Creating Characters: Questionnaires Don't Work!

Shock horror, right? Everyone on NaNo uses them, shares them etc.

Well, check this place out: http://www.superheronation.com/2008/06/05/how-to-develop-characters/

This is just one out of many things on this site that writer-useful. This is brilliant, though; a much more effective way of developing characters if I ever saw it! Check it out!

I can see where the author is coming from. However, it's important to note: not everyone uses those insane character questionaires to create their characters. I, for one, will create a character in a similar manner to the way he does. Then, I'll use a character questionaire to flesh them out a bit. Once I know a bit about them - and the world they live in - I am better prepared to answer questions like, "What kind of car does he drive?" (Which could be important to the story) or "What's in his wallet?"

I'm with hmltwin; character questionnaires are fun to fill out once you know your character a bit. They certainly make you stop and think about certain aspects of your character that might not seem important at first, but offer insights.

The "what kind of car" question, for example--my character, Bobby, doesn't have a lot of material possessions. He just doesn't care about knick-knacks or momentos. He considers all that stuff to be "clutter". He's got an e-reader for all the books he could ever want, so he doesn't need a paper library. He has all of his music and movies in digital format. He rents pre-furnished apartments, so he doesn't even have furniture. The one possession he does have, and cares a great deal about though, is his truck. His parents made him earn enough money to buy a used pick-up truck for himself as a teenager, and then later, when he had a job of his own, he bought a new one (another Chevy Silverado). It shows that, while he doesn't have a lot of "clutter", he still cares about working and earning things. (And that he loves his truck, but hey.)

So don't count them out completely.

I wouldn't say "everyone" does it. Some do; some don't. Some use them later in the development; some use them to start brainstorming. Some fill them out all the way; some ignore half the questions.

The only time I used a questionnaire was when I wanted to keep track of little details, so his eyes don't change color between chapter six and chapter twenty-three.

There are very few things that can be said about writing that are NEVER.*

Based on their popularity, I think it is unsupportable to claim that "Character Questionnaires Don't Work".

Maybe they dont work for you or for the person who created the website, but definitively telling another writer what will or won't work for them is a great way to be WRONG.



*"Never use the word cerulean" is, however one of the valid "NEVERS".

I think it works for minor characters who really don't need to be three dimensional- they are only in your story.for a limited purpose.

Your main characters however, usually need more development. After all- you are not just a list of your likes and dislikes, are you? Personally- I hate bananas, but I love banana splits. How weird is that? That's something normal questionaires won't cover.

I personally never do character questionnaries because ... I just suck. No really, I never think up characters that I could answer those questionnaires with. Take for example every character from my 2011 novel:
They're from a fantasy setting, so there's no use asking them questions like "favourite music/food/..." since I guess they can either choose to like bards or not and as for food: you can't really choose if you can't afford it anyway, so there's no point asking. Apart from other cruel things like zodiac signs (which do NOTHING, btw), all those interviews you get also don't fit my fantasy characters so well.
Well, whatever anyway.
The fun thing about my 2011 stuff was actually that the main character 'figured out' the second main character while they were out adventuring. That was a pretty fun thing to do since I also got a chance to develop both characters along the way.

But yeah, everyone does things differently and I guess people who are actually serious about writing (unlike me) will come up with a more effective way of creating a character if they need one.

I don't like questionnaires, because most of the time I don't give a flying rat's ass what their favorite flavor of ice cream is. However, I also don't like to create characters by sticking random traits on them. Ok, so the guy is honest. Well, HOW is he honest? Does he always tell the truth, even when it'll hurt him, or others? What *could* he lie about, given a reason to? Does he commit lies of omission? Is he more honest to some people than to others? Most of these traits are just too general to give me much of an idea of what this character's actually like. And you can be going along happily defining when & how your character is honest...and then realize you also decided he was somewhat of a coward. Well, how do those traits interact? There could be any number of ways, and you could spend days working it all out.

Personally, I mainly figure out who my character's related to and whether they get along or not, what he's good & bad at, what his job or function in society is, maybe even some of his hobbies. I don't care what his favorite flavor of ice cream is (heck, in a fantasy story there might not even BE ice cream) or what kind of toothpaste he uses. I DO care about stuff like: how would he react if his girlfriend dumped him, would he give a flying rat's ass if his (insert relative) died, and how dedicated to his job he is. If I want him to have a pet kitty, I give him one and THEN figure out what it is about his makeup that makes him want one (if it even matters, which frequently it doesn't).

