Audition Your Characters!

This post was brought about through a comment I received on my blog post: 'Write Like You Speak...', I said in the comments that I felt I should go deeper into the subject, so here I am.



Damaria (her blog), the person who commented said that she wrote her characters in 1st person to get a feel for them, she then wrote through a different POV, and then 3rd person so she got a good view of their world.



I felt that this was a little bit unnecessary because I always feel that if I've chosen a POV, then I must stick with it. I wasn't too sure how other people worked it out, except when Damaria told me... I was like... well that's definitely unique.



So... on with the post... before I do any 'real' writing, I kind of make my characters audition... this might be weird, because I've never heard anyone else say that they do this before, but hey, I like to think I do things differently, and I like to think it works.



In the audition I give the character a scene... and in that scene they must show their character/personality, so whatever personality traits that I've put down on their sheet, they have to show that, if they can't, then they're out. I then either go through some characters that I've jotted down or I change the character.



The whole purpose of making your character audition in a scene is getting a feel for that character... it doesn't have to be a huge scene or anything, just 500 or so words. And then through this you might already tell which POV you're going to take with it... for me, it's usually 3rd person, although Clandestine is going to be braved with a 1st person.



I hope this post proved to be less rambling and more of an informative post... either way, I'm sure you learnt something.




Are you going to audition your characters?

Or do you have your own method?


-Joseph




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