As you probably have noticed the main character of my on-line novel in progress is a female lawyer.  Since I am neither female nor a lawyer how can I possibly write convincingly from her perspective?

Do you remember the Jack Nicholson comment in “As Good As It Gets”?  He was asked about how he wrote such realistic female characters.  His reply “I think of what a man would do and then remove all logic and common sense”.

I don’t hold to that at all but he was such an arrogant, but flawed, character himself in that movie it fit nicely for his character to think that way.

Have you read or heard about how some actors get into the character they must play realistically?  They go live the life for a while, if possible they hang out with a genuine character that they are trying to be.  They are trying to get into the headspace so closely that they become that character.

It has been suggested that it is exactly that dedication that caused the ultimate death of Heath Ledger.  I think that’s taking things a bit far but it may also explain the problems that so many actors have with their own lives.

There are clues here for the astute.

For the rest of us, one of your better techniques to research characters is the interview.

You will have to do some research first so you can ask sensible questions, you don’t want your subject to just get annoyed with you do you?  You need to be able to have some feel for what they do so you can show appreciation and so gain valuable insights that will only be exposed when they are relaxed.

How will you do the interview?  The wonderful thing about the Internet is that you no longer need to be in the same room, same city or even that same country to do a face to face interview.  You can use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) such as Skype, one of the Internet Phones, MSN, and hundreds of others.  Search for voip service providers.

Yeah they do take a bit of getting used to but they do work extremely well and you can record the whole thing on your computer for later playback.  You will need to get their permission to record the interview before hand.  You could email your subject a list of questions before hand so they can prepare their answers.

What do you ask them?  That’s what th research is for, but you will need to start with some general stuff first to help both of you relax and gain some rapport.  The questions may have to stray from the written format if your subject begins to talk about something really interesting and you may have to pull back to the questions if the interview strays into non-relevant territory.

After the interview transcibe it as soon as possible because there is a chance that you’ll forget some of what was said and, more importantly, how it was said.  You may need to recontact the subject later to clarify something.  Don’t leave that too long either as they can also forget what they said and give you a completely different answer.  That might not be a bad idea sometimes but often it just confuses things.

The more realistic you can make your characters the better your writing will be.  Do you have another way that works for you?