The Essence of Character Driven Storytelling

“While spending a lot of time inside the story universe with the characters is critical, it’s also important to step outside and assess what you’ve got.”

In my Character Development Keys class, a question arose on the discussion boards about how best to gett to know characters and hear their voices. It’s one thing to answer questionnaires about characters — what’s their favorite color, do they prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream — but that’s pretty surface level. Besides, how do you know it them you’re talking about or your own responses to the questions?

I dashed off this response:

Getting to know and hear characters is a challenge. Two things. The first is almost spiritual in nature. Believe your characters exist. Their story universe exists. Indeed, the fact they have ‘come’ to you suggests they want you to tell their story. And since it’s their story, the primary task — at least in the story prep and crafting process — is to reach out to your characters, immerse yourself in their individual and collective lives, as well as their story universe, and see what you can learn about them. So again, believe they exist.

The second is based on the first, but more practical in nature: Use direct engagement exercises to reach out to your characters. For example, create a scenario where you interview them. You are a psychiatrist. They are your client. Engage them directly in conversation and write down every Q&A. Get curious. Ask questions.

Another direct engagement exercise: Character sit-down. Shut the door. Turn off your phone. Close your eyes. Do some deep breathing. Basically like meditation. The idea is to get out of this world and transport yourself to their world. Focus on one character. Try to do a ‘Vulcan mind meld’ (for you Star Trek fans) where your mind and their mind is one. Set a timer for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Close your eyes and blind type (or hand write). Don’t edit. Rather write down everything that comes to mind. Even if it seems stupid or unrelated, put it down. Your mind will wander. Don’t berate yourself, rather let go those thoughts of this world — “I have to go shopping… I want a muffin” — and keep coming back to their world. Keep writing, keep reaching out to connect with the character.

It can be a monologue where the character is saying stuff. It can be a stream of consciousness, a series of images, thoughts, feelings. It can be (and often is) a combination of both. Just keep writing it all down.

Ding! Timer goes off. Look at what you’ve got. Maybe 80 or 90% of it seems completely a bunch of hogwash. But if 10 or 20% of it strikes you as insightful into the character… that’s gold! And more than likely, the content has come from them.

Do this with all of your main characters. And it can be an ongoing process. Let’s say you’re writing the script and something’s just not sitting right with a character. Do a sit-down with them. Ask them point blank, “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you working with me?”

That said, while spending a lot of time inside the story universe with the characters is critical, it’s also important to step outside and assess what you’ve got. That’s primarily what this class is about when we explore the role of character archetypes: Looking at each character and what their respective narrative functions might be. It’s a way of connecting the dots and understanding the nature of their interrelationships.

So you bounce back and forth between visits with your characters inside the story universe… and time spent outside molding, shaping, probing, prodding.

Somehow between all of that, the story structure emerges. But start with and rely on the characters throughout. That’s the essence of character driven writing.

This process describes what we do in my Prep: From Concept to Outline workshops and it’s proved hugely successful. We spend the first four weeks of the six week course living with the characters, engaging them through a series of brainstorming exercises, then reflecting on what emerges from those connections. Again… it’s their story. It just makes sense to begin with characters, end with characters, and find the story in between.

This way, you not only end up with much more deeply detailed and complex characters, the story structure evolves into being through that interchange of going into the story universe, then stepping back and working with all that narrative content.

How to best get to know and hear your characters? Believe they exist. Reach out to them. If you do that in good faith, they will make themselves known.