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Hello, Main Character
6 January 2010 | Filed Under Tools of the Trade
Every writer I’ve ever met, including on the internet, absolutely swears by the character dossier or the character interview. I do not understand why.
If you’re unfamiliar with these, let me enlighten you.
The Dossier: For each main character, you invent everything you might ever possibly need to know about them. There are hundreds of lists out there you can use, which take you through basics like appearance and family and minutiae like favorite color and desserts.
The Interview: Instead of listing everything, you write a short scene with (or just list) a series of questions for your main characters to answer. It covers the same information as above.
Both of these techniques are designed to get you to know more about your character. I’ve tried both with little success. I’m sorry, but filling out an endless form is a completely useless way for me to know my characters.
In case you share my frustration, let me share what I use: my mind.
I run through scenes in my head, most of which will probably never see ink and paper. I talk to the characters in my head, hear their imaginary complaints of how the story is going, console them with new plot points. We never cover favorite colors or desserts. I learn about their family if they bring it up themselves. I don’t drill them on minutiae. It’s irrelevant for my purposes.
If the dossiers and interviews work for you, more power to ya. Otherwise, I invite you to try my technique. It just might help you learn about your characters.
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I feel this resonates profoundly with very similar practices used in the actor’s preparation. The acts are fundamentally the same, but they are altered slightly. The Character Vitae, much like the Dossier, seeks to quantify and objectify any possible element of the character in question. Uta Hagen published her Objective Exercise, a.k.a. the Nine Questions, which are in essence the same as any Interview questions; they do, however seek to put action as part of the inquisition. (The questions and an example: http://blogs.fruitportschools.net/shepler/files/2009/10/Nine-Questions.pdf)
Like you, I find a lot of these exercises redundant and inapplicable. I agree that an organic discovery process is far more useful in my work, both as an actor and director. However, there are two things to be said for this formulaic approach:
1. Not all characters possess the knowledge or the life experience we possess, both in a positive or negative sense. Thus, it gives a necessary impediment to our minds’ natural tendency to fill in or present information that may not be necessarily true to the character, but to our perception of the character. If I wrote a story about an eight year old feral child, I am tempted to “socialize” its actions since that is the behavior I can readily describe; if I wrote a story about an eighty year old blacksmith, unless I do a lot of hands-on research, I will present the forging process in a way I would forge it, not how he would forge it.
2. Narratologically, it is becoming more and more necessary as stories and narrative become more and more post-structural. Within the confines of an ordered universe, the organic process is free to develop as the world evolves. However, that system is thrown askew when, for instance, time becomes non-linear and we have to determine how, if at all, the differences in experiences have manifested in the character at each point. Do we step in Heraclitus’ river and present two different people? Or is it closer to Sartre’s thing-in-itself, in that the individual is the same but has to display itself in accordance to different circumstances?
Creation is a fickle mistress.
I don’t think either of those options can’t be solved organically.
1. Similar to preparing for a role, you have to sink into the character’s consciousness to discover/create the different knowledges and life experiences. If you are tempted to “socialize” the feral child’s actions, listing information wouldn’t change that. But hopefully, if you mentally run through a series of scenes, you won’t run into that problem; or at the very least, you’ll notice that you have been socializing the actions, and find a way to fix it. For instance, if the child was raised by wolves, it would make sense for the child to act like a wolf.
2. If you have an idea of where you are going with a character in a post-structural story, this shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. Otherwise, that’s the whole purpose of re-writes!
Amen.
At first I misread that to just be “every writer I’ve ever met on the internet,” and I was thinking well duh, one of those memes goes around every couple months. :p
Also, I chuckled a bit at the thought of “consoling” your characters with plot points, and learning about their families if they felt like talking about it. Of course, you have to be careful; the more you introduce as your characters bring it up, the more you have to worry about using a wizard/plot ninja/whatever to fix up holes introduced by new knowledge. And you can’t just fix it with a rewrite if it’s in a sequel
Ok, right back at you! I giggled at the idea of a wizard-ninja. Oh, and new knowledge is always easy to fix: someone lied to them the first time.
1. Very true, but unless you are intimately familiar with the behavior of wolves, it behooves you to at least make an objective analysis of familial structure, rearing tendencies, etc. The act of researching a character’s past – again, only if you aren’t writing something you know very well – is in essence a listing of information. You can shorthand it mentally, picking one tidbit or another to emphasize or minimize, but the list does exist. And isn’t finding out new things to write about part of the fun?
2. Whether the problem is solved quickly or no, the existence of such a stylistic question does mandate a choice. That is the core of both the mental playing out of scenarios you advocate as well as the Interview method.
I think what I am positing is that the organic process is very effective for those who are able to utilize it, but the other method is still useful in doses. To continue the parallels between acting and writing, Stanislavski’s System is perhaps the most thorough attempt to systematize the creative impetus of theatre. Bertolt Brecht noted that the reason the System was a successful system was because, first and foremost, it was a system. An actor could continue to discover truths and succeed without the System, but its very existence took an intangible concept (compelling theatre) and made it accessible to even the least visible of actors.
Such is the same in writing. Up until a hundred years ago, stories and other forms of narrative were largely immeasurable, with analysis focusing on what they meant for society instead of what they were individually. The advent of narratology as a field of study (and the aforementioned tools as developed applications) means people can objectively analyze a thought, project it using specific methodology, and make something.
That’s what is so fascinating to me about both fields – we’ve come to a point where people like you and I can compose pieces of art completely conceptually, but we have completely objective tools available to refine our work. These tools didn’t exist for thousands of years, and now we can freely choose to use them or not. Amazing times.
I see. Sorry, I misunderstood the point of number 1. I concede that you would need to take notes for research, but I am not against note-taking or outlining. In fact, some writers would do better for a little research. I’m merely stating my annoyance with and – through my experience – the futility of making a master list for each character in order to learn about them.
Your comment about “analysis focusing on what they meant for society” reminds me that stories used to be told through the oral tradition, picking up embellishments along the way. That, combined with the fact that every telling had its own inherent differences from other tellings, made each “story” unique. Now English classes dissect every single word of the classics. We’ve come a long way. Amazing times indeed.
No silly, not a wizard-ninja, a wizard *or* a ninja. If something doesn’t add up, a wizard did it, *or* a plot ninja sneaks back in to…I dunno, assassinate whoever pointed out the hole?
Ok, but you said wizard/plot ninja/whatever which means…wizard-ninja or plot-ninja or wizard-whatever or plot-whatever
I don’t use the dossier approach either. It’s not that I have found it useful or not useful, but simply that it bores me. I find my characters are usually born into my mind quite aware of who and what they are, and they unfold for me scene by scene, sometimes revealing more about themselves than I feel like I could have imagined for them.
Like the author of this piece I also have whole imagined dialogues with them play out in my head, most of which never makes it to paper.
Don’t make me drop you in a dip again, smarty pants :p
So true, that characters can reveal more about themselves in a scene than you could imagine by yourself, especially cold. I know that sounds like the same thing to most people, which is why I’m glad to be speaking to writers.
psh. you can try!
[...] Not only do they have a detailed outline that is almost as good as the novel itself, they have the character super-dossiers, a to-scale map of every forest or castle or closet ever, a history of their world that begins [...]