Thou shalt know thy characters
Yesterday I went along to a novel writing workshop, given by author Harry Bingham as part of the Guildford Book Festival. It was useful, in that highlighted a couple of things that I already knew from the many books on writing that I’ve read, but had long since forgotten. Consequently I have to go back and re-visit the few chapters that I’ve written of my novel.
One of the things that he touched on, was the need to know your characters inside out. Somebody should be able to fire questions about your character, and you should always have the answers. This might seem obvious, but to prove a point he made us go around the room and ask the person next to us a question about their character. There were many that you’d expect - what do they look like, what do they do, do they have children, etc. But what if someone asked you (as someone asked me) - what did your character last dream about? - you might struggle, as did I. Harry said that we should have a list of questions - as many as one hundred - about characters. You might not use this information, but the fact that you are aware of it will make the characters richer and more believable.
It made me think about some of the questions I should be asking. I’m one of those people who needs to plan before writing, and I usually make some effort to write character profiles, but inevitably I get bored trying to think of questions. So, today I’ve started to define a template for these questions, which I’ve attached to this post. Feel free to have a look and use it if you like.
But can you think of any useful questions? The more unusual, the better!