A question for the writers and creators out there.
How do you write for your characters? Do you just know what they'd say? Or do the characters tell YOU what they'd say (and even make plot suggestions/changes?)
I do the latter, and during a convention where I explained the process of "telling a character who they are until they start telling ME who they are" another creator leaned in and whispered "your brain frightens me."
🤔 I think the process of writing a character is indistinguishable from the process of writing yourself, except it involves writing, and more downtime while you write other characters or are forced to go back to grouchily (not)writing yourself for a bit. Trying to spontaneously _be_ is much the same in any context? Also if it doesn’t hurt and exalt as much you’re (I’m) probably doing it wrong.
@dolari I first see my stories as movies (halfway between anime and real life action) in my head, so it's more like my subconscious is telling me what my characters are saying. When I actually write the story down, I can still shape the finer details like adding more layers of paint to a painting and thereby adding depth.
@dolari based on several Novembers writing ~50K words, I tend to point the characters in the direction of the main plot, and try my best to get them to hit the points I want to include.
I know the personalities & speech patterns, but the details tend to just turn up