I might not even know everything there is to know about his past...heck, usually I first start writing with characters before I know even half this much about them. One year I only knew my MC was a 15 year old fortuneteller, and another year I thought my MC was going to psychoanalyze the Dark Lord, and she didn't even do that! :P

"Creating Characters: Questionnaires Don't Work!"

Well, duh! ... what would you fill out that questionnaire with if you didn't have a character to fit the answers to in the first place, anyway?

Questionnaires are not meant to create a character, only to maybe get to know them a little bit better, but mostly just to have a bit of fun. They may however make it easier to find the answer to “how he would react when he gets dumped” – the answer to which might be as simple as “go out and buy a box of his favored ice cream” (or a fried rat on a stick, who knows).

Questionnaires don't work for me either, not even for fleshing out characters after I have a very basic idea for one. I just find them tedious to answer, a waste of time because of the time it takes for me to decide if a character should have siblings or not and what his relationship with his grandmother is etc. and I think they are pretty counter-productive. Instead of ending up with a fleshed out character, I have almost the opposite. And I can't skip questions either, because then I'll just skip all of them.

(I think) Characters are like people and you can't fit people into questionnaires like that. I don't even know what my own favourite colour is.

This is no problem for me 'though because I think I can create characters fine without them (finding their motivations is what's difficult). I like to *discover* what they're favourite ice cream is, if I don't know, rather than just pick one at random.

When I create characters, I only think one thing is really important: What makes this character "tick"?

How they speak is not important. Nationality, not important. Favorite color, food, flavor of ice cream, not important. I need to know the why-why they are the way they are.

An example: I have a character named Bennie who's a 30 or so year old fast talking ladies man.

What makes him "tick"?

Bennie is one big ball of insecurity. He was a nerd in High School with a huge crush on the hottest girl in school. The ladies man gig is how he makes up for it.

That's it. That's all that matters to me. Everything else about Bennie flows from that, and I mean everything. Appearance, style of speech, mannerisms-once I know how Bennie "ticks", those things come easily. The why is the only important bit.

What I think it ultimately comes down to is two things: questionaires are useless for creating characters. No one here has argued that. However, they aren't entirely useless for every writer.

Some writers find them useful for fleshing out characters - whether they answer the questions as the character or on behalf of the character. Some writers find them useful for filing known information away (like, you've decided in the story that the character has a sibling - fill in that question, so you don't forget). Others, find them to be utterly useless across the board.

None of us are doing it wrong and those who use questionaires to fill out the characters aren't necessarily making better (or worse) characters than the people who use other methods. Everyone works in the way that suits them best.

I've never done any character "creating" before I start writing. I just start writing. My characters are developed by writing them. I may note details in a character file as I discover them, but I don't worry overmuch about fleshing them out or de-mary-suing them. I just write them as realistically as possible.

I find the fact based character questionaires can be handy for collecting facts that I decide on as I write. Easier to go check what you called their second cousin by looking at one of those than searching through 80,000 words of novel!

I find the questionaires that work better for developing characters are the ones that ask about attitudes and beliefs and behaviours. They make me think about aspects of the chracter I may never have even throught about before.

I don't do it by either method. And I've been on Nanowrimo for 6 years? So that would make your statement false.

I use a variety of methods which I've taken from writing magazines and just experimented with. It really depends on my mood and the type of story I'm working on.

When I get stuck with characters I use mind mapping rather than character sheets--because then I can figure out in relation to plot points what I need to know. But I wouldn't say any method is better than another. They are all useful in some way.

To be honest, character questionnaires don't work for me either, mainly because they are full of unnecessary stuff that are, 9 times out of 10, completely unimportant for the character. Half of those things I don't know about myself or my friends and family, and I know what kind of people we are.

What I usually do is some sort of a targeted character interview. I take a situation that will probably appear in the novel, a crucial scene or maybe I just put my characters in a room to talk to each other. Then I just let them talk (I usually do this while I'm ironing or doing dishes, lol). It does wonders for both developing characters AND my plot. It just flows naturally, most of the time, because stuff that aren't natural for the characters or don't make sense for the plot are usually not mentioned this way.

Alternatively, I take a character from his/her infancy to see what was going on in there. Key events will be important for the character, but usually won't be mentioned in the actual story.

One thing about the whole character development thing (or anything else for that matter) is that you need to know more than you'll actually put in your book. But I doubt knowing my character likes apples would help here.