RebelGoddess

Someone suggested this idea to me and after trying it out, I definitely love it!

The point of this exercise is to see if your characters are too similar and/or to find ways to make each one more distinct.

Even in parts where it didn't help separate my characters, it definitely gave me inspiration!

The basic idea is to make a chart with each of your characters' names at the top of a column.

At the start of each row put a simple word or a popular phrase that is called something different/said differently by different people.

Some of the words I use are:

Sofa, bureau, dress, pants, clothes, alcohol, "cool", "Oh well", mother, father, attractive, etc.

For example, if I had three characters (a teenage girl, an old man, and a man in his twenties) I would put each one's name at the top of a column. Then say I chose "cool", I would write it down at the start of one of the rows.

Under each character's name I would write how they would say it. So the teenage girl would most likely say "Hot" or "Cool", the old man would probably say "Hip" or maybe "Super", and the guy in his twenties would say something like "Cool" or "aweosme".

This is a really basic example, but I hope I explained well how I set it up.

But basically, I think that it's a great way to really hear your characters and get to know how they express thenselves. I've also found that it's a good way to show a character's background/social or economical status/etc without going into a lot of exposition.

I hope it works for you guys, or at least gets your mind going!

Racheal

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Damian_Rucci

Ahh amazing! I never thought about that, I'm going to start doing that soon. Thanks,

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seigfried007

Wait 'til you get truly colorful people in your head to answer those question

And some really colorful terms to have them look at--like semen, sex, nagging woman, adulteress, woman of loose moral caliber...

Others like storm, cigarette, currency, beautiful, man, woman, car, happy and unhappy have some delightful euphemisms too.

For instance, one of my guys blatantly refused to call a car' 'a car' and instead insisted I show him a picture so he could name the kind of car it was. Another reffered to both nagging women and storms as 'howlers' and sometimes 'banshees' but had all kinds of names for anything with tobacco in it (apparently, he names them for size and flavor--thus, a 'vanilla finger' or 'vanilla index' is a vanilla-treated cigar and a 'cherry ballpoint' is a cherry cigarette) though he had no name for tobacco other than 'those smelly plants in my closet'.

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lin

Why is it neccesary to have a chart to keep this straight. If you don't have an inner voice working for you characters, I don't see how changing their words around according to plan is going to help you. Are you going to make the list include every possible choice, of limit your dialogue to the words on your chart.

Quit screwing around and write a chapter, already.

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Noirllyn

We did an exercise like this in a creative writing course I took. It wasn't limited to expressions, though. We had a segment for expressions, one for gestures, then a few for different kinds of physical traits (clothing, head, body, I think it was) and segments for personality traits.

It wasn't necessary to the production of the things I was writing at the time, but now that I'm writing longer things with more characters, I find at least the part about clothing helpful, like how my mother makes out a chart of which outfits she has worn with each of her sections so her MW-evening class doesn't see her in the same thing the whole time. I've noticed a few times that I've made foils wear similar outfits to their counterparts in the same way, which didn't really help the foil. The charts just help find little technical things that readers would probably look at and say, "Hey. These people are really similar, I thought they were supposed to be different. Am I not getting the story?". Just the same, it makes it easier to link characters together, either as family members, friends, business partners, or intellectual cohorts.

Terminology does help to set-up peer groups, cliques and regions, but I usually use pre-existing groups I have good knowledge of, so I don't have to keep a running list of terms that each group uses in order to initiate a new member. If I ever get amnesia, it'll help me finish my stories, though. :p

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seigfried007

Considering that not all characters pop into one's head full formed like Athena from Zeus' brow, I don't think the exercise is completely wasted--used correctly, it can help engender that voice, and help us listen to it.

Arbitrarily assigning esxpressions, however, would defeat the purpose entirely because then the author has nothing but two-dimensional gestures and descriptions to vomit-via-keyboard. Nothing but the same old 'russet curls framing her face' and "Ho-ho what!"s used in so much fantasy.

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lin

Consider carefully the word "character".

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RebelGoddess

LOL!

A: The chart is not for keeping this straight, nor is it absolutely necessary. It’s merely a way to put on paper each character’s personality (their “inner voice”) as shown through their language.

It’s basically a visual aid to help the writer literally see each character’s individuality and compare it to the other characters (either to create similarities or to ensure that each character is different).

B: I’ve already finished my novel; now I’m in the process of re-editing it over and over so that I can make it as interesting, multidimensional, and memorable as possible.

Haha, good idea! Great terms, especially if you need to get to know the character on their lowest, crudest, or freest state of mind!

The “answer” for each character isn’t set in stone or anything, it’s just a basic idea.

It’s kind of like doing “word association” with your characters; it’s just a way to see how they would respond if they were a real person. It’s also not supposed to be a long, thinking exercise; it’s definitely one to be completed quickly, using whatever words(s) come to mind first.

Also, it’s a dialogue exercise; most of what you write down would go into/be seen in their speech.

Lin, I’m probably reading wayyyy too much into what you wrote, but what exactly do you mean?

Racheal

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lin

What I mean is like, "what is your character like"?

How much does it have to do with whether you say sofa or couch or what your favorite color is?

What do you KNOW about people when you say you know them?

Can you chart it out? Would you?

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archer88iv

Sure. Catch being, if you've got a flair for characterizing shit to begin with, you wouldn't bother.

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dejudicibus

The real problem with characters is to avoid that they are too similar to... you. Just think to some popular actor as Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman. They spent months to think, act, speak as the characters they had to play. You have to do the same for several characters at the same time! The only way to write a good character is to identify yourself with him/her. Not easy. Gender could be different, he or she can believe in ideas you do not trust, he or she can behave as you would never do. That's the challenge.

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lin

Bottom line....if your characters are so insipid and cloney that you need to make sofa/couch charts to tell them apart, you need to find another form of self-expression.

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RebelGoddess

And then answer this:

What can you tell about a person by the way they speak?

A lot.

Yes, what you can glean is often superficial, but it gives characters distinction until the rest of their individual traits are established.

I get it, you hate this idea.

I enjoyed spending 10 minutes doing it and it gave me a NEW perspective of how my characters appear.

Just because someone may want/need to do this exercise doesn't mean the characters are insipid or "cloney"; it's a tool for the writer, not the character.

Racheal

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lin

Excuse me, but this thread is entitled "Making Your Characters Different From Each Other"

If that's the problem, it requires a lot more drastic solution. And no, I don't think you really tell much about a character from whether or not the say sofa instead of couch. Maybe that's just me.

Of course it's not a tool for the character. LOL

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Truth-Teller

You want to separate two different characters?

Learn to write better dialogue. Also, write in the two extremes.

Have characters share ideas but come to different conclusions. That way you can always tell them apart, which gives them their unique trait.