At the Crime Writing and Getting Published workshops at the 2014 Waterford Writer’s Weekend, I was struck at the importance of getting to know your characters.
Author Alex Barclay gave the Crime Writing Workshop and Vanessa O’Loughlin of Inkwell and Writing.ie.
As Alex spoke, a thought struck me. How about knowing your character so well that you would know what exactly their Twitter bio would say? Essentially this is boiling down what they deem important into 140 characters.
Mine currently includes different interest areas I tweet about; use Twitter to read about; and that are relevant to my personal/professional mix on Twitter.
Cast a professional eye
Another question to ask is does your character have a LinkedIn profile. A LinkedIn profile is more than a CV. It allows you lots more space to go into detail of achievements in various roles. LinkedIn profiles fall into the following categories:
1. None
2. Unused and barely filled out
3. Filled out with minimum detail and not updated regularly
4. Filled out normally
5. Overkill of adjectives and detail
Facebook fun
If you’re a Facebook user, you’ll notice Facebook keeps on prompting you to further add details – the latest I saw was “who is your favourite athlete?”
What Facebook asks is a great way to get to know your character – not just the answers, but do they actually allow those details to be public, do they allow just friends to see these details or do they decide not to share these details at all.
The motivation for Facebook is advertising revenue. You can target ads based on user preferences. You can also go through the advertising process without paying a cent to find out details about the general population eg you could whittle it down to how many engaged men between 30 and 35 like watching Coronation Street and play rugby in a certain geographic area. This would give you a sense of how ‘normal’ your character actually is.
Keeping the Pinterest
Another way to get inside your character’s mind and feelings as well as getting an idea of what they like aesthetically is to see what would they use Pinterest for? An image-based website, some people use it to ‘pin’ or store ideas for interiors or for motivational quotes on beautiful backdrops. This is a way to see inside your characters’ minds.
Of course, depending on the era, location, and socio economic setting maybe your character doesn’t do or have access to social media. You can still use it for prompts to get to know them better.
