Shen

I found out that my characters always change. For example, if I get to know a new person and I find him interesting, I put some elements of his character in my old character and i just cant keep it stable. I find that old characters are boring so I put new ones and then they change, too, and it seems that I'll never finish that story! how can I immune my characters against changes?

imrhati

don't immunizer your character sagainst changes. as you write you subcounsciously will deciede small details about them (i do anyway), and you will find your characters doing things you didn't intend. This is good becuase your characters are fleshing out. If you find this happeneing just keep going. then when you are rewriting make it all match. good luck.

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Banzai

Change isn't a bad thing; think about it, are you the same person now as you were a year ago? people change, especially when exposed to conflict (such as is almost always present in a story). So your characters changing is a good thing, it means your writing is coming alive, to use a cliched phrase.

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"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you"
-"The Wasteland" by T.S. Elliot

Shen

Thanks, guys, but I dont thiink you get it. When I write about someone I imagine him, and when I say that I change his character I mean that all of a sudden I start imagening him as someone else. I put someone elses character in a role that is not his. My new characters doing or saying things that the old ones would never do, and thats bad, because it alters my plot. Its not like the character developed or realized new things, no. It just turned into someone else. What can I do about it?

Fantasy of You

If your characters change everytime you go to write, then you don't know your characters, and no one can help you with that. Ask your character questions, like an interview, give him a history, past and motives. Whenever you feel other personalities seeping into them, take a look at the things you've written about them. It should fix it, hopefully.

Banzai

What I did was before I started writing my current project, I wrote a background to each major character, explaining their history, looks and personality. When I'm writing now, I frequently refer back to it (though less frequently as I continue with writing, and become more and more familiar with the characters I created). This helps my characters to remain the same characters, and only develop as consequence of the storyline. Hope that helps.

__________________
"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you"
-"The Wasteland" by T.S. Elliot

Hakeem

Give your character plenty of room for development and growth, so as to return to it when you feel the need for a change.

It is not wrong to alter minor qualities/feelings of a character, because naturally, they tend to evolve and change by time. Yet if you tend to make major changes that are hugely contradictory, then because you're still uncertain about your characters. You may want to try and write from your own life, your own experiences-- this would make the character more solid and realistic.

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"The great art of life is the sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain." -Lord Byron

Omnisu

Writing is change. Stop fretting about it and write it.

aspiring

I consider this a problem of inexperience. I used to have exactly the same problem with my characters. Now, eight years after I started writing, I don't. It's all to do with becoming more confident in your writing abilities.

Polartch

I'd say just write, and eventually part way in the story you'll remember all their traits, but when you're editing/revising, change all the beginning stuff if you need to.

Polartch

Kaz

Hello everyone. I am new to this site and this is my first post. Good luck to all of you in your writing goals. I am pasting in an article I once wrote to assist writers with fleshing out characters. My site has several writer's resource directories to assist writers.
Regards,
Kaz
http://www.carolkluz.homestead.com


Play God! Give Your Characters Zing!

The Body Physical

You’ve decided that your protagonist is going to be a male. Now you need to instill this person with a personality. He needs to have feelings, dreams, and desires. And you have the creative power to mold him into whatever you want.


Will he be tall, very short, very tall, average, stout, muscular, lean, gaunt, skinny, obese, slender, or average? Is he going to be a child, a teen, a young man, an old man, or somewhere in between? What race is he and what is his ethnic background? Will he be from a new race?


Mold him and watch him take shape. Assume you’ve created a young man in his late twenties with a slender physique and shaved head. Don’t stop there. Finish molding him until he becomes someone. Color his eyes and eyebrows. Work on his features. Does his face boast chiseled features or are they softer? Is his nose slightly large, or maybe it’s a bit crooked from a childhood accident when his brother ran into him. Is his face interesting, pleasant to look at, handsome, rugged, patrician, snobbish, youthful, ugly? Does he have unusual quirks like chuckling when he’s embarrassed, or blushing? Does he mumble to himself when he’s thinking? Is he sensitive, slow thinking, sharp, street smart, book smart? Does he get into trouble? Is he law abiding? Is he loyal and polite to his family and friends? Is he rebellious? Will he fight when pushed, or will he try diplomacy?


Clothes

Clothing often categorizes people. Does your character work in a business office and wear suits with ties? Is he a fireman by day who wears casual slacks and golf shirts when off duty? Is he a ranch hand who dresses in faded jeans, boots, and long-sleeved western-cut shirts? Is he a by day conservative and by night liberal who wears a rock band T-shirt, tattered jeans, and sandals, or is he an athlete who wears jogging suits or shorts? Maybe he’s in the military, or maybe he’s from another world and dresses in colorful jump suits or dragon leather.

