New Year Writing Workout #3: Discovering Your Character’s Culture

Okay, today’s exercise is a fun one. You get to sit back and use your imagination. Are you ready? Let’s go!

You’re going to need a partner for this one. So either grab an existing character who needs some fleshing out or create/fill out a new character who’s hanging out in a work in progress and needs some help.

Generally, when people think of characters, they first think of their outside appearance. Are they blonde, brunette? Eyes blue, green, brown, grey? Etc, etc. That’s all fine and dandy, but what about the aspects of what makes them real? (Case in point, New York Times Bestselling author, Sophie Kinsella, never actually described her character Becky Bloomwood in the Shopaholic series. Yet, she is so real that readers want to reach through the pages and slap her, hug her or simply meet her for coffee.) So, once we’ve got the appearance down, what can we do to flesh these ‘character’ people out?

Please note that if you don’t know the plot, it’s okay. You can build plot first or character first, or even build them simultaneously. Whichever you choose, try and ensure that the plot and character work together in terms of believability, firing up motivations and the like. Right now, we’ll put our finger on who exactly this character is:

First of all, we need to do some digging.

What is the cultural background of your character? Are they of German decent, Finnish, English, Italian? Small things like this can influence the way they feel about food, family, even physical proximity to others. Personally, I find this one tricky seeing as I pretty much see everyone as part of that big melting pot called Canada and think we’re all fairly similar. However, when I’m creating a fictional character these ‘stereotypes’ can be helpful for filling out small details in the character’s behaviour and personality.

Next up, how does their family background affect their behaviours, attitudes, philosophies as well as how they express themselves? You can move these questions along to the effects of their social background (where they grew up, education, wealth or lack of it) as well as religious background and emotional background.

Once you have some of the bones of who they are and how they were raised and their inner core, we can put some meat on those bones:

• What was your character’s most embarrassing moment?
• Who was their first boyfriend/girlfriend? How did the relationship end? How does it influence future relationships?
• How do they feel about animals?
• What is their occupation?
• What are their friends like?
• What are their dreams?
• What are their relationship like with their parents and siblings?
• What is their biggest weakness? This can be anything from chocolate to sappy movies to the inability to say ‘no’ to the urge to run away any time things get difficult in their life.
• What does their home look like?
• Do they collect anything?
• What are their hobbies?
• What movies do they like?

I’ve built a few worksheets you are welcome to use if you want to help organize yourself in this activity. Context and Character (pdf) Context and Character (Word) (scroll to bottom of page) as well as Character Core (the sample) and Character Core (Word version to fill out at bottom of page).

Enjoy getting to know your characters. It’s time well spent when you hit the pages of your manuscript.