: Re: What Can I Do to Familiarize Myself with my Characters? I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop and plan my novels before I ever start writing them. In my case, this is almost something of

@Yeniel532

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I massively struggle with the technique of putting my characters into random hypothetical scenarios to see how they act. I know a lot of writers do this, and it's probably very successful, but I am simply unable do it. So I came up with my own technique.

In thinking about how to get to know characters, I thought about how I would get to know a real person. For me, that would be by asking them questions. It generally turns into an interview type scenario as I think about the questions in my own head, which isn't necessarily how I interact with real people, but considering how many real life interviews I listen to on the radio on my way to and from work I'm comfortable enough with the format to be able to do make the process more efficient than if I were to imagine a conversation at a dinner party, for example.

This way I can ask pretty benign questions, which illicit an honest answer (or a lie if the character is so inclined), but then when I've thought of how they would answer I will ask another question based on what they've just said in order to probe deeper into their personality. This helps me to get through the superficial 'this is who they are' to get to the real 'this is why they are'. Over time I'll think of new questions I want the answer to, so I'll ask them, and usually I end up answering questions I didn't even know I had when I began the process.

The reason you're more familiar with your old character than your new one will likely be the same reason you would be more familiar with a real person in that situation: you've spent more time with them. Of course you'll know the old character better, they have existed longer. You haven't known the newer character very long, so even if you know who s/he is, like with a real person it will be impossible to understand them as well so early on.

You do always have the option of changing the character. I was struggling with something similar to this, but after a name change and gender swap it was much easier to restructure the character and think about them in an entirely different way. Changing something else significant (but ultimately unimportant to the story) might make it easier to anchor that this person is different into your mind.

No matter what you choose to do, it will take some time to overwrite the old character with the new, and whilst the process can be sped up I don't believe there is an overnight fix. Simply spending time with the new character in mind may be all you need.

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