Don’t forget accessories. What sort of shoes and socks will he wear? Does he wear a ring and what sort? How about a medallion, or gold chain, or earring? Does he wear a belt? Does he carry a wallet or shove his money into his pockets? Does he wear a broad sword across his back or carry a knife in his pocket, on his belt, or hidden in his boot?


Once you have him dressed in a manner that suits his status in life and his personality, you have taken several major steps in fleshing out your character, but the work doesn’t stop there.


Environment

Your character needs some place to live. Where he lives and his habits will help to mold his personality. Will he be neat and organized, a total slob, an average guy who occasionally leaves his socks and underwear scattered on the floor? Does he live in an apartment, a house, alone, with others, in a tent, in a sheep wagon, in a condo, on a houseboat, in a castle?


Back History and Psychological Issues


Interview your character now and find out where he grew up. Get him to talk about his parents, his friends, his escapades, his siblings, his school, his religion, his political beliefs, and anything else you’d like to know about him.


Ask him why he hates his oldest sister, or why he and his father haven’t spoken in five years, or what he did that landed him in jail for two days when he was in college. Ask him how he managed after his mother was killed by a mugger.


What are his aspirations? Does he want to own a company someday, run his own cattle ranch, destroy the evil dragon, marry his high school sweetheart and raise a family? What motivates him and why? Does he want to find the man who murdered his mother, attend a rock concert, join the CIA, run for the Senate, write a musical score, or join the priesthood?


Status Quo

We all have ideas on usual types of characters seen over and over in fiction. Misunderstanding is rampant when an individual is portrayed as a mean and threatening individual but turns out to be just the opposite. We also see this with the underdog—the meek person who comes through with an incredible courageous act to save the day. Others include the vengeful woman, the antihero, the hero. So, what you want to do with your newly fleshed-out character is avoid making him a stereotype. Do this by giving him an added habit or quirk that doesn’t quite fit the stereotype. He could be a liberal senator who secretly listens to Rush Limbaugh, a professor who likes reading children’s books, an opera singer who has a collection of Grateful Dead records.

Giving your character contradictory traits is a good thing. You want him to be unique. Just try not to follow the status quo when doing it.


Actions, Reactions, and Feelings


Our protagonist is readying himself to help drive the plot of your story. How he acts, reacts, and feels all play an important role as do his interactions with the other characters in your story. Different factors about
your characters will determine their reactions.

Some of these are ethnic background, education, age, environment, rebellious personality or conforming personality, and even specific events in his background.
Suppose your protagonist and his best friend, a female, are accidentally bumped on a busy street. The memory of his mother’s mugging and subsequent murder flash through his mind, spurring him to grab the offender and slam him against the wall of a building, his eyes flashing with anger. She immediately grabs the protagonist’s arm, begging him to let the man go, insisting that it was only an accident.


It isn’t the fact that they were bumped that’s important. It’s how elements of their personalities were revealed by their reactions to the incident. By this revelation, the plot has thickened, because we now know that the protagonist has a weak spot, an explosiveness that will play a role in future events. We learned that his friend is forgiving and compassionate.


Introspection

Help your readers to know what makes your protagonist tick by allowing them to occasionally see what he is thinking. Thoughts not only help build who he is; they allow the reader to bond with him as well or at least to understand him more fully. Now your character is whole. You’ve taken all of the necessary steps to breathe life into him so that your readers will be interested enough to want to know what is going to happen to him. Will he achieve his goals? Will they want him to? Will the readers feel sad when he fails? Will they feel anger when someone does him wrong? Will they rejoice when he succeeds? Will they laugh when he’s the butt of a joke? Will they cry if he dies, or will they think he deserved it?

When your readers react to your characters, you know you’ve succeeded in making them real.

Rob

You either need to be more disciplined about sticking with the characters the way you intended while you write and not letting them change the plot, which will come with practice, or you should allow them to change during writing and make sure during revision that everything is consistent by the time the story is completed, which will come with practice.

As long as everything is consistent by the time your reader starts reading, either way is fine. It's really down to you how to work. Some feel constrained if they try to plan too rigidly in advance, while others like to know where they're going before they start.

rydenthorne

For my major characters in the novel I'm writing, I do an extensive bio sheet, including their motivations and goals. As for changing characters, what you might want to do is have the character start a certain way and then evolve as the story unfolds. It's ok to have dynamic characters, but you need to make the growth or decay of the people realistic.

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