Playwriting - Part 5H - Creating Characters by Letting them Speak to You

No matter which ways you've used to create your characters, you've obviously got characters for your play. If there are no characters, there's no play. Maybe you created characters first and then put them into a situation. Maybe you thought of a situation, and then created characters to fit into that situation.

Whether you are writing your play or you are only writing about your characters, something magical seems to happen in a writer's brain. Your characters start to come to life. They start to tell you about themselves. You may have had one idea, but your character starts to tell you that it isn't how that event happened or isn't who he or she is.

One of my writer friends literally yelled, "Shut up!" to her characters once when she was at a family gathering. She told a group of writers that I was in this story, so we all found it funny because we could relate.

Your characters will tell you who they are. If you are concerned about keeping them one way and not letting them change, then you are being too strict on yourself as a writer. Let your characters change with your writing. Let them take your writing to where you didn't know that it was going to go.

Your characters are part of your creativity. Let them speak to you in daydreams and at night when you are resting. You'll be pleasantly surprised, even if you don't like the details that your characters are giving about themselves, you'll like the way those details fit into your play.