Getting in the head

[polarissruler]

Probably the hardest part of writing (besides actually writing stuff, of course) is getting in the characters' thought process. How would they react? What would they say? How would they say it?

What's your trick to get in their heads? Copious amounts of rewatching/rereading until you can cite their lines from memory? Trying to imagine their voice until you can hear it perfectly? Is there a character you have understood perfectly from the first time? Or one that you still struggle to write?

Comments

[tei]

Usually when I have a fic idea that grabs me, it's the thought process itself that comes first, and then is filled in with whatever is happening action-wise later. So I don't think I've ever had any trouble getting in the characters' head, because... if I weren't already in there, the fic concept wouldn't exist in the first place, if that makes sense?

Maybe this just means that I very rarely branch out and write from the perspective of a character whose intentions and emotions in the situation don't make immediate and intuitive sense to me, but... oh well.

[pauraque]

This is often true for me too, though sometimes for me an idea can stem from thinking about a character who doesn't make sense to me in canon, and trying to come up with reasons that they act the way they do.

[tei]

Ooh yes, absolutely. I’ve done some fics that start from a premise of a character acting in a way that appears to be counter to their usual habits, and the fic is essentially an explanation of why that behaviour makes sense or occurred to them.

[polarissruler]

That's how story ideas come to me, too. But when I try to add more than the characters I immediatly get, things easily come to a wall.

[tei]

Ah, yeah. Maybe it also depends on Lethe level of omniscience of your narrative vs. how far into a specific character’s head you are? If you’re writing really far into one perspective, then you don’t really need to understand 100% about how all the characters act or feel— You only need to understand how your POV character perceives the actions or emotions of others. Whereas if you’re writing from a place that’s a bit more zoomed out, then there are more characters that you need to develop a personal understanding of.

[polarissruler]

I haven't looked at it this way. I mostly focus on one character's perspective - so this trick can work. Thanks.

[hannah]

I think you're asking two different questions here: how to replicate cadence and vocabulary to authentically depict an individual character's speech patterns, and how to achieve strong depth of characterization.

[thewriterinpink]

Some characters I do understand immediately, but I think understand is a relative term—it's really just projecting stuff on to that character and calling it a day. I think in fandom a lot of the time we gravitate toward characters we can indulge the most on and with that in mind it becomes much easier to figure out how you want to write them. Whatever caught your attention about that character and made you want to focus on them is what you'll use to expand your understanding of them. That's why interpretations can be so vastly different—it all comes down to where you started from and what you want from that character. I say there isn't exactly a right way to write a character as long as they're not ridiculously OOC. There's no way to please every viewer and it would be tiring to try.

I also want to point out that huge inspiration on how to write a character stems from other fanfics that already exist. When you start out in a fandom, it's likely that you'll check out what the fandom has and that includes fanfics. It's easy to start getting ideas while reading these fics and this is how fanon being more popular than canon begins to manifest because the fics that came first tend to set the bar on how to write these characters, whether those fics were in character or not. Sometimes you get people who haven't allowed fandom to put ideas in their head yet and are completely new in their interpretations, but mostly people rely on other fans to quickly get a grasp at what they want to write because it's easy. What's popular with this character? What do people like to see this character do or think? What relationships do people enjoy with this character? Soon enough you feel the same way because there's no other fanon to look at.

I don't think I answered your questions at all lol. Sorry, but I don't think there's any real trick to understanding a character. I just write and hope for the best, taking inspiration from my own desires and the desires of others. Whether that makes the characters true to themselves or not depends on who you ask. Trial and error is all I can really give to you. :)

[polarissruler]

it's really just projecting stuff on to that character and calling it a day

Now that you mention it, I creatinly find myself guilty of that. For example, I foucs on the shyness and smarts of some characters, because those parts reach to me. Thanks for sharing you opinion!

