Character Development - Get Active!
I was asked today how I approach character development, so I decided to make some sort of tiny masterpost about it. In it you’ll find memes and questions I found helpful.
This is not about advices and resources, but simply about questions and prompts, questionnaires and things you can write out and answer to help you get to know and develop your characters.
So, in short, it’s focused on inspiration and things that require your activity and get you to write out things. If you’re looking for advices and resources, there are many, many other masterposts floating around on tumblr.
If you have answered all of these, you should definitely have well-rounded characters. And probably grey hair.
What I also find helpful, from my own personal experience (and of course that means it doesn’t fit for everyone) are:
1) playlists - both for songs about your character as well as songs your character would listen to. Lyrics can be helpful, can make you think about your character’s traits you haven’t thought about before. Instrumentals shouldn’t be neglected either, though. These playlists might help you to put you in the right mindset to write your character, too, to get the mood and attitude just right.
2) In case anyone HASN’T noticed yet: character blogs. I love character blogs. I run about a billion of them. I love thinking about what my character would blog about, what he’d post. And it’s been quite obvious to anyone following me through my tags that I love to put posts on this very blog that remind me of my “babies”. That, too, helps me find inspiration and closeness to them. Sometimes it’s a picture that inspires you and helps you write that one scene. (example for a character’s blog, example for a story’s collective blog I do not claim that the writing you’ll find on these blogs is good. I know I’m mediocre at best, but this is about the approach of character development, not about the quality of my writing <.< So please be gentle in this regard.)
3) I find it helpful to use questionnaires that are randomly going around on tumblr for my characters instead of myself. Just pick one of the three billion. Answer them not as yourself, but your character. It helps you develop their voice, their language, their linguistic characteristics and quirks.
4) Do memes and character questionnaires and prompts. Such as the following:
30 Day Character Development Meme
30 Days Of Character Development
Character Questionnaire (first person)
50 Question Character Development Questionnaire
100 Character Development Questions for Writers
Character Development Exercises
10 Days of Character Building
Handling A Cast Of Thousands - Getting To Know Your Character
Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
Top 10 Questions For Believable Characters
Meta-Character-Questionnaire (answer from your POV)
“Creepy Questions” Questionnaire (answer from your character’s POV)
“Talk About” Questionnaire (answer from your character’s POV)
Fancy Word Prompts (the source link didn’t work for me, so I’ll just link my own reblog here)
World Building Questionnaire
15 Fun Questions About Your Story
Character Development Through Hobbies
The Ultimate Writing Resource Masterlist
Character Sheets and Character Creation Masterpost
Creating a Fictional Character (okay, that one is a resource and not activity-based <.< )
Morality Alignment Test (first person)
Now there’s no excuse anymore. Start writing :)
(Disclaimer: None of these memes and challenges are mine. Some of the links are not the original source, unfortunately, but I saw the original ones long time ago and couldn’t find them. Some source links are dead. So please forgive me. I also don’t claim to be a good writer, either. My native language isn’t even English. But as mentioned before, this is just an approach on character development. Nothing else. Maybe it’ll be helpful for a few of you. And if it isn’t or you don’t like a few things or find them ridiculous, I’m sorry if I have wasted your time.)