Relating To The Characters

One of my most interesting times writing is me becoming each character. Imaging how they would feel and what they would say when happy, sad, angry, threatened, or even presented with their own mortality. All these emotion and physical reactions when put in the spotlight have been the easiest. But sometimes too easy. So easy that I would question my own feelings on their actions. This sometimes causes me to mix personalities for some quotes and reactions. But that issue came from me not being willing to fully put myself in the character's shoes.

So here's what I do to help remedy that. Act it out. That's right. I would act out the scenes of the character's lines and reactions. This goes for the females too. When I'm alone I feel no shame doing every single little detail. I do all of it! And doing this method has helped me develop my team to greater lengths than they were originally made for. But there are characters that I did feel strange about being able to portray. Strange as in questioning if that kind of persona exists in me. But that's going off topic.

Point is, once I decided to stop doubting my ability to understand them and realized in some sense that each of these personas are in me, I no longer feared who was put on paper. Because let's be honest. No one can understand your characters better than you. They're your children. Don't shun their actions, embrace them!