#know a characters schedule IF im gonna be interfacing w them and interrupting them.....

[lucabyte]

On the subject of your recent post, do you have any ways to come up with interests/dislikes for your characters? Cause usually characters pop up for me with a personality and background for why they’re Like That and I can vaguely find what they’d like and don’t by tossing them into scenarios and seeing how they respond, but I usually have a way harder time extending that into things like what they’d do in their free time

!! Okay this is something where like, I have trouble with this too? Coming up with what they do on the day-to-day.

I think I mostly try not to sweat this stuff until it's relevant (at which point I'll put myself on the spot and really logic it out. I know recently I was digging into different university timetables for Lavender's subject of Horticulture, which I mostly did by checking out forums like thestudentroom & going on uni websites)

But yeah, no I think I'm a similar way. I can come up with a core for a guy, how they act and then throw them at a bunch of interests or scenarios without having to think too hard.

Generally, though, the process of giving them Interests is an iterative one where I claw outwards from the core Joke or Concept-- Like going from that to related concepts, and then flipping those concepts to find opposites or tangents that feel like they bear fruit. Like a fashion-forward character could be into customisation, or thrifting- or go tangential and say they also enjoy fashion dolls, and then from there go into real life fashion doll wikis for inspiration, then like... Maybe they like horses from those going hand in hand, or maybe they have a complete inverse of hating fashion dolls due to [find a specific pet peeve they have]?

(or, just go wikidiving and play a game of 'ok i have to assign this thing i just found to SOMEONE. who does it fit?')

But as for like. What they *do* with that hobby.... So this is a weakness of mine-- Like I tend to just hope that until I get around to them, it's not *obvious* that characters are lacking Internal Activity Timetables. But whenever I do get around to trying to flesh it out I usually just go hard in on research. This usually means checking out personal blogs of people who have those hobbies, or looking into what jobs entails (THIS PART SUCKS TO RESEARCH SO BAD. hate it). (LIKE FR RESEARCHING FOR CHROME'S MUSIC CAREER IS KILLING ME THE RABBIT HOLE KEEPS GOING LET ME OUT)

Reddit is genuinely not the *worst* place for this-- Stuff like hobbydrama will give you a glance into the shape that some people's lives take in really odd ways. Like you can trace back how people must've gotten into that scenario.

But figuring out a character's like job/student status and how much time must be made up of stuff like that can help.

It doesn't help that as an artist my own "what do i do in my free time" is a lot of sitting on the computer and drawing -_-;;; So i'm not the best model for it all.

I do have some characters that intentionally do jackall though so I try to write them to be different to characters who have internal lives that just haven't been fleshed out yet LOL. (Which I did by giving them the like... Handful of 'hobbies' those scary Whole Ass Adults will have to the exclusion of any actual joy. Just implying they let a lot of the day pass them by without doing much.)

But yeah no don't feel like that you're the only one that struggles here. And I fear the main solution here is researching and reading about the lives of real people and just trying to transfer that knowledge. (I'd love some quick fixes if anybody else has them but I feel like theremay not be many LOL)