Character Interviews

[Raphee]

I know, I have a major problem with my MC. Even I don't feel sympathy for the poor soul. Though I have the MS finished.

I've decided to do an interview of her to get to know her better. Anyone of you can give me pointers in this direction, I'll be grateful. since I've never done one before.

Or any other stuff in general that may help me in making the lady in question someone that my readers can love, hate, empathize and buy a book for.

Thanks.

[IdiotsRUs]

I don't know about interview but I do ask questions, such as

What do you love most
What do you hate most ( and why)
What is your biggest fear
What is your darkest secret
What is the single worst thing that has happened to you, and why was it the worst ( and again for best)
which is the one thing guaranteed to make you lose your temper, and why

Also silly stuff, just to make the character come alive for me a bit more

What is your favourite swearword / pudding / tree

:)

[Devil Ledbetter]

Raphee, I do these a lot. Which isn't to say my method will work for you, but I'll describe it. I freewrite about the situations I'm working on, and ask the character whatever questions come up naturally in that. For me, the key is to ask open-ended questions that have to do with the story, his relationships with other characters, and his motivations. So rather than a laundry list of stock questions, my questions are always specific to the story. In this way, the character tells me the story from his POV.

This may sound strange, but I find my characters much more cooperative if I start the interview by apologizing to the character for neglecting or misunderstanding him. I let him know this is his opportunity to set the record straight.

Good luck.

[Brighid]

There are many resources out there for character sketches and character profiles. Think about the story from your characters perspective. What is her motivation? What is her goal in the story? What is the conflict and how does she feel about it?

In a broader sense, think about what she looks like, her favorite foods, her quirky mannerisms, her good points and bad points. Even jotting down a few traits may help you.

[citymouse]

Why not ask someone to read the MS and then that can do an interview. This reader would most likely have lots of questions and that could be the interview.

Frankly you've set yourself up. If you have no sympathy for you MC then readers will most likely feel that same.
C

[Finni]

My characters are real people in my eyes. They live in my head until the story is finished.

If you need to feel more sympathy for your MC then you need to peel away the skin of the character. Not everyone starts out bad. Well, unless your story is scifi and your MC was born evil. Having any main character purely good or purely evil is silly though. Your MC must be complex and be able to change. There must also be a reason why the MC is not so good. Why isn't he easy to like? Did he watch his mother get killed by the character he has the most conflict with? Was he orphaned as a boy? Did he work his ass off all his life just to realize the system won't let him succeed? Explore this. Find the reason. And then milk it. Let the reader see this character in pain and vulnerable.

[Ravenlocks]

What Finni said. I think the whys and feelings behind your MC's personality are more important than externals like her favorite color. If you know why she is the way she is and how she feels about it, you'll be in her head and can make her sympathetic.


P.S. The only character interview I ever did featured a character interviewing ME. It's here (http://ravesblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/interview-with-the-raven/).

[Matera the Mad]

Any kind of dialog with one's characters is good. I am not comfortable with formal interviews, and neither are my characters, drat them. My favorite thing is to lie down, pull up the blankies, close my eyes, and play fly-on-the-wall while two of them talk over a problem. It can be completely off-plot-topic, I just want to know what they really think and how they feel about each other. I might role-play as one of them if I need to direct the conversation. Mostly I just let it happen. The result is usually a good nap spiced with some fresh insight. I get up and write.

[Raphee]

If you need to feel more sympathy for your MC then you need to peel away the skin of the character. Not everyone starts out bad. Your MC must be complex and be able to change. There must also be a reason why the MC is not so good. Why isn't he easy to like? Did he watch his mother get killed by the character he has the most conflict with? Was he orphaned as a boy? Did he work his ass off all his life just to realize the system won't let him succeed? Explore this. Find the reason. And then milk it. Let the reader see this character in pain and vulnerable.

Thanks to all for the pointers.
I qouted Finni because this one sentence is where my character is at :
Did he work his ass off all his life just to realize the system won't let him succeed?

Also I think I used the wrong word sympathy; it could also be empathy. The MC is not inherently evil or bad. She is undergoing a change whereby she has to break the rules of her house (and her own belief system) and risk becoming an outcast.

What I have felt is that I do not necessarily feel empathy for her actions.
This could also be due to the narrative distance set up because of the use of multiple POV in 3rd.
At the same time, I have probably not hurled enough stones at her.
Working on this MS for a year now and I wonder if I am too close to the story. Still I am pretty sure that the MC needs development.

Raven, your interview of ME was good fun.
Thanks all.

[EelKat]

I actually created a character interview to use when I need to know more about one of my characters. I kept getting so many requests from people on NaNoWriMo asking me to email it too them, that I finally created a website for it. A lot of folks on NaNoWriMo said that it helped them create their characters. Here it is (http://www.squidoo.com/CharacterProfiles), maybe it'll help you out too.

I used this as the "template" to create my character profiles on MySpace. Here are a few of them to give you an idea of how I use the character interview to create a finished character:

Etiole (http://www.myspace.com/etioleswanzen)

Razz (http://www.myspace.com/razzburyswanzen)

Blackbird (http://www.myspace.com/esmerald_blackbird)

hope this helps.

