Character work basics

-for getting started in feeling your characters as real people / keeping track of all of your characters

Character work basics

-for getting started in feeling your characters as real people / keeping track of all of your characters

-Like my last post, this was inspired by a beautiful question that somebody asked me at the yearly festival of writing held by Jan Fortune–how do we keep track of all of the characters that we write about?

1. Invite your characters over for intimate + cozy vibes. As you would when inviting anyone over that you want to kindle friendship with + get to know better, offer your characters something. Maybe it’s simple: you brew and pour a cup of tea. Maybe it’s more elaborate: you conduct a tea ceremony for your characters. I have had whole cacao ceremonies for and with my characters.

Maybe you invite your characters over and you read poetry together. What do your characters think, how do they feel, about the poetry you’ve prepared for them? Yes, the point of this is the ritual. Make a ritual of hospitality for your characters, make them feel welcome.

Then, the “point” of this is what I like to call the interview. You now have time, space, and a container of trust within which to interview your characters. You ask them questions, listen to their answers.

-What do you remember about your mother / father / caregivers / childhood?

-Where in your body do you feel different emotions?

-Do you have any scars?

-What do you love about yourself?

-Do you have creative dreams? What do you think about having creative dreams?

-What is your favorite book?

-Tell me about a recent dream you had that left a thumbprint in you.

You get to integrate their answers to these questions into your writing of their stories, maybe, or even “just” into your awareness about them. The point isn’t really to write more. It’s to deepen intimacy. It’s to dwell in otherworlds with your story people. It’s also to reciprocate, to build trust, to share with your characters about you, too. The point, then, maybe, is greater self-knowledge, self-awareness. The point is pleasure.

2. Write with your characters beyond the book you’re writing. I know that my characters have life, and lives, outside of the parts of their stories that I write down, even the parts that are just for me (sketches, backstories, “deleted scenes”). Writing with them outside of the structure of the book or “novel” helps me get closer to them as real people.

I usually write about my “fictional” characters digitally, on my laptop, and I assume most other writers / novelists do too. Feeling them requires stepping out of this structure sometimes. So I keep a beautiful, aesthetically and materially pleasing, elaborate journal where I write and dream to and about my characters. So:

-Keep a handwritten journal (if possible; or try voice notes if not, use your physical voice) where you write to or about your characters.

-Write journal entries as your characters.

-Write a physical, handwritten letter from one of your characters to another, or from a character to you (as their author or just as a person, a friend). For bonus points, mail it to yourself.

-Write dreams for / as your characters, keep a dream journal for them. Ask the dreaming world to dream about your characters.

Yes, these take time. The “point” here is to spend time, to take time.

3. Find ways to take your characters out of their habitual settings. There are many ways of doing this. The classic is that you take your characters on a trip. I’ve written dozens of travel sequences for my characters. I never tire of it. Getting out of our usual environments shakes things up. It shakes things loose. Travel is revelatory of who we are, of who characters are: against the backdrop of some new place. Travel is also a ritual, ceremony. A trip has a beautiful, microcosmic story flow that’s so good for the practice of writing: the dreaming, the ideation, the prep; the packing of all that which is important to us; the conveyance from here to not-here; the narrative of the trip as our characters move from one place to another, seeing new things. And of course there is the delicious, and the terrible, sense of unknown about travel: the unexpected turns, the getting lost, the mishaps, the uncertainty, the lack of sure-footedness, the potential for high emotions. Travel creates memory, leaves its traces on us and our characters too. Take your characters on a trip

Or take your characters on a trip. This means that YOU, the author, travel, and you take your characters with you. What do they notice? What do they want to try?

Play with any method of shaking your characters up, of having them try new things. The original impulse for my novel Mira’s Story, published last spring, was that a young woman with a chronic illness who has recently experienced a positive breakthrough in her health is intending to try some new things. The story evolved from there. But you can see the glimmers I think of that original seed still flickering in the story. Have your characters take a class. Have them try a new creative pursuit. Place them in some unusual setting or circumstance: a boat ride? being interviewed on a podcast? at their first day at a new job? at a sex party? See what happens. Writing is surprise.

Take a poetry class as your character. YOU take the class, but you are taking it to see what your character would notice, would like to write through you. (Yes, this is mystic. But ain’t poetry always?) Take a pottery class as your character. What would they like to make? How do they feel, with wet clay under their hands?

4. For my fresh and happening mystics, find some way of character embodiment. I like to suggest this one for characters that you consider to be EXPANDERS for you, or ones whose qualities, vibes, or beingness you would like to live greater into yourself. I like spending as much time as I can in storyworld with characters who are expanders for me, whose ways of being I would like to absorb. This is the magic spell of conjuring our writing as activism, of using it as a tool to get us closer to the world we want to inhabit and the lives we want to be living in. If I am not using my writing for this, if I am allowing it only to pull me deeper into an undertow of despair about this shitshow world we are living in, then I am not awake. This is the call of the mystic, like Rumi always used to say: to be up, to face the darkness yes, in fact to be awake to it, to everything, every feeling and sensation, to witness what magic it has for us. To write is to be awake. Writing is awakening–as is reading such writing.

For fun: go shopping as your character. Yes, this is kind of like an artist’s date. Y’all know I’m a basic bitch. I love me an artist’s date: a “festive, solo” outing to nourish & fill the inner well of your gentle and sweet inner-child-artist. At this shopping trip, buy something your character would like. This could be extravagant, as one of my favorite yoga teachers says, “if you can or want to.” (Hello, G. I love you. May you be safe, may you be well, may you be happy.) This could be a five-dollar purchase at the thrift shop or the dollar store. (I love me a dollar store: that wonderland of possible options!) It could be a piece of jewelry that you’ll wear together, this could be a bouquet of flowers they love. What scents, colors are they drawn to?

For the sensuousness: cook a meal or go out to eat as your character. What textures & flavors are they drawn to? What do they want to try? How do they feel about the sensuousness of cooking a meal from scratch / the luxury of someone else cooking a meal for them and serving it? Light candles or go someplace with candlelight. Create romance with your character.

For my more advanced mystics: can you find some way of embodying your characters with your body? Can you walk or move through the world as them? How would they speak or act or engage with the happenings of your life? Again, I’d suggest this one only for characters who are expanders, who carry a texture of aspiration, for you. It’s a lot to channel an energy like this, to allow a slice of the dreamworld to move through you. One of my favorite memories as a creative person was the time I danced one of my characters: I choreographed and danced a solo at a dance show where I embodied one of my characters, her feelings and some things she was going through, on the stage. Other people could see her through me, asked about her story. I felt incandescent with dreaming. How might this play out for you? Make it hot. Like I said, the point is pleasure. The point is fun.

For more on character work–

A meditation on me & some of my favorite characters here

Learn more about the idea & practice of “your characters as expanders” here

Check out my newest writing guidance book, Writing Magic. I have several chapters there of meditations & ideas on ways to play with character work.

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Hey. I’m Mistress M / Nikki Ali. I’m a writer, writing guide, teacher, dancer, and creative activist based in Newark, New Jersey.

I am a person whose ancestors were enslaved people who helped build the structures of this country where I live. I stand with the lightworkers + those seeking the liberation of all peoples from oppression. I live + create most humbly on Mohican + Lenape territory, and I lovingly acknowledge the ancestors + elders, past and present, of the land on which we live.

• Do YOU know the ancestral elders of the land on which you live? Check out this tool, Native Land, to learn more. Educate thyself. ♥️

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