Words, Words, Words...

It's probably because I started as an actor, but I hear the words and often I speak the words as I type them. Yesterday I had to do that, because I was writing a character unlike myself, so I after I wrote what I heard in my head, I had to read the words aloud to see if it tracked. This really ties into character for me, because I do hear voices in my head (no, I am not crazy) and what I hear is the voices of my characters. When the character is not as clear in my head, the words are more practical and less organic, but often I will hear a specific voice with a specific way of speaking.

I love when it becomes a scene with urgency, either a fight or excitement, because I find that affects the dialogue - short, fast, choppy, louder, this word, that one. I like playing with how much one character says compared to another - what does that say about how each of them feels about the situation (it's not about counting lines, that's for sure...). I like it when I can hear the "ums" and the "ers" and I put those in. They feel important.

The proof comes in the reading. I am looking forward to next week, because I will hear someone else say the words and I will see how closely it matches up to the voices in my head. I am nervous, too, because I know this play is nowhere near done... a skeleton, really. But I am looking forward to putting the flesh on it's bones.

* submitted by Kristen Finlay

Creating the Who...

In the past I have used a variety of tools to create my characters. The thing I do most frequently is STEAL. Sometimes I am more subtle than other times. I cobble together qualities from some people and mix them with qualities from another person. That tends to create a whole new person. When I am writing female characters I usually have their entire history in my head - I know them - I know what made them who they are and why they relate to the other people and the circumstances the way they do. When I get stuck on a moment or a point of plot or character choice, it is usually because I need to go into them and figure out something about their past that I don't know.

I will admit, I find this harder with men. My male characters are more of a struggle for me and I always try to work at that. If I get stuck I STEAL again. I think of actors that I know that I thin would be good in the role and think about what would work if they were playing that character. Usually this is someone I know (a local person), but sometimes it's a famous person (I have used Anthony Hopkins as my muse...). I find that when I STEAL from life I like the results. I get different voices and diction and that helps making it seem like a real scene between people and not just an abstract discussion.

The characters change too - sometimes the way I picture them in the first draft is very different from who they become in the last draft. This is because I have to let things go that do not work. I think that can be tough because sometimes you become really attached to the people you create.

I have stolen a lot in my play writing. The script that I am working on now steals from my own life but mostly I steal from other people's lives... that too helps with the creating the who...

Characters

"Here is the question for week #2!
Characters- how do you differentiate their voices? How do you choose their names? Do you find that you model a real person when creating a character?"

The answers to all these questions varies based on what I'm writing and where I'm coming from.

Sometimes they just come to me - voices, names, personality, etc. 

Often for my fiction writing I do some research to have the character's names have a deeper meaning; with an idea of the 'journey' the character is on through the story.

I have also modeled characters after real people. In my prose I have 2 characters named specifically after people I know (they wanted me to use their names in stories), however as I work with the characters the personality, and voice, become distinct. The play I produced at the 2007 Fringe was based on real people, names changed, and a couple of the characters were true to form.

Generally to help differentiate the voices of the characters I actually visualize them - whether they're based on real people, or not, they become more real to me in imagining them and understanding something of their life or back story. From there I try and bring their voices to the page.

For this play, Joe (Joseph) and Carl (Carlos) were the names from the start (as was Dr. Van der Hauk), though the characters did go through a flip in role. Maria had other names before deciding on her name. All of their voices come from my imagined presence of them. The other names in the play - Maria's classmates, etc, - had only the thought of balancing the alphabet through the play - with a little more thought on a few odd characters (Alyssa, Hugh, Blaine, and Mr. Fordom).