It can be hard to create a realistic, three-dimensional character. It’s all too easy to accidentally slip up and have your characters just be one-dimensional vessels for the plot.
But no one wants to read about a walking cliche or someone without fears, hopes, and dreams.
Thankfully there’s an easy way to make sure your characters don’t end up that way, by asking them some questions!
During the last stream, we did a character building exercise. I polled chat for some character idea suggestions, and after narrowing it down a bit, they voted for us to flesh out this one: a painter who suffers from hallucinations.
You can watch a recap of the exercise here,
or scroll down to read what we came up with.
To flesh out our hallucinating painter, we asked him these six main questions, plus a few bonus ones. Here’s what we came up with:
- NAME: Theodore Allen Patterson
– What is their physical appearance? Something unique?
– He is slender in physique and his lanky fingers wrap around his brush smoothly
– Gaunt face, sunken eyes
– Painter is albino
– Sees his own white skin as a canvas that he paints
– He has pet fish, fish is hallucination (tropical fish?)– What is their personality? Strengths and weaknesses?
– He suffers deeply from hallucinations and social phobia. He doesn’t venture out, lives in his own world, and cycles between anti-psychotics and refusing to take them, though he lives with his brother who tries to force him to keep taking them.
– He makes up his own name for colors.
– He talks to the people, creatures while he paints and he sees them move and talk to him as he creates them.
– His hallucinations powers his creativity, so he goes off his meds to get in the zone.
– This dude has trouble navigating, so he never leaves his studio
– He hates crowds so he doesn’t get out much he goes outdoors when the world is quiet sunrise, sunset and night
– He doesn’t bathe or eat unless prompted to.
– He has hallucinations, so he does not distinguish between dreams and reality.– What are their relationships?
– Pet fish hallucination is a relationdhip
– His family is dead, but he still talks with them via hallucinations and paints those conversations
– He has a secret crush
– He has this rival artist that he really really hates called Asso, he is imagined as well– What are their hobbies/interests?
– Bug collecting
– Maybe he doesn’t actually like to paint. He does it because he feels he needs to
– He knows Latin and Gaelic because they are rare languages not many people know
– He plays chess against his own imagination.– What is their dream/desire?
– To become a famous painter and get over his fear of people. He wants to travel the world and capture the beauty through his paintings.
– His dream is to top off his imaginary rival Asso by becoming the most beautiful painting in the world themselves
– His hallucinations tell him a story, and he wants to finish painting it before he dies, before he dies he will use his blood in his painting
– The dark part is that he’s seen the bloodstains on sidewalks from jumpers that never seem to fade away and wants to find the perfect place to become a jumper and turn himself into the greatest piece of art the world will ever know– What do they hate/fear?
– He fears losing his sanity, as he slowly loses the ability to distinguish between reality and hallucination
– Fears crowds, outside, especially in the rain, something happening that would make it so he can’t paint anymore, he fears blades of grass/asphalt slicing the bottoms of his feet
– He hates the sun and loves it at the same time because he burns but he loves the sunrise and sunset
– Oh, water splashing from his fish tank actually splashes on canvas, he really hates thatBONUS QUESTIONS
What would they die for?
– He would die for his art collection
– He would die to create the perfect painting
What’s their favorite Disney movie?
– Fantasia
– Pinocchio because he wants to transform himself into a “normal” person who can enjoy the “real” world.
What’s their favorite food?
– Ice cream sandwiched between MnM cookies (dips them into paint?)
– His favourite food is actually coffee beans, being pretty colorful and keeping him awake
– His favorite food is whatever his brother cooks him.
As you can see, we came up with a ton of ideas about Theodore! Enough to fill several books. And that’s perfectly fine.
Coming up with a character is not a perfectly linear process. You come up with a bit of the character first, which influences a bit of your setting, which influences a bit of your plot, which then goes back around to influence your character.
In just our brainstorming, Theodore has four very different dreams/desires, and any one of them could make a great story. In order to narrow it down, we then moved onto the prompt section, and chat voted for a writing prompt that we had to write Thedore into.
Chat voted that we write about Thedore using this prompt created by Gamerboy11116: Write a horror story that appears to be a nice, heartwarming, happy story until the last sentence.
I really like how our story ended up. Theodore started out as just a vague idea, then he turned into a thousand ideas, and then we finally pinned him down into one single character that packs quite a terrifying oomph!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-11:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming December 2018.
Featured image: photoAC