[tei]

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “projection” a lot too lately, because I’ve been coming around to the idea that what we call (and feel, when we do it) as “projection” into characters isn’t necessarily a process that’s going to result in “OOC” characterization; I think when done well it improves characterization, because at the heart of believable characterization is specificity. Characters feel real when their thoughts and emotions are specific to the point of being idiosyncratic and weird, because that’s essentially the experience of being alive and having thoughts— thoughts in our own minds are, usually, so convoluted and and bound up with highly specific experiences and emotions that they’re hard to even convey to the outside world in a succinct way. So I think projecting those idiosyncratic, highly specific thoughts onto a fictional character (as long as those thoughts make some sort of general sense for them to be having, and are explained in the narrative) is the best way to make that character feel like a real person.

[thewriterinpink]

You're right, of course. If it's true that we gravitate toward characters that are familiar to us in one way or another, projecting thoughts and actions on them won't result in any advert OOC situations because we've chosen a character that feels like us or is adjacent to us in some way or even a character that is similar to another character we've written in the past. It becomes more difficult when you're faced with a character that is less attuned to you because breathing life into their thoughts and reactions becomes harder to pull off authentically. Although, even with characters that are so vastly different than ourselves, I think it's possible to find an opening in their personality that reminds you of something familiar and work out from there, learning how to apply your own thinking on to that character in a way that feels true to them.

I personally think projection should never be considered a bad thing in fiction, least of all fan content, so seeing the other side of it—the positive side—is also a good point to make.

[tei]

Yes!

I had some interesting experiences lately with stories that involved autistic and asexual POV characters, neither of which I am. And my approach to writing was essentially, y’know, of course I’ll use the information I have about how I think these characters would experience the world, but I really leaned into just putting the parts of me that I wanted to into them, very much an attitude of “I’m just gonna write as detailed as possible from my own perspective, which is the only one I’m capable of, and if people think it’s unrealistic or OOC they’re welcome to stop reading.” And then these stories that I conceptualized as being very self-indulgent and me-centric... ended up getting a lot of comments from autistic and asexual people, essentially saying that they felt the perspective particularly along those vectors was accurate in a way that made them feel represented.

Which is awesome, I absolutely love that other people could feel themselves existing within my fiction in some way, but it also feels like a counter-intuitive way to get to that place: that by just concentrating on “representing” myself as accurately and specifically as possible, I could end up “representing” other experiences.

[thewriterinpink]

I think as long as you can get a character to sound real and human, people will feel a connection to that character because despite our differences we're all still of the same species. As someone who is Autistic, yes I would like it to be authentic to what it's like to live like that, but what matters even more is the autistic character feeling like an actual person as opposed to a stereotype or a prop, both of which autistic characters tend to fall into. Since autism is a spectrum of different experiences and lifestyles, acknowledging that we're different but still just as human as anyone else can really breathe life into a character like that. I commend you for putting so much effort in writing someone like that and succeeding in conveying sincere realism with the character. :)

I'm actually pretty used to that as well. The amount of times I've poured my own self into a character only to be told how IC it was is plentiful. It looks like treating characters with genuine humanity and filling them with our understanding of the world does make for a more authentic character, regardless of if we are anything like that character at all. It's interesting.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Sometimes it's more that I have to think what is going on and then how a particular character would conceptualize it.

It's hilarious to juggle Barnes, Clint and Phil Coulson.

[pensnest]

I think my stories are likely to come from my understanding of the characters, by and large, though I suppose sometimes they come from a good plot idea. I'll think, what if this happened to X? and work from there. Fanfic is about the characters (with an occasional nod to the world they inhabit). We fall in love with those characters, and that's why we write about them. We already know them quite well by the time we get down to writing those stories. Plus, I don't think I'd be interested in writing a character I understood perfectly—part of the point, for me, is to explore the character(s) beyond what canon gives us. We have to figure it out, that's the fun of it.

