What makes a Character? - High School Stories

I have known, since I wrote my first fiction story (the story after my "non-fiction" story about my friends fighting), that I was very character driven. To me the characters are a very important part of the story and because of this they need to be real. This has been a good thing and a bad thing.

The Good:

• I know a lot of the reasons why my characters do what they do, and though sometimes that motivation changes as I learn more about the character, I can give (I feel) pretty good reactions to situations.

• I can tell you way more than you will ever need about the characters in the story.

The Bad:

• Because I get so connected to characters I tend to want to write their stories as well... which has lead to a long list of Back Stories for my main world. Will these ever get written? Who knows... but I have ideas for all of them.

• Sometimes I have a plan in mind on where the plot is supposed to go, and they don't like to listen. This means I am stuck trying to figure out how to shift my plot because no matter what how much I try to change their actions... somethings I just can't do.

I know, I can hear all of you now, "But Nevah! You're the author, just write them doing what you want them to do!!!" ... Yeah... it never goes as well as I want when that happens. The material feels forced, the story feels wrong and the whole story just feels... messed up.

I've written a piece once where I had to plot out the whole story because it was for a writing class and I needed an outline of events. So I did, then I wrote to that outline. You can ask those who read it... it was not good, at all.

With that said! How do I keep all of my characters straight. Well now, I have a large database (multiple as I haven't had time to combine them as I want to). That has all of their information in it.

Before that, I kept written binds FULL of character sheets. These have evolved as I have in details and information as well as, HOW good the information is.

Let's take a look at a few of them:

These are two of my character sheets I used to do. (Notice they are from Love Bites, so you'll know the names from Middle School Stories - Part Two). Notice how at 15 Mark made some pretty good money working at the hospital. (Don't ask, I have no idea what he did there).

After awhile I found some rather cool writing books at Barnes and Noble (I know old school bookstore), and so my character sheets grew.

I know there is a lot less in this one, this was a fan fiction that I wrote (which you will hear about in a few weeks). But my details got a little heavier when it comes to backstory.

But then... then came this one -

Yup... nine pages (Don't worry once typed it isn't that long, just these books were tiny and my handwriting was, still is, pretty big). There is a lot of information in here (most of it has changed since writing this story... LOL). A ton of it will never be used, ever, in anything. But it was a longer character sheet I found and was like, "I can fill these out!" and.. so I did. For all of my characters. Luckily, back then, I only had a handful of them. NOW though... this would take my years, though I know the answer for a lot of these for almost all of my characters.

So which way are you? Character driven or plot driven? Do you have a ton of information about characters that you will never use but know anyway? If you are a reader which do you enjoy more? Plot or characters?

Let me know in the comments below.