Listening to the Voices in Your Head
My friends and I are always talking about how our characters do this or would say that or think that or whatever. The characters literally exist in a plane of our brains, and we have very little to do with what they decide to do when we write for them. For instance, sometimes we'll be talking and thegreatonesapprentice will say, "What do you think Daniyah would do in this situation?" Instead of me whipping out my omnipotent power and saying, "Well, I'm the writer and I think that she should do this." I stop. In my mind I sit down with Daniyah and say, "Hello Daniyah. thegreatonesapprentice was thinking that maybe this should happen. How would you react to that?" Then I wait for her reply. Sometimes, it's something completely different than what I would have thought! Don't ask me how or why it works, but it does.
The most frustrating experience is when those voices in my head refuse to talk to me. When thegreatonesapprentice and I first started writing Apacolypse, I had a really hard time getting into Mr. Archibald Von Calvistan's head. He didn't seem very interested in talking about himself, except for every once in a while when one of his posts would allude to a mysterious girl named "Maggie" or his family. I would ask him, "Who's Maggie?" and he would kind of just turn his back on me in a "I don't want to talk about it" kind of way. I would throw every possible background senerio at that old man to figure out what his deal was, and finally something that thegreatonesapprentice and I threw stuck. Then another thing stuck, then another. Now I have nearly all of Archie's backstory figured out. But it is a far different story than we had originally planned. In fact, both he and Sammy became the stars of our story by accident.
Originally, we started with two other characters: Abby and Jack. After we created the bios, our conversation went something like this:
Me: Both Jack and Abigal seem to be the adventuring type, and maybe it's because I'm taking an art history and exploration class, but I wondered what would happen if they all got into an expidition or somthing. Maybe we have a person who wants to go out and explore the "ruins" of the past generations so is assembling a team to go with him/her so that, you know, he/she doesn't get eaten....
greatonesapprentice: O_O ... You are a genius.
me: Haha thanks! You write him or me?
greatonesapprentice: You do it. I will sit back and learn.
me: Okay! I'm feeling like there is a little sibling/child or something tagging along with archeologist or something....I can't decide what archaeologists age should be....SPEAK TO ME ARCHAEOLOGIST!
greatonesapprentice: I think an older man, some kind of uncle relationship? Maybe? Someone Jack and Abby can look up to?
me: Ooh! I like. :) You should be the person he drags around with him.
greatonesapprentice: Ok! Like a little apprentice?
And thus, Archie and Sammy were born. :P And instead of just being the two random characters necessary to bring Jack and Abby together, they became the backbone of our story.
I guess, my point of this post is that part of the fun with roleplaying is that you never know what's going to happen! You never really know which way things are going to go. Your characters might come out and surprise you if you stop to really listen to them. Think of their background, what they're more prone to do in given situations, how they feel, what they like, and try not to get yourself confused in there. You discover a lot about your characters that way, and even a lot about yourself and what you really think and feel. It's an amazing experience. :)
Well, I suppose that's my rant for today. :) Go out and write something today! Find a character and explore them. If you're having trouble discovering what they want/who they really are/whatever, know that you're not alone. Sometimes it helps to do a really detailed character "dig". That's what I finally did to Archie. ;) You can find questions you can ask to really dig into your character here. It's a list I've compiled after some character creation classes in school and from a book called, "Writing Magic" by Gail Carson Levine. Have fun!
ON TO ROLEPLAYING AWESOMENESS!
~psychogiggles
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