teenage parties and so on helps to find ways to make the character grow organically. And it’s really great for developing their relationships with other characters in the story. But for me, the most powerful way to get inside my character is to talk to them.

If you start talking to your character, you won’t just find yourself asking questions. Your imagination will instantly fire up because you’ll need to start thinking about the world the character inhabits.

Every step of this process prompts another imaginative leap.

These are some of the tons of questions I suggest for one section of the character workout:

Ask your character:

 What’s your strongest memory?

What makes you cry? Or don’t you?

What makes you laugh? Who’s your favourite comedian?

 Do you giggle?

 What do you fear the most?

Has anyone ever betrayed you? How? What do you feel about that experience now?

Have you ever betrayed anyone? How? What do you feel about that now?

If you could be granted one wish what would it be?

 If you could undo one thing you did in your life, what would it be?

Do you hate anyone?

Have you ever been in love? Or are you in love now? Or have been once?

Do you have/want to have children?

Is there anything that keeps you awake at night?

What does all that tell you about their inner life?

How is your character feeling about being asked personal questions?

Have they told you to piss off yet?

Edited extract from SCREENWRITING THEY CAN'T RESIST. How To Create Screenplays of Originality and Cinematic Power. Explode the Rules. Quaere Publishing.

© PAULINE KIERNAN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

Hi Pauline.  Welcome to the group.

I have no idea how that is done.  It drives me nuts too.  Hopefully someone will be able to tell us, I would gladly change the order for this group.

Looking forward to your comments on our discussion.  Have fun, this is a great group of writers, full of wonderful insight.

Hi

Does anyone know how we can reverse the order of posts? It seems strange not to be able to view the latest posts on the first page.

Cheers

Pauline

Thanks for the worksheet, Zetta!

This will be a great help!

Great exercise book on just that subject, called What Would Your Character Do.  It's a lot of fun and really helps keep me on track and in the head of the character

I am not generally a fiction writer but did try the NaNoWriMo last year. (write a novel in 30 days--national event).  Even though the advice is to just "start writing" I soon realized that I didn't know my characters very well.  I'm sure most fiction writers do something like this but it is a great idea and one I will try if I give fiction another go.

Yes, I can't really figure it all out ahead of time, either. But as I do figure it out, I try to keep notes, so I remember what's what about characters. And often I stop the writing going forward to take time to work more on a character and discover the person. I don't have to do it all in advance. But I do take time to do it. It's a good thing to do, I've found, when I'm blocked on the actual writing, to step out of it and free write about characters or settings. I find that part fun. I love the discovery.

I do a weird thing. I walk around sometimes during my day, riding the bus, waiting in lines, imagining one of my characters with me, thinking what they would think about this or that thing or person. I try to listen to them "speak" to me about what's going on or what I see.

Help yourself! Like I said, I cobbled this from what other people use so I can hardly be proprietary about it LOL