How do your characters speak to you?

[somekh]

I hope I did not offend anyone who are psychologically different, such as having DID.

Not offensive at all!!! It's actually extremely refreshing to see someone with this viewpoint. A lot of roleplayers try to co-opt DID and claim that you can actually make it voluntarily, and it's extremely harmful and toxic.

If your characters talk to you genuinely autonomously, I recommend seeing a therapist, as DID is caused by trauma prior to the age of 9 (or 11, in rare cases happening with comorbidities of ADHD and autism/ASD). Even if you don't remember the trauma (which is likely, as DID is extremely covert and is supposed to make you forget it), if your characters are talking to you, see a professional!

Also, there's a lot of fun and cool brain science on the weird things that roleplaying can do to your brain chemistry! I recommend this as a read on the topic! Actors getting into character has a genuine effect on electrical pathways in the brain very similar to the changes observed with identity disorders like BPD and PTSD, so it's fair a lot of people get them confused.

Yet, my characters gaining sentience in my head then taking over the last remnant of my already fallen apart (and probably near-inexsistent) sense of self and personality is one of the things I am fearful of.

Also, as a psychology major and someone who's extremely well-read on the topic... don't worry - this is physiologically impossible

DID must be developed with severe trauma between the ages of 6 and 9 and cannot occur later in life! Anyone who tells you otherwise is severely misinformed at best, and maliciously trying to take advantage of you at worst.

[akemikae]

Dialogue has always been on of my strong suits when it comes to writing anything, so I've never really thought too hard about it. However, I found that after a while, you just start to get to know your characters well enough that you know how they'd respond to certain things. I'm also not afraid of letting my characters surprise me sometimes, as occasionally I'll be writing dialogue and my brain be like "this character would totally act a little off in this particular scenario because of this particular character trait/or other person being around"

I think over all if you have strong enough characters with vivid enough personality, the dialogue eventually comes out of them pretty naturally.

[CosmicLeon]

I approach characters like people, what they tell you is who they are. And its takes time to figure out who they are. Typically when I do this, I draw an image of them, and then write whatever comes to my head. Or i will stare at a drawing I made of said character, and just think about who they are, and what they are like. I think of story ideas and then write them down.

[CosmicLeon]

its not as if the character it actually talking to you, but rather the ideas start welling up in your head, and their 'voice' is actually your brain getting ideas.

[WoollyPAR]

I try to put a little bit of myself into them so it's easier for me to understand what they would and wouldn't do, think, and say. I also give them character arcs personal to me so I know the natural progression of their arc from beginning to end.

I have one character who deals constantly with his own anger and stress, so much so that it drove him to commit a brutal murder, and he has a friend who is upset by this fact and feels concern for him. They both resonate with me (not the murder bit obviously) since I've felt uncontrollable anger and unrelenting stress, as well as concern for a friend's mental state. I try my best not to write about things I haven't felt or experienced myself. That's a little difficult tho cuz I like writing bizarre fiction

[PaleOcra]

No my characters don't talk to me. It's usually ideas on how they would react. I do base their overall gist and how they would react using some 'template' (inspiration) I had from dramas and such. Then I add in their histories, and that is how I try to determine how they would act