How To Keep People In Character: A Guide

how to keep people in character: a guide

I have gotten some requests for advice on how to write specific characters, but the underlying principles to keeping characterizations canon-compliant can apply to writing anyone in any series. Better yet, this advice may help you come up with character interpretations that feel both canonical yet original (and distinct from mine!).

You can reduce characterization to three basic principles:

1) Habits and speech patterns

Habits and speech patterns serve as “shortcuts” that immediately connect the character to the canon. The audience recognizes these cues and will associate them to the actual character.

Speech patterns are particularly important to keeping a character recognizable. As soon as the speech pattern of a person deviates from canon with no explanation, the suspension of disbelief will break for an audience. A common issue I see in shipping fics is that people will make a character give the love interest a pet name that just would never leave their mouth in canon-compliant situations.

Habits can be verbal tics (e.g. they say “babe” a lot), bodily motions (e.g. touching their hair or pushing up their glasses), behavioural trends (e.g. eating a lot), or even phrases that come up often. The latter I find is underused but very effective. Here’s the thing about people in real life: they will repeat phrases and stories, sometimes even verbatim, to different people! If you lift a line out of the show or book and re-contextualize it, it’ll immediately feel like the canon.

Habits come with two caveats:

Do not overuse the tics. It can be annoying and intrusive, especially when used more frequently than in canon! 

Do not rely too much on these habits for characterization. Your character may come off as a shallow imitation of canon without “substance” if so. 

The next two tips will help give your characterization substance and originality.

2) Drivers in decision-making and thought patterns

People in real life often have patterns in the decisions they make or the thoughts they have because of some kind of underlying motivation, whether or not they are cognizant of it. The same will apply to well-written characters in fiction. Try to think about any significant decisions the character makes in canon and why they might exist. (Hot tip: If these motivations are not explicitly stated in the canon material, this is where you can come up with some extremely juicy headcanons!)

Understanding the fundamental drivers behind the character’s actions will allow you to extrapolate and write what they’d do in the situations in your fanfic. These non-canon situations can include relationships! It’s a common issue for romantic relationships in fanfic to feel OOC because the characters act inconsistently with their canon decision-making and thought patterns solely for their love interest.

Examples of common drivers in fiction:

Abstract values such as freedom, revenge, survival, self-preservation. (If you’re writing anything political, try to figure out how they value conservatism vs liberalism, anarchy vs authoritarianism, etc).

Baggage and trauma relating to familial issues or past relationships, which can often result in maladaptive trends in behaviour or hard-lined moral codes and ideals.

Significant relationships that affect their needs, goals, etc. Pay attention to platonic, familial, or romantic bonds that are strongly featured in the canon.

All these examples are interrelated. Often our abstract values will arise from baggage, which then influence relationships, which in turn influence our values. Try to think about how each of these types of drivers may relate to one another for your characters.

Stories tend to have the most layered characterizations when the author has identified two drivers that are in conflict with one another, or one that leads to opposing behaviours. This can also be the starting point for character growth, whether it’s a hero’s journey or descent into a villain role.

3) Cultural context

Cultural context is a subcategory of drivers that I often find is overlooked. 

The culture in which someone was raised will often influence their decision-making habits, whether they conform to it or outright reject it. Recognizing the cultural context for a character can be very useful for figuring out cool little headcanons or extrapolating behaviour/opinions in the absence of canon material.

Some examples of how culture contributes to behaviour:

The kind of art and hobbies they enjoy, or at least are on their radar. 

Knowledge they would have about certain topics—even mundane things like musical instruments, certain skill sets, etc.

Their judgments on themselves and other characters, as well as the values they’d project onto their relationships.

The actions they would take when trying to conform to social norms of the time period—or even the set of actions that might occur to them!

It’s a pet peeve of mine when characters behave in a way that ignores their cultural context, simply because it won’t feel realistic! Since I’ve been relating this to shipping, I will make this point: what time period and country (or coded culture) is this character in? What are courtship norms like? And, if we’re going to go the nsfw route, what “interests” (haha) would exist?

Here are some quick examples of this analysis applied to two different characters: Hakuryuu Ren (Magi), Daryl Dixon (TWD). These are characters I’ve gotten requests for—let me know if anyone is interested in others!

Keep reading

Novel Writing Tools: The Draft Notebook

The best advice I can give for finishing a first draft is this: find the motivation to keep moving forward. Three easy ways to this are to give yourself a deadline, keep track of your daily word count, and save the editing for later. This means that the most useful tool you can arm yourself with to get through a first draft is a simple draft notebook. 

There are only two components to a draft notebook: the productivity tracker and the idea diary. 