Trying to keep the voices true to the characters can be a bigger problem, as it is easy to slip back into writing ourselves rather than our characters, or at least, writing the easy way, with the first thing that comes into the author's head. That's probably the point at which the writer has to be careful. Beta readers are vital, here, I think. A beta can point out that this word or that phrase just doesn't sound like something our character would say. A beta is also useful when they point out that people are behaving in a particular way For Plot, rather than because that is how they would behave, or even, how the world really works. In my experience, it is always a better story when the characters behave like themselves and move the story forward that way. But then, I like to discover what happens by writing it, and I know there are other writers who know what is going to happen before they can write it.

I find that getting the 'voice' perfect usually comes in the editing process. Does this sound like a thing X would say? Yes? Ok, then. No? Rewrite. I edit as I go along, it's not just in re-reading that this happens.

And sometimes, a character says something exactly right and quite unexpected without apparent intervention from me. My fingers type it, I stare at the screen and think, well, I wasn't expecting that. And the only thing to say next is, okay - what now? Because when a character actually takes over, you have to go with it.

[polarissruler]

That's an interesting viewpoint. Writing characters definitly can change the understanding of them.

And character take overs have happened to me too - and sometimes it has compltely changed my plans for a scene.

[fabrisse]

The very first fic I ever wrote was "Come Saturday Morning" in the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer fandom. I literally heard the characters talking to each other.

Many of my stories are dialogue heavy because I can hear them and quite a few are first person -- especially for Yuletide -- because one character wants to tell a story.

I consider myself weak on plot, though I've improved, because I tell the stories through dialogue more than exposition. As one of my betas will tell you, I'm awful at physical descriptions of characters at least partially because hearing is my dominant sense.

So, in Hannah's sense. I'm pretty good at replicating cadence and vocabulary. I work hard at depth of characterization, but I tend to achieve it through dialogue rather than conveying inner thoughts or description. I'm not always sure I succeed.

[polarissruler]

Interesting. With me it's complelty the opposite - I can write inner thoughts perfectly, but sturrgle in the dialogue department.

[fabrisse]

I have a friend who's great at description and plot, but needs a great deal of help with dialogue. It's amazing how different all our approaches are/can be.

[polarissruler]

Yeah, there are many approaches. My cousin focuses on worldbuilding and leaves characters for last, for example.

[china_shop]

For me, the important thing it to recognise (or decide) who and what matters to them and what they want. I usually do this in a intuitive way, but I find it really hard to get started with characters when I feel like canon hasn't given me a clue, and that's when I turn to fanon/other people's fic. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I know as much about this character as anyone does. (I love how, with fictional characters, you can know everything about them without it being creepy. *g*)

Getting started is a bit like choosing a greeting card for someone. You look at different things until you find one that hooks into your feeling about them and what they like.

[polarissruler]

That's definitly a good starting point! After all, everybody wants something. The greeting card methaphor is nice, too.

[mxcatmoon]

I don't have a trick to get into character's heads. Some just seem to come naturally to me, I can 'hear' their voices in my head. I'm more prolific and enjoy writing in those fandoms the most because I can let my imagination run wild without being slowed down with characterization issues. My fic is character and relationship-focused, so it can make or break a story.

I've tried to figure out what it is about certain ones that are easier for me to write, but haven't come up with anything they all have in common. Sometimes there are similar characters and one is easy, the other hard. Characters I really identify with that I can't write, and ones totally removed from my experience that flow easily. I'm still trying to figure it out, doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. It can be annoying when there's a show I'm really into but struggle to write. Re-watching is a help... but there are episodes I know so well I can recite by heart yet the characters don't come easy.

[polarissruler]

I share your pain. There are so many things I want to write about, but the characters never come to me. Especially because some of my current fandoms deal with beings very different from humans (but with few things in common) and it's hard to properly do that 'inhumanity'.

[firecat]

IMHO, as long as nonhumans are written to be a little nonhuman, I'm good with it. Not every alien has to be Solaris. It just bugs me when the fic is set ten thousand years in the future and the nonhumans are getting coffee at Starbucks and generallly acting like humans from the last couple of decades.

