Learning About Character While Writing Them?

[HGohwell]

Does anyone else do this? Sometimes when I'm writing a character, things just feel right for them and sometimes I learn about their background or personality quirks totally organically.

Obviously there are two schools of thoughts on characters as much as plot: the ones who plan out every detail, and the one who just writes. I'm somewhere in the middle, I don't care what colour my character's walls are (unless I have to draw it) or every partner they've ever had unless they're important to the plot. A lot of the time, it's on the fly and the characters are doing their own thing as naturally as possible and my role as author is more to make the universe conspire to nudge them in the right direction. I know just enough the characters reveal the rest as I write them as it becomes important.I know some people think "the characters just did it on their own" is a cop out, and in many ways it is, but when you know a character well enough, their reactions should be natural, and if you have to force them into the direction you want them in there's something wrong with your character plan or the plot. Just because they're your character doesn't mean they can't be written out of character.

So, what's everyone else think? Have you learnt things about your characters they've just revealed as you're writing them? Have your characters ever surprised you? If not you think you'll ever be surprised by them or are your character sheets too detailed for that?

[DasIstWunderblyat]

No, I think me too While I have had their appearrance and personality planned, they always surprise me (I'm the person who plan for character more than I plan for the story)

Sometimes there is an unforeseen aspect of character personality unravel within the story progress, I don't know is it a bad thing or a good thing.

[ar-ninetysix]

I've been thinking about this for a while now!

I thought I had a detailed enough character description to work off of, but once the story started coming more and more together, I saw myself sticking to the descriptions less and less. My main characters are supposed to be this dynamic of an over-protective older sister clashing with her over-thinking younger brother on a police case, with a shared dynamic of being a close-knit family once they're not in their work environment. That was the initial thought.. but it turned out way different. They're just way more fleshed out overall. They even started showing these habits they never had when I wrote those descriptions out!

Sometimes there is an unforeseen aspect of character personality unravel within the story progress, I don't know is it a bad thing or a good thing.

Saaaame lol

[ForLackOfStars]

All the time! Nearly all my characters turn out extremely differently than I originally intend. In some ways it feels less like I'm writing them and more like I'm discovering who they are.

[HGohwell]

Haha I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's always disheartening when people tell me it's the sign of a bad writer.

I don't know is it a bad thing or a good thing.

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing either but I tend to find if I try to write too detailed character sheets and control everything, it starts feeling stiff. Maybe it works for other people but for me I always ends up awkward and forced.

I like to think of it a bit like filling out a profile on a (dating) website or something. The character sheet puts out there that he's 19 and his mother's a witch, but he's holding back is anxiety issues and mild self harm until you write him more and get to know him better.

[simplykit]

i felt the same way makin my character

it all comes down to the artists imagination

makes the character alive, exist like a real person

[DokiDokiTsuna]

A lot of the time, it's on the fly and the characters are doing their own thing as naturally as possible and my role as author is more to make the universe conspire to nudge them in the right direction.

Oh my gosh, that's exactly how I write...I feel like I might cry...

This is a lot of the reason why I have a "just do it" approach to writing. Because if I don't start writing the story, not only will it never exist outside of my head, I might never even really understand how it plays out. The characters are the ones who decide that, as they make their way through the situations I set up for them. I just get to watch and take notes.

[AmysGames]

Yeah, all the time lol. Honestly, usually I just come up with a general character concept, then start writing them and see where it goes. They almost always end up doing things I didn't expect.

[nostalgicroxas]

I write, draw and doodle my characters. I draw them more the more I need them in my story. And my doodles aren't just art- sometime's it's written doodles like "one character tosses a TP roll at the other", "one character shoots a sandwich out of a t-shirt gun at the other, and has to explain how a t-shirt gun exists in their world", and "one character hides under the bed and reaches out to scare the other" .... Can you tell the dork doing all this tossing and scaring is the same character? XD Cause it is gigglesnort

But it's weird things like that that I don't think I could've written if I hadn't done some Character Development Exercises.
Basically ask your character a question as if they're being interviewed on TV and they can't really escape answering it in one way or another.

