Writers often struggle to unlock their creativity when faced with the blank page. Tools such as interviewing your character, using writing prompts, switching up the point of view and rewriting a scene from a different character’s perspective, or even using free writing, can help.
Interviewing a character can offer insight into their motivations, goals, and core beliefs. It can reveal flaws as well as their strengths. The right questions can provide you with a plethora of revelations about them and make them come to life for you – which means they will for your reader, too.
Here are five questions to ask your characters to get you started:
1. What is your biggest fear?
Fears reveal vulnerabilities and motivations. This information lets you grasp their emotional landscape and the potential obstacles they may face.
2. What is your biggest secret?
Secrets disclose their moral compass and what drives their decisions and actions.
3. Tell me about a significant event from your past. How did it shape who you are today?
Backstory influences their personality and goals.
4. Who is the most important person in your life and why?
A key relationship shows you their support system, emotional attachments, and potential conflicts.
5. What is something you would never do?
Discovering a character’s non-negotiable principle sheds light on their values and what they hold sacred.
Each of these areas – fears, secrets, formative events, relationships, and principles – showcases your character as an individual, who is fleshed out, and offers you the chance to deepen your understanding of their personality, ultimately bringing them to life on the page. The answers give you the perfect ways to throw obstacles at them and up the stakes of the plot, allowing them to overcome any odds.
If you’d like more inspiration and more in-depth questions, check out Writing Raven’s Character Interview Worksheet https://writing-raven.com/product/character-interview-worksheet
Wishing you boundless inspiration,
The Ravens