[mxcatmoon]

I can imagine that could be difficult! I've never tried writing fic focusing on non-humans.

[polarissruler]

It's not easy at all, but it's pretty fun. Some of them don't have any idea how to interact with a human, while others have observed them - and still fall short in applying the observations to practice.

[doranwen]

Oh, this is so complicated, lol, but a good question!

Let's see… rewatching/rereading helps a lot with character speech specifically - how they say something, and to a point, what they would say. But I do rely a lot on fanfic because often the show or movie or whatever I'm watching doesn't have *enough* of the character, and I need lots of examples to pattern after, to absorb. The more fic, the easier it is to identify the ones that nail the character, that feel like the original canon, and ignore all the OOC ones or ones that push the boundaries for characterization.

For character motivations and actions, I have to think things out sometimes, and having a good alpha reader can really help. Again, it ultimately comes down to having a lot of examples to pattern after.

But yes, there are characters I've gotten instantly, and I'm not sure if I ever pinpointed exactly what it is about them - sometimes it might be that they think similarly to me, or that they're a type of character that I find easy to understand even if it's not like me… Eliot from Leverage was easy for me right away, to give an example from a recent fandom I've written, Parker a little harder (and I would say I'm something of a mix between the two characters, if I had to answer "which Leverage character are you" like the old memes - the ways I'm similar to Eliot are the ways that make him so easy to write, whereas the ways I'm like Parker are the more difficult-to-understand ways that don't help as much for writing).

Most of the other fandoms I think of (Rookie Blue, Alphas, X-Men, Lord of the Rings, etc.), I can't think of one that was immediately super easy, but mostly they aren't really hard either, as long as I'm recently enough familiar with the canon. Chloe from Smallville was really easy, though (I've only seen and written for the first three seasons but she's so easy to get into - love her snarkiness). The very first fic I wrote was from her mindset, a short little ficlet, and I actually imported it to AO3 when I got an account there six years after that, because I felt it was one of the few fics I'd posted to ff.n that I thought worth keeping, I felt I had gotten her character right in it. So I think it's a good thing that the first fic I wrote was for a character that I found so easy to write. (Might've had something to do with why I wrote it, even - I don't remember the process now as that was like 16 years ago, but I suspect the story just started to write itself in my mind a little.)

The one fandom I really struggled to write a character from when I tried was The Pretender. I could probably have written Jarod OK, except that the fic I was writing really didn't have him in it much at all, and it had copious amounts of Miss Parker, and for all that I love her character dearly, I cannot write her, apparently. So I sadly gave up on writing any more Pretender fic as a result. She's just too hard for me to get a good grasp on.

[polarissruler]

Ah, thanks! This is a good answer, too.

Fanfic certainly helps a lot. (Unless you're literally the first in a fandom, which has happened twice to me - lol.) If there are fics before mine, I haven't found them at all.

Writing characters similar to me is often easier. (If they are similar in the right ways, as you said. With some I just have the wrong things in common.)

I'm happy you are proud of your first fic. Mine was an unplanned mess, where I definitely bit more than I could chew. There are some parts of it which I love, but most of it was just...

[doranwen]

Lol, yes, I know all about being the first in a fandom (I used to do BetheFirst each year if I could). There I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best, pretty much.

Yeah, my first fic might've been half-decent - but at least half of the first six or so were terrible, lol. Quite a few of my early fics did NOT get imported to AO3 for good reasons. :D (It took me a few years to realize I had to go off the feeling of whether it was flowing or whether I was forcing the writing - the latter ALWAYS produced terrible fic. So now I've learned to really rely on that to know if the writing is going well or not.)

[firecat]

Some characters just live in my head without my having to try that hard.

Other characters need more study. Rewatching / rereading helps, especially if I write down dialogue that is relevant to the story I want to write. Reading the dialogue I write and then trying to imagine the character saying it. Noting the character's vocabulary and trying not to drag too much slangy American English into it, if they're not from here and now.