The Productivity Tracker

In the first two page spread of your notebook, sketch a 4-week calendar. Depending on your personal deadline, you may want to use the next few spreads for additional months. A three-month timeline is a wonderful goal, if you have no NaNoWriMo plans. 

Give yourself a daily word count goal, based on the estimated length of your novel and your deadline. You can also mark out days where you know you won’t be writing, and adjust your daily wc goal accordingly. (Have super busy Saturdays? Plan on taking those days off from the start.)  

Write your daily goal somewhere to the side of your calendar, just so you have it. 

Make tracking your daily goals fun. 

Use stars to log your writing progress. (ex. One star equals 500 words, with a daily goal of 1500 words.) 

Fill in the squares of days you’ve reached your goal with pretty colors. 

Put scratch and sniff stickers on the days you’ve reached your goal. Whatever works for you. 

You can also use a bar-graph tracker, using your total word goal as the y-axis, the date as the x-axis, and your daily goal as a line to hit each day. 

If you want advice for sketching out your own calendar, check out bullet journal inspiration Tumblrs or scour Pinterest. Bullet journalists have that on a lock. 

The Idea Diary 

On the first blank page after your productivity tracker, write the date and everything you know about your new novel. This may be a four-page synopsis or a character’s name and age.

As you draft, update this section like a diary. Each day, write every new thing you discover about the story, everything you’re changing, you’re removing, you’re pondering. Write down all of the ideas that aren’t going into your draft that day. Keep it with you so you can jot down an idea that strikes you while you’re falling asleep at 1am or in the middle of cooking dinner. 

Use this to keep yourself from returning to an old chapter and editing everything. Let it give you solace that all of your brilliant ideas for the second draft are safely recorded. 

What happens once you finish the first draft?

Once you’re ready to start thinking about your next draft, you can read your diary section, and use all of those ideas to start planning your second draft. 

While working on your second draft, you can even keep adding to your notebook. Make a little “Draft Two” cover page, sketch a new calendar, and start a new diary section. 

The diary section will probably remain the same, with notes for future changes, except you might want to use your new first entry for a synopses, and a few main character profiles. The productivity tracker can be updated with goals for pages/chapters revised instead of words. 

If you need additional help making your way through a first draft, take a look at my other posts:

What to Do When You Can’t Write

How to Finish a Draft

Sometimes you don’t make art that changes the world. 

Sometimes you make art that just makes someone’s shitty day a little bit easier to bear. 

And that? 

That’s damn good too.

One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.

it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.

options for when you no longer like a fic you wrote

Orphan it. By adding it to the orphan_account on AO3, you remove your name from the fic and from the comments (if you replied to them). The work is removed from your account and from your stats. You will not see future stats or comments or kudos on that work unless you click into the fic yourself to investigate. You can no longer edit or delete the work after you orphan it. You can not get the work back.

Add the fic to an anonymous collection. This will remove your username from the story and from the comments if you choose to reply, but you will retain ownership of the work and still be able to edit/delete/orphan it in future. You can also regain ownership at any time by removing it from the anonymous collection. 

Add a disclaimer or other author’s note to the top of the story explaining how you feel, or what’s changed since you wrote the fic. 

Edit the fic. Either make changes to the existing story on AO3 or create a new story and include something in the summary or an author’s note that says you are rewriting your own work. You can even link the two together in a series or with the inspired by function. 

Delete the fic. While this will sadden readers for whom it might be a favourite story, this is always an option. Your Archive is your own, and you can control which of your works remain on the internet.

Remember that you wrote that fic at a time in your life when you felt a certain way or had a certain skill level. There’s no shame in that. You had to start somewhere to get where you are today. ❤

Hii!! I just want to ask if you have any tips or resources in writing character relationships?? Like I want to build a relationship between two characters in a relatively short time but i dont want it to feel rushed,,,,thank you so much!! Your blog has helped me alot!!

I have quite a few resources and advice on the topic of building romantic relationships in a story, so I’ve linked some relevant resources below that you might find useful:

How To Fit Character Development Into Your Story

Creating A Love Interest For An Introvert

 Writing Opposites Who Attract

Resources For Plot Development

Guide To Plot Development

Describing Heartbreak

 Developing Complicated Plots Around Characters

Writing Great Fanfiction

How To Write The Perfect Kiss

On Romantic Subplots

Resources For Romance Writers

Tips On Writing Skinny Love

Guide To Writing Friends To Lovers

Guide To Writing Enemies To Lovers

Guide To Writing Faded Love

Resources For Writing YA Fiction/Romance

Guide To Writing Will-They-Won’t-They

Rivalry vs. Abuse

Guide To Writing Forbidden Love

20 Mistakes To Avoid in YA/Romance

Balancing Fluff and Conflict

 Best Friends To Lovers Resources

How to develop an Emeies-To-Lovers story

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