2020: Getting personal with characters

ADDED: 02.08.2021

CONTENT: Tips & advice attempts, work in progress

I try to talk about how I can get personal with characters to give more depth or whatever.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I discussed briefly ways to connect to a character personally, and I thought it would be a good idea to expand on those ideas.

So, as I've already written, a great way to get personal with your characters is to relate them with something or someone that means something to you. Here's the list I wrote:

• Your character may have shared traits with you
• They may have shared traits with someone and/or existing characters you care about
• They may be like the person you aspire to be or not to be
• They may be like the person you wish you could be or glad you have/will never become
• Etc. etc. etc.

Now I've introduced the list again, I can elaborate.

1. Your character may have shared traits with you

When I say "find a personal connection with your characters," you might first think of taking bits of yourself and enforcing those traits onto the characters you write. That pretty much sums up this entire point. 

However, using only yourself as a base could spark a bit of a challenge, since it's often that the way you view yourself is so complex that it's difficult to link yourself to character traits without thinking of too many or nothing striking at all.

But I'm not saying it's impossible to simplify the traits that you see in yourself. 

So, because the way you see yourself is so complex, it's actually possible to split your entire personality into an entire cast of characters (at least, as long as  you expand on and/or exaggerate them). 

For instance, you'll likely find that the way you behave around the people closest to you is different to the way you'd act towards a stranger, a boss or tutor, a casual friend, or an acquaintance. And even the way you behave in front of your immediate family, non-immediate family, and your closest friends may differ as well.

You can also quickly calculate your MBTI type that can give a pretty surface-level or "not-so-totally-specific-to-you" sort of list of traits that may or may not describe you. Then you can match your character with the traits of your type. 

(Another option is to even just give them a type based off what you think matches their direction, but that's a little off topic for this section...)

Or finally, you can just get people that you think know you well enough to describe you. But it's probably best that the topic gets brought up smoothly or else it might feel jarring to one or both parties.

2. They may have shared traits with someone and/or existing characters you care about or someone you know cares about

This one may be a lot easier to think about compared to the first, especially since you view other people and especially characters in a more simplified way compared to the way you view yourself. 

When it comes to real life people, they'll tend to behave in a way where they (usually subconsciously) show the side they want to show to you, AKA a portion of their personality. 

This may lead to a little bit of an awkward encounter if that person finds out a character you made has been based entirely off of them, especially if they never knew from the start, so it's best to have multiple sources of inspiration. 

3. They may be like the person you aspire to be or not to be

blah

4. They may be like the person you wish you could be or glad you have/will never become

blah