Thinking about and making notes on the character's motivations. What do they want? What do they like or dislike? What do they do in canon to get what they want? Can I extrapolate that? What would they do in situations that are different from in canon?

Still other characters, I struggle with because the way I want to write them keeps veering away from canon. Sometimes I just live with it: I accept that I want to base my character on this canon character, but I want them to be a little different too. That's OK. Sometimes I try to drag them back toward the canonical character.

[capsulecorp_tm]

wow finding this late but I hope you don't mind an extra contribution.

I RP here on DW (LJRP/DWRP) so there's something a little extra for getting into a character's head and finding their voice that translates to fic as well. In RP you're just focusing on one character, which I suppose for anyone getting into RP would easily help with single-character focused fics. Most people who need to nail down their RP character's voice canon-review a lot, focusing on that character's best scenes and shining moments, but canon-reviewing is never a bad thing unless watching/reading it too much ends up basically making you so tired of it that you lose all sense of interest.

But when I decided to set out to write an epic fic which is the prose retelling of the storyline of a video game with literally hundreds of characters, I learned something very new that RP didn't teach me. In that case, when you have lots of characters to focus on - okay, let's say, more than three characters - it is very much about hearing the voices of the characters saying their lines, no matter which language it's in, that helps to clue you into how they would speak given any new scenario. Their speech patterns, tone, and mannerisms convey everything about them even if the fic scenario is not one ever encountered in canon. You do have to know some basics about character personality, too, but it doesn't have to be an RP-level character study about the entirety of their being. You just have to know which characters would respond with sarcasm, which ones are earnest and truthful, which ones are cagey or silent, and whether they would be hiding anything you can convey in prose about their thoughts. I mean it's pretty obvious I prefer third person omniscient in terms of prose style, but the more canon characters you want to explore in a fic, the more relevant that becomes. Third person limited can benefit from this as well, I suppose. I don't write in first person because I generally don't do character studies, I prefer storytelling with conflict, plot, and resolution and my style sort of works better in third person for that.

This is pretty damn easy to do when you're talking about any media that includes voices - live action, voiced video games, voiced animation. When it comes to manga-only or literary canons, that might be more difficult. Literary canons written in your native language will at least give you a sense of speech pattern and tone, even if you can't literally "hear" the character, but the real hardmode is translated literature. You can't be sure that the translator is injecting any sense of voice to the words on the page, or if they're capable of capturing the original writer's attempts at conveying tone and voice. Hats off to anyone who's capable of writing entertaining fic set in canons they only know from translated literature, that requires some epic work. But even folks writing voice and tone from a non-native language have some difficulties. I prefer the Japanese language even for my video games but I'm a native English speaker, so sometimes the tone conveyed by the Japanese voice actors is different from those in the English dub, which means you have to make a conscious choice which "voice" to emulate in fic. That said, people have constantly commented on how they can hear the characters in my dialogue so I must be doing something right. Then again, I had a linguistics minor in college and have learned enough Japanese to be able to understand what tone is being conveyed (humorous, sarcastic, straightforward, polite, disrespectful, flippant, serious) that I'm not fucking things up too badly. It's a very rare case where the English dub of something is so far off from the original language in terms of personality and tone that you have to actually specify in author's notes which version you're using for characterization. See: Yu-Gi-Oh.

[polarissruler]

No worries! I'm sorry it took me so much time to reply. Any addition is welcome - especially one so well-written.

I agree with you on the translation issue - I've read some stories in original and translated and in some of the translated works all characters seem to speak the same way. Unfortunately, my ability to read originals is limited to English, Bulgarian, and German - so for anything else, I need to rely on a translation. In those cases, I hope the translator has done their job right and go with it for characterization.

And a little last thing about the Yu-Gi-Oh - I am unable to write stories with the Japanese characterization. I've watched it subbed, I've read fics, but at the end of the day, I can only write about the translated version. (Maybe I've watched it so much as a kid that it is stuck in my brain.)