Interviewing the character

I love to write. I don't know yet if I'm good at it, so I've bought lots of books and check out a few blogs and many websites hunting for golden nuggets that will help me refine my craft.

I ran across some advice that said I ought to interview my character. The idea is that you sort of pretend that your character is a real person and you just sort of split your personality and pretend to interview this person that doesn't exist except in your mind. Because of the way I just explained the idea, you can tell that I balked at this advice. You see, I am a rational, intelligent human being, and I happen to know that it's really the writer who imagines and creates his characters, endowing them with their values and traits, their mannerisms and quirks, and so on. So yes, I rolled my eyes at the idea.

Until I tried it.

I love my main character in this short story I'm writing. He's the main character in a novel I have outlined, and this short story is a further development of the prologue. Anyway, yeah, I think this guy is terrific: an underdog type that picks himself up by his bootstraps, improvises, and overcomes against all the odds. Yeah, predictable American male author, I know, so sue me! By the way, this character is not based on me. He's not much like me at all, except that we're both terrific guys with stunning good looks. Don't distract me! The point is this - I thought I had this guy nailed down, but when I started trying to whip this short story into shape, I found that I, believe it or not, didn't have this guy figured out. So I gave in to the temptation to follow the advice. I interviewed Robert.

Okay, it was a weird interview. This was not a "Geri's Game" sort of thing. I just started with what I knew and then posed a few questions based on those little basics. Yes it was still under my control, I was the creator-in-charge, but it was still very cool and strange. I stood in front of my classroom chalkboard and wrote a few facts down, things fell where they fell as my questions came and went, and within 15 minutes I had the entire board filled with bubbles, arrows, lines, and scribbles: a hundred values, traits and mannerisms for this character.

So even though an author may have the basic plot and characters in mind, there is something really dynamic about how a character, even though they aren’t real except in the mind of the author, somehow develops himself and lets the author know who they are.

I have already written my synopsis for the novel starring this character, but before I start writing the novel itself, I am definitely going to "interview" every single major character in the book.

J.P.T.