[OliviaMerteli]

I plan a lot more the story than the characters. In the early preparation stage, they are just tools. They have a "name" (their fonction and a number) and basic traits related to their role in the story, and that's all. I generally decide on their true name and appearence right before their beginning and I discover their personality along the road.
In my current story, it works because the MC just met all the others characters so he's learning to know them too, and them, they temper their nature and don't really show their true colors yet so I have a margin for contradictions in their behavior/personality.
I love to do it that way. I love having surprises concerning my own characters.

[HGohwell]

@DokiDokiTsuna Please don't cry or I'll cry.

Honestly it's really nice to see so many people doing the whole "have a general idea of plot and character and let them go" thing. I love character development exercises, we used to do lots of them in a writers group I was in. But also just writing small pieces. One of my favourite things is to use a random word generator to get a collection of words and do several 500 word pieces for 1 character from them.

@OliviaMerteli It's interesting that you sound like you've got more story than character. I always assumed people with a stricter story wouldn't have this so much because the characters are tools for the plot. We've all seen pieces where we're thinking "is this the same character" because they're forced to do something for plot. So it's really surprising to me that people have this with heavy plot planning as well, not just character driven writing.

[Maps]

Oh yes! I've definitely built my characters as I've written and came up with ideas or pasts for them that I didn't even have originally planned. My original idea for my story was just how I wanted to start it, how I wanted to end it, and three characters I wanted to focus on. I didn't know much more until I began writing and I just let my mind wander and began building my character's personalities and experiences. I also throw in flashbacks so we get a background about their pasts to better explain why they are the way they are/do the things they do.

[indagold]

I usually make a story first with the characters in it and then slowly figure out how what they do works with the plot given. Like my comic All Broken Gods I found the mc to be very naive and realized I needed to give him parents and an upbringing that lead to this naivety about the world: very strict religious upbringing in a isolated commune out in the wilderness. A lot of my character writing is trial and error, where I start giving new attributes to my characters that fit the plot as well as just make sense for how they would act without me even first planning it.

[1UPrime]

My stories always tend to originate from characters for some reason. I have their aesthetics and base personality in mind but not much else when I start to think about them. And then I start to form a story around these main characters and everything just flows, I figure out more and more as I go along, I've had times where I've switched mains from a plotline to a completely new one while retaining all their character from the original plot idea because certain traits I found they had didn't sit well with the environment of the first. It's a lot of fun when you're not yet commercial as you feel characters go through a lot of detailed evolution. But I can imagine how frustrating such a scenario would be in a professional workspace lol.

[Zaboem]

Nope, I am that guy who plans. Like they say in the military: you plan the jump, and then you jump the plan. Some of my plans are more detailed and others are very vague before I begin writing, but there is always a plan. I have never experienced a character deviating from the plan, but I do believe that it can happen.

My wife is more of a channeler or stories than a composer. She complains frequently that she cannot get any writing accomplished because characters are being stubborn. I look at her like she is from Io, but ultimately she isn't wrong.

[OliviaMerteli]

@OliviaMerteli It's interesting that you sound like you've got more story than character. I always assumed people with a stricter story wouldn't have this so much because the characters are tools for the plot. We've all seen pieces where we're thinking "is this the same character" because they're forced to do something for plot. So it's really surprising to me that people have this with heavy plot planning as well, not just character driven writing.

I'm not a big planner anyways so, even if I outline stories before creating the characters, it frequently happens that those ones evolve in a way that interfere with my original plans and I have to adapt the story around them. And sometimes, it give me nice surprises.
But generally, forcing the character to follow the story is what help me build their personality, their past, because I have to find the reason that will make them acting that way.

I have projects where I created the characters first and I'm stuck, because I'm totally unable to build a story around them. It seems I'm only able to work the other way around.

But I like it this way. Because I have to learn something new about my characters almost each scene I write