Getting to know your characters.

Struggling to find out what is particular to your character? What they do when they're in a queue, waiting, when they're sat on the bus? Never thought about those wrinkles or creases in the corners of their eyes or mouth?

All of the little things that you never knew existed could be yours, by doing a few of the following. Or just one. No matter which one you choose you're bound to learn something new.

1) Have your character talk to themselves, in the second person "you", whilst looking in the mirror. One of my characters I did this for spiraled off somewhere deep and dark.

2) Put your character in a room with another character. Be this one from TV/film, another one of your creations, from a book you've read,  but as long as they are somebody your character has never seen/heard or would know about, do it. See what happens. Do they fight? Argue? Flirt? Get along? Debate? Talk? Ignore one another? What do they do with their body? Face each other? Turn away?

3) Put your character somewhere out of their comfort zone. You have an Earth bound character? Put them on a space ship. Somebody who likes loud music and the city life? Stick them in an opera theater, or in the country side.

4) You, as the creator, write a letter to your character. Start it with "I saw last Tuesday in that small cafe," or something similar. Don't talk about what they basically did... (you lined up, got a coffee, paid and left) Talk about the minute details. They tapped two fingers against their thigh. Every few seconds they had to push a strand of hair out of their face. When they sit down they bounce one of their legs. It's always the left leg over the right. You get the picture.

5) Rant and rave as your character. Put yourself in their shoes, find a topic to complain about and go wild.

6) Go shopping for them. Shop for food, clothes, books, CD's, DVD's, magazines. Anything. Shop and buy what your character would want and love. Not you, your character.

7) Interview them. Maybe create a series of questions, and start answering them as your character. Maybe add more questions depending upon the answers you're given and explore a point further.

There are many other ways to get to know your character but personally, I like these seven and I hope you'll have some fun with this and find out some rather interesting things.

Happy Writing.