Excercise: Finding Character Depth in Questionnaires
I was reading an article on Brain Pickings this morning and I started thinking about character and how do you find depth in your characters. Do you remember Inside the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton? He would do interviews with actors about their works and their craft. Every episode ended with James Lipton asking the same set of questions, e.g. “What is you favorite word?”, “What is your least favorite word?”, etc.
Well turns out James Lipton lifted the idea from a French television host named Bernard Pivot. Though Pivot’s questions were a bit risqué for American television, so some had to be changed, e.g. “What is your favorite drug?”
Both are based on a set of questions written down by Marcel Proust. Evidently, questionnaires of this type were all the rage in the Victorian era. Proust’s questionnaire was found after his death and was Pivot’s inspiration for his questions which in turn inspired Lipton and even the magazine Vanity Fair had their own version for a while.
Anyway, what does this have to do with characters and finding depth?
The better you know your character, the easier it is to write them. “What would my character do when this happens?” becomes “This is what my character would do when this happens.”
There are a lot of different ideas of how to fill in that depth on your character: write a short story or scene with the character(s), fill out a character sheet for you favorite RPG for you character, and on and on.
This is another of those ideas: Answer the questionnaire from Inside the Actor’s Studio. Don’t just give the character’s answers, but answer in the character’s voice. Answer it how they would answer.
My favorite part of doing this type of exercise is when the characters have answers that surprise you. And the other part is that this is just for you, no need to share this. The goal here is to help you understand your characters in greater depth to help writing them.
For reference, here are a bunch of the various questionnaires I mentioned.
James Lipton’s Inside the Actor’s Studio Questionnaire
- What is your favorite word?
- What is your least favorite word?
- What turns you on?
- What turns you off?
- What sound or noise do you love?
- What sound or noise do you hate?
- What is your favorite curse word?
- What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
- What profession would you not like to do?
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Bernard Pivot’s Questionnaire
- What is your favorite word?
- What is your least favorite word?
- What is your favorite drug?
- What sound or noise do you love?
- What sound or noise do you hate?
- What is your favorite curse word?
- Who would you like to see on a new banknote?
- What profession other than your own would you not like to attempt?
- If you were reincarnated as some other plant or animal, what would it be?
- If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
The Proust Questionnaire
- Your favorite virtue
- Your favorite qualities in a man.
- Your favorite qualities in a woman.
- Your chief characteristic
- What you appreciate the most in your friends
- Your main fault
- Your favourite occupation.
- Your idea of happiness
- Your idea of misery.
- If not yourself, who would you be?
- Where would you like to live?
- Your favourite colour and flower.
- Your favorite prose authors.
- Your favorite poets.
- Your favorite heroes in fiction.
- Your favorite heroines in fiction.
- Your favorite painters and composers.
- Your heroes in real life.
- Your favorite heroines in real life.
- What characters in history do you most dislike.
- Your heroines in World history
- Your favorite food and drink.
- Your favorite names.
- What I hate the most.
- World history characters I hate the most
- The military event I admire the most
- The reform I admire the most
- The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with
- How I wish to die
- What is your present state of mind.
- For what fault have you most toleration?
- Your favorite motto.
The Vanity Fair Questionnaire
- What is your idea of perfect happiness?
- What is your most marked characteristic?
- What do you consider your greatest achievement?
- What is your greatest fear?
- What historical figure do you most identify with?
- Which living person do you most admire?
- Who are your heroes in real life?
- What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
- What is the trait you most deplore in others?
- What is your favorite journey?
- What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
- Which word or phrases do you most overuse?
- What is your greatest regret?
- What is your current state of mind?
- If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
- What is your most treasured possession?
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
- Where would you like to live?
- What is your favorite occupation?
- What is the quality you most like in a man?
- What is the quality you most like in a woman?
- What are your favorite names?
- What is your motto?
Links
- James Lipton
- Inside the Actor’s Studio
- Bernard Pivot
- Marcel Proust
- Proust Questionnaire
- List of the questions (found the Pivot list here)
- Brain Pickings Article on Proust, Vanity Fair’s Questionnaire and Bowie (started me down this rabbit hole)
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