[Jenan Mac]

I don't do interviews, but I three-year-old characters sometimes so I can make myself like them better. "Why?" "Why?" "Why?"

Gordon's a jerk and none of his cousins get along with him. WHY?
Because he thinks they're all going to Hell. WHY?
Because he belongs to this particular religious sect and they don't. WHY? (What made him convert?)
And so on down the road for a dozen or more whys. Gordon's still a sanctimonious rat-bastard at the end of it, but it's because he's trying to be the best man he can be. And meantime, I've discovered he loves his kids and is completely mystified by his marriage.

[britlitfantw]

I've had a lot of fun interviewing my characters, and it's helped me develop them further:

http://britlitfantwin.livejournal.com/tag/character+interviews

I found this a good resource for interview questions:

http://www.tarakharper.com/k_char2.htm

[Danger Jane]

Write alternate scenes. It really helps to write a scene that might be really hard and that you know will never make it into the MS, but that shows a different (maybe darker) side of your character. And you can use this to highlight the qualities that really do make it into the MS.

[jules]

I do character interviews a lot. It feels like a very natural way of finding out more about a character to me. I never plan them in advance, I just sit down and start writing. I write a couple of lines of description to start with, and then just dialogue. The interviewer is somebody they don't know but who they (usually) feel able to trust. Some of my characters are very paranoid and won't open up, but that's rare. For these, I have to give them a reason to do it. I usually start by asking them their name, and then something about the task I see them fulfilling in the story.

Example:

Subject is a white male, approximately fifty years old. Dark hair with some grey visible, brown eyes, clean shaven. Wearing jeans with a casual shirt.

I: Please sit down.
S: Thank you.
I: Name?
S: Sam Foster
I: You're an engineer on the compression drive project?
S: That's right. I work with Doc Lincoln to translate her ideas into drawings for the fabrication team to produce.
I: So you know the drive pretty intimately, then.
S: Yeah. Perhaps even better than Lincoln herself. She understands the theory, but I know the machine.
I: Right. I know Lincoln works late a lot. Do you stay with her?
S: Not if I can help. I've got other things to do with my time. She might want to spend her entire life making this thing work, but I have better ideas.
I: Like?
S: Well, I like spending time with my kids, you know?
I: Of course. Tell me about them.
...

It works best if the questions flow from the answers like that.

[HourglassMemory]

Imagine her being mistreated. But DO imagine it.
Do you feel sorry for her? Do you feel, in your mind, like going next to her and protect her from the 'evil person'.
If so that's a start.
Make the evil person be extremely mean to her. Try to feel what she would feel. Try to imagine what would come to her mind, her past. Doesn't have to be dramatic scenes. Just scenes that would flash through her mind if she was about to get killed.
Imagine her drawing, as a child, something with some crayons her grandmother gave to her.
And now she's being mistreated. Poor girl/woman. That girl who once drew innocent drawings with colored crayons bought by her grandmother is not getting beaten and insulted for whatever you think of.

This is just an idea. You might think it's too mean or weird.


You really need to get attached to the character. So, in your mind, create situations that would lead you to get closer to her, as it would in real life.

Quite honestly, compared to this an interview is boring....

[ishtar'sgate]

It sounds like she's flat. You don't love her. You don't hate her. You simply don't care what happens to her. An interview with a character wouldn't give me what I want to know. I could ask someone about their likes and dislikes, what ticks them off, what moves them to tears, etc. but it isn't until they're actually faced with a situation and are forced to deal with it, that a character emerges as either sympathetic or unlikeable. For example, I had a mouthy old guy in my last novel. A bigger, younger man got fed up with him and told him to shut up or get thumped. He was just a skinny old guy so it would be quite normal for him to be afraid of the threat, clam up and be quiet. But my old guy was a bit of a rooster and didn't take into account his age and lack of strength so far from being intimidated, he became the aggressor. He lost, of course, but turned into such a sympathetic character that some readers complained to me when I killed him off. They'd grown fond of the old fellow. They cared about him. I don't know your story so don't know what your MC has to face but for me conflict stresses characters to the point where they have to make a choice and the way they respond to conflict lets the reader see who they are and decide to either love them or hate them. Don't know if that helps at all but it's possible you know your character well enough, you just haven't given her any tough choices to let you and the reader see what kind of stuff she's made of.
Linnea

[Raphee]

WOW, guys. I cannot thank you enough. All the pointers, tips and links are great. It has started making me think in a fresh manner about my character.
Danger Jane, I have been thinking today of worse situations for my character; so the alternate scenes idea is great.
Linnea, you are correct. She is flat, indecisive and waits far too long in the story to take a decision. As I revise my MS, this thing glared out at me. Apparently, since her external conflict is low, her internal conflict is low too.
Reviewing my character has shown to me some other shortcomings in the story.

Hourglassmemory; thanks for the idea. I'll definitely do what you say as this sounds a great way to have someone reveal themselve.

Thanks all.

[Danger Jane]

Danger Jane, I have been thinking today of worse situations for my character; so the alternate scenes idea is great.


Yeah. Besides giving you ideas for a nebulous plot, it can help you solidify ideas you were already committed to. I just did one where a character took a major opposite path than the one I want for my story, and the weirdness of it just convinced me more of how the story will go. It'll help me write the real scene stronger.