Interview your Character #BYBin30

I had an odd dream last night. I am a fan of a certain Korean singer. In the dream, I was doing an interview for a magazine. I was not interviewing that singer but, instead, I was interviewing his former group, which now consisted of only two other singers.

I wanted to ask them the kinds of questions that their fans would be most interested in hearing about, not just the stuff that would be considered standard questions. I was more interested in finding out more about their interpersonal relationships, with each other and with former members of the group, as well as their reactions to some of the fan fiction written about them, especially the writings that would have been, possibly, awkward for them. I had other questions for them too, once they'd answered these, but, as often happen with dreams, I have forgotten a lot of the dream and can't remember everything I asked them.

But the point of telling you about this dream has nothing to do with the KPop idols I interviewed in my dream. The dream made me think about the characters in my stories. What kinds of questions would readers ask of them, if given the chance? How would they answer those questions? And how could I weave these aspects of their answers into the story? Their answers, obviously, would tell something about their personalities, but also about their relationships to others in the story, because, I suspect, many of those questions would have to do with those relationships.

I'm suggesting that you, dear writer, interview your characters as a way of more fully developing your characters within your own mind. Let their answers tell you more about your characters and their relationships, and then find ways to allow those aspects of your characters to be seen within the stories you are writing.

If you do this, let me know how it goes by telling me in the comments.

How Your Dreams Can Feed Your Stories #BYBin30

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I've been having some strange and interesting dreams lately. Sometimes, those dreams are more like wish-fulfilment and other times, they are nightmares I try to escape from. Sometimes my dreams at night are of the mundane variety, and sometimes they are magical. Often times, they make very little sense, and occasionally, they make no sense whatsoever.

But one thing every one of those dreams has in common is that they are fodder for stories. They can become whole new stories for me to write about, or they can give me new scenes to add into already forming stories. Sometimes, they just help me better pinpoint an emotion I am trying to portray (by letting me experience it in depth within the dream so that I can better describe it to my readers).

Just as our nightly dreams can sometimes help us work through issues we are having to deal with in real life, they can also sometimes give us answers to problems we are having in the writing of one of our stories. There are times when dreams are largely symbolic though, so we might have to navigate their meanings before we can find those answers.

Have your dreams ever inspired a story you've written (or wanted to write)? Have your dreams ever helped you with a story you were already writing? Let me know in the comments!