Not long ago I saw a blog post where the author had interviewed her main character and posted that interview. I've seen other authors who do the same thing but hadn't really thought much about it.
Now, I do interview my characters at times. It's a way for me to get to know them, what they are all about and discover things about their past which might be relevant to the story I'm writing at the time. But I've never posted these for anyone to see.
But, I can sorta see reasons to do this...
The reader gets to know your character on a more personal, deeper level.
The reader gets to know things about the character other than what's in the story, which could be cool.
And as a writer, anything that connects the reader with our characters is a good thing.
But my question is to you, the reader. Well, I have a couple questions but I'll start with you, the reader.:-)
Do you enjoy these character interviews? Do you even read 'em?
Now, what about you, the writer?
Have you ever posted character interviews? If so, what kind of response did you get? If not, have you thought about trying this?
4 comments:
I've read about people posting character interviews, but I've never read one. Sometimes I interview my characters, and while I've never posted it, I might in the future. What I do more often than interviews is write a journal passage from my character's POV, but I've never posted any of my character development stuff anywhere.
I've never thought about doing this, but it sounds like a great idea and I'm going to try it. Probably won't actually post interviews, but seems like it would help, as you say, get to know my character(s).
It's too early to say whether I enjoy reading character interviews or not because I haven't read one yet. This is something new to me and while I doubt that I would ever post one from a writing standpoint, I would likely read a character interview that another writer posted, just to find out what it entailed and because it is an interesting concept.
I doubt that I'll ever try this because my characters are made to be given life on screen by actors who portray them, so posting a character interview would kind of defeat the whole purpose of a plot, I think, making the on-screen and off-screen versions like two different people, which would be awkward.
You have, however, got me thinking about possibly interviewing actors as they appear in character instead of the typical interview where they are being themselves and discussing their careers and what they "think" about the character......this would definitely make for an interesting addition to my regular interviews and to my blog posts, so thanks for the alternate perspective :)
The Madlab Post
I've not read one either. To be honest I don't read many author websites and most of the author blogs I read are like this one - informational on writing in general - and not so much geared to the writer's own books and characters.
I'm not sure I'd get into reading them much. I think reading them would affect me much the same as trying to do them does. I've tried several times and always feel silly, like I'm talking to myself while pretending I'm not talking to myself. To me, I think reading such an interview would seem fakey.
Matthew (above) mentioned that he will do journal entries written as that character. I think I'll give that a try - it might not feel as forced and fakey.
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