âI love you, darling,â were the last words you said to me.
And although I donât have a recording of it⌠and although I forgot to save your voicemails on my phone, I will never forget the sound of your voice.
I miss you, Nana.
But I see you in every flower and every hummingbird that happens to be near. Maybe itâs your spirit, just saying hello.
You surround me, always.
I love you.
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Do you have any tips on getting to know your characters?? I feel like I'm not connecting to them properly :/
I was actually looking forward to answering this one when I opened up my inbox because one of my favourite things is character development and character driven stories!
The Basics
The first step in fleshing out your character is setting their traits in stone. I like to use those character questionnaires where you fill in eye colour, hair colour, star sign, likes/dislikes etc.
It doesnât matter if you donât fill all the categories inâ some like âtheir Starbucks orderâ might not be essential to your story or even fit with the setting. But I do like to fill these in even if I know theyâll never appear in âcanonâ as I feel like it helps me start to see them as a multi-faceted person, and not just a two-dimensional cutout.
Iâll know that my character might like gold jewellery, but detest silver jewellery, and they love sugary coffee, but not tea (unless itâs green), and likes daisies, but not lilies because they smell like funerals. Itâs not important to the story, but I can start to see who they are.
Here are a few handy character questionnaires that I like to use:
http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/aktoura/question.html
http://www.eclectics.com/articles/character.html
http://dehydromon.deviantart.com/art/Abridged-Character-Sheet-320864509
http://character-resource.deviantart.com/art/Big-Ass-Character-Sheet-Updating-167182524
Character Motivation
A big part of making a character more than a dull, flat cut-out is to give them a motivation, a goal (or several) that theyâre striving to in your story. Along the way theyâll encounter trials and be bumped further away from their goal, setting up conflict in the story.
What does your character want? Fame and fortune? To protect their family? Love? Just to make it to the next day?
Your characterâs motivation should reflect their world, and drive the story, therefore driving the plot. You might want to think about what they need VS. want. A starving peasant is probably more concerned about securing food rather than becoming the next American Idol, while a bored rich, businessman might be yearning for adventure and probably doesnât even need to think about food. Maslowâs Hierarchy of Needs illustrates this idea well:
Character Image
This isnât an essential step but I like doing it because it really helps me visualise the character fully, but I like to make playlists and mood boards for each major character in my book. I listen to music a lot when writing and I find it helps me to quickly get back into the tone/mood of the story. I use Spotify to put together playlists (I generally make one for the book itself as a whole, and then individual playlists for the characters), but you can also use 8tracks or youtube playlist function. For mood boards, I use Pinterest to pin images of people who look like I imagined my characters, or inspiration for things like hair, clothing, weapons, etc.Â
Hereâs an example of my mood boards on my Pinterest page: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/kr_forsyth/
I hoped this helped a bit! Feel free to ask me anything, Iâm always happy to share some advice (although I canât promise itâs always the best advice, but still, Iâll try!).
-Katie
@krforsyth Â
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*doesnt even do the bare minimum* all in a dayâs work
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folks, Iâm just gonna say it. I donât think it rains for long enough periods of time. it rains hard, it sounds good, Iâm comfortable inside, but within 5 minutes the jig is up. the dream is over. I think it should rain for longer periods of time than it presently does
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i had a dream where tornadoes were made illegal or something i just remember like a dozen police cars driving directly toward a tornado with their sirens on and all getting sucked into the tornado
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anyway hereâs your reminder that lgbt muslims exist and islamophobia shouldnt be tolerated within lgbt communities!
shout out to lgbt muslims living in places where our identities are still criminalised.Â
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getting random sharp pain in your organs is a lot like when your check engine light comes on in your car. you dont know what it means so you just ignore it and hope you dont blow up
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a video of me eating pizza, with a cat filter on, while listening to britney spears is as much petra as anything can get. @jsmndns can confirm
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Tumblr app: Iâm done loading
Me: but what about all these blank pictures and gifs
Tumblr app: did I fucking stutter
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so no one told you life was gonna be this gay
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