Writing Characters Not Like You

[Alan Aspie]

@Alan Aspie that's fantastic! Not really the year for meeting new people sadly, and I wish I was as brave as you!

I'm not brave. I'm me.

 

[BT Jones]

I think the most fully former characters in my WIP are the ones based on real life people; a lot of which have drastically different outlooks to me on a number of things. I'm not sure how to provide any tips on this. I always find it quite easy to adopt an opposing point of view, even if its very bigoted and backward. I guess its like that old thing with school debate teams; you have to argue both for and against something, to test your prejudices.

It sounds very easy to say, but you just have to try and inhabit that character. What drives them? What is success to them? Are they safe, small-minded, conservative, extrovert, introvert...?

I think the first objective is to make it a character that you can relate to, even if its just in a small way. I think they have to be sympathetic with some redeeming qualities. That's one arch villains in movies can be very monotone; they were written to be so immoral and evil that the writers couldn't think of any qualities they might posses or sympathies that they could elicit, hence psychotic demons. I think the greatest villains are two-dimensional; that you could be for them OR against them if your life had gone a little differently. Essentially, if you can't stand the character and don't enjoy writing them, then they're probably not going to be very effective.

Maybe you can imagine that these are people YOU could have become if certain events in your life had gone differently. If you'd lost someone, had an accident, not met someone, gone to a different school, hung around with different kids growing up, etc.

Sorry. None of this is really advise, per se, but its all I could think of.