We're always looking for stuff for our Wacky Wednesday and this time, Cia came through with this piece on Character Interviews. Enjoy!!

I recently answered a tip request with some information regarding character interviews and I thought I’d take it site wide, so to speak. When you write a story, especially anything approaching novel length, you need to make it as vivid as possible for readers to keep them interested. One way to hook readers is through character realism, even if you’re writing a story about werewolves, aliens, zombies, or ghosts.

To make the character believable, you have to make them relatable. They need to be ‘real’, all the way down to the small details. In order to do that, I tend to do character interviews. I might not sit down right away and write these out for every character at the start of a story, but I often try to come up with one as soon as the character cooperates. Yes, I know that sounds a tad Sybil, but it’s true! Sometimes the characters in my head talk.

When that happens, I grab my interview questions and get their details. I’ve a whole file full of different types of questions and I scroll through them to see what my character feels like answering. For example:

• What is your character’s greatest extravagance?
• Where would your character like to live?
• What is the trait your character most deplores in himself?
• Does your character have a birthmark? Where is it? What about scars? How did he get them?
• What makes your character laugh out loud?
• Who are the people your character is closest to? Who does he wish he were closest to?
• What is in your character’s refrigerator right now? On her bedroom floor? On her nightstand? In her garbage can?
• It’s Saturday at noon. What is your character doing? Give details. If he’s eating breakfast, what exactly does he eat? If she’s stretching out in her backyard to sun, what kind of blanket or towel does she lie on?
• What is your character’s educational background?
• What would most embarrass your character?
  

Once I’ve gotten the aspects of their character down, or as much as they’ll give me, I’m ready to slot those details into the story.

I can take my alien that can’t stand light and make him adore flowers, but mourn that the most beautiful rarely blossom at night. My jock might be large and a bit brash as he rules the school, but he also adores his older sister and jumps to help her whenever he can. I might have a character love ice cream but be unable to eat it due to a medical condition so he steals small bites from his partner. A friend might be an emotional support for the main character and love his wife to pieces, but be unable to stand his mother in law.

I can take a business man and make him hate wearing a suit and tie so on weekends he wears basketball shorts and tank tops. An extroverted college age character might secretly write emo poetry about death due to a loved one’s suicide, and he hides his poem book behind a shelf of bio-chem textbooks. Maybe he wears that loved one’s sweatshirt when he writes the poetry, wishing it still smelled like whatever cologne the loved one used to wear.

For a plot like that, I might do an abbreviated interview for my supporting character. It might not be as in depth as my main character’s interview but I’d do the basics, age, appearance, motivations in life … things like that. I don’t need to know everything about a supporting character but there are certain small elements, like what cologne they might have worn, that can be introduced in a small way that isn’t a distraction for the reader but helps them connect in a sensory way, which makes the story more vivid.

Stories are all about the details. How much you share with readers dictates how they perceive and experience the world we create for them. You don’t have to hit them over the head with every mundane detail but a small difference between telling the reader the character had breakfast, or had their favorite breakfast of toast with peanut butter, can make a big impact on a scene. And in the end, we all want our stories to have that impact. That’s what makes the readers come back for more!

For those who are interested, I have .doc copies of my interview lists for characters. If you’d like your own, please PM me and I’d be happy to share. For those readers of this blog who have not yet been brave enough to join, go ahead and email me at: cia@gayauthors.org