{"id":162,"date":"2021-02-07T00:38:52","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T06:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=162"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:28:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:28:23","slug":"13-unusual-questions-for-character-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/02\/07\/13-unusual-questions-for-character-development\/","title":{"rendered":"13 Unusual Questions for Character Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you\u2019re creating characters, you have the obvious questions.\u00a0 What\u2019s their name?\u00a0 How old are they?\u00a0 What do they look like?\u00a0 What are their interests, and what\u2019s their worldview?\u00a0 Strengths, weaknesses, and deepest fear?\u00a0 These are highly useful, especially if you have a good handle on the answers.\u00a0 If you want to make your characters truly realistic though, it helps to go a little deeper.\u00a0 To that end, and also because it\u2019s plain fun, here are some more unique questions to ask about your characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go to 13 Unusual Questions for Character Development<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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  1. What do they do while standing and waiting in a long line?<\/li>
  2. What do they think of snow?\u00a0 About people throwing snowballs at the back of their head (even if they don\u2019t mind snow itself)?<\/li>
  3. What do they always keep in their purse, backpack, and\/or pockets?\u00a0 Quarters, lipstick, band-aids, sunglasses, or a book in case they get stuck in line?\u00a0 When not out and about, is there a certain place at home they always keep their bag?<\/li>
  4. How do they react to people who annoy them?<\/li>
  5. Opinion of coffee and\/or caffeine?<\/li>
  6. What are their eating and exercise habits?\u00a0 Do they have food allergies or sensitivities?<\/li>
  7. Do they have seasonal allergies?\u00a0 So many people do in real life, but fictional people rarely seem to.<\/li>
  8. How does their attitude and\/or behavior change when they\u2019re tired?<\/li>
  9. Cinnamon roll status – this is something fun I learned about a while back.\u00a0 There are four answers.\u00a0 1) They look like they\u2019ll kill you, and could actually kill you.\u00a0 2) They look like they could kill you but are a cinnamon roll at heart.\u00a0 3) They look like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you.\u00a0 4) They look like a cinnamon roll and are a cinnamon roll at heart.\u00a0 And for those of you whose characters are food: 5) They ARE a cinnamon roll, who could actually kill you.<\/li>
  10. What\u2019s their sense of humor like?<\/li>
  11. How would they react if an actual alien showed up in their room? (Think E.T.<\/em>)<\/li>
  12. How do they feel about spiders and snakes?<\/li>
  13. How comfortable are they with the technology of their world (whether it\u2019s a contemporary or speculative story)?\u00a0 Especially in a sci-fi story, it can be easy to focus on the tech and not how different characters interact with it, but in real life you have individual comfort levels ranging from the developers and programmers to those who stick with flip phones and don\u2019t have computers at all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    There are plenty more oddly specific or just plain wacko questions you could throw at your characters, but hopefully this will get you started.  If you have more you\u2019d like to add, feel free to share them in the comments!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When you\u2019re creating characters, you have the obvious questions.\u00a0 What\u2019s their name?\u00a0 How old are they?\u00a0 What do they look like?\u00a0 What are their interests, and what\u2019s their worldview?\u00a0 Strengths, weaknesses, and deepest fear?\u00a0 These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}