Need tips to represent someone who you are not....

[Viraja]

I'm a newbie writer.

By nature, I'm sorta serious to whom philosophy, religion, and heavy topics such as these appeals a lot...

Not that I do not appreciate humor.

For some reason, I'm inclined to write a funny story. I think that would be the best to represent a concept/idea that I want to convey.

My challenge is, how to sound like a funny person (or a person of a different mental make-up than me) when I'm not one?

I'm not asking for ideas...

I'm rather interested in knowing, have you faced this situation in your own writing? (Where you had to represent a character who is totally a different person than you....?)

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

What has more or less worked for me is that I start by interviewing the character. It's something that for me at least has taken some practice, but I got quite a bit of that while I worked as a newspaper reporter.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

There are a lot of different versions of comedy. I have my doubts most people can emulate every last one well, but I think upon discovering the types of humor and identifying with some, they can find two or three types they can pull off.

 

[Nakosis]

I'm a newbie writer.

By nature, I'm sorta serious to whom philosophy, religion, and heavy topics such as these appeals a lot...

Not that I do not appreciate humor.

For some reason, I'm inclined to write a funny story. I think that would be the best to represent a concept/idea that I want to convey.

My challenge is, how to sound like a funny person (or a person of a different mental make-up than me) when I'm not one?

I'm not asking for ideas...

I'm rather interested in knowing, have you faced this situation in your own writing? (Where you had to represent a character who is totally a different person than you....?)

I always thought it would be important to fully create a character with as much detail as possible. Culture, upbringing, motivations, family relations. Create a character profile with as many details as possible. Give this character an autonomous life. Their own thoughts, their own faults, their own morals. Create a character that you don't identify with. Write down all of these details.

Take this character and create a situation for them. Then don't recreate the character acting in the situation. The character was already created. Let the character find their own way through the situation.

May seem a little weird at first, but you can do it. You are basically feeding all of this information about this character into your subconscious mind, then allowing your subconscious mind create the actions of this character. You might find what this character ends up doing even surprising to you.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

I always thought it would be important to fully create a character with as much detail as possible. Culture, upbringing, motivations, family relations. Create a character profile with as many details as possible. Give this character an autonomous life. Their own thoughts, their own faults, their own morals. Create a character that you don't identify with. Write down all of these details.

Take this character and create a situation for them. Then don't recreate the character acting in the situation. The character was already created. Let the character find their own way through the situation.

May seem a little weird at first, but you can do it. You are basically feeding all of this information about this character into your subconscious mind, then allowing your subconscious mind create the actions of this character. You might find what this character ends up doing even surprising to you.

In doing so, you'll sometimes find that things you decided, or they tell you about themselves, turn out to not be true, once you know them better...just like people in real life...

 

[Vinayaka]

I'm a newbie writer.

By nature, I'm sorta serious to whom philosophy, religion, and heavy topics such as these appeals a lot...

Not that I do not appreciate humor.

For some reason, I'm inclined to write a funny story. I think that would be the best to represent a concept/idea that I want to convey.

My challenge is, how to sound like a funny person (or a person of a different mental make-up than me) when I'm not one?

I'm not asking for ideas...

I'm rather interested in knowing, have you faced this situation in your own writing? (Where you had to represent a character who is totally a different person than you....?)

In my writing style I use dialogue a ton. So the characters indicate who they are by what they say.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I'm a newbie writer.

By nature, I'm sorta serious to whom philosophy, religion, and heavy topics such as these appeals a lot...

Not that I do not appreciate humor.

For some reason, I'm inclined to write a funny story. I think that would be the best to represent a concept/idea that I want to convey.

My challenge is, how to sound like a funny person (or a person of a different mental make-up than me) when I'm not one?

I'm not asking for ideas...

I'm rather interested in knowing, have you faced this situation in your own writing? (Where you had to represent a character who is totally a different person than you....?)

You never role played before? Just say to yourself , "I'm a comedian I'm a comedian".

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

When I was young, I was very shy...couldn't talk in front of an audience, etc. So I invented myself a role to play...his name was Derek...started using him sophomore year of high school...I could turn him off or on at will by senior year...eventually he became a part of my total person...

works the same way creating characters...of course, I haven't made any money off creating characters...

 

[Viraja]

I always thought it would be important to fully create a character with as much detail as possible. Culture, upbringing, motivations, family relations. Create a character profile with as many details as possible. Give this character an autonomous life. Their own thoughts, their own faults, their own morals. Create a character that you don't identify with. Write down all of these details.

Take this character and create a situation for them. Then don't recreate the character acting in the situation. The character was already created. Let the character find their own way through the situation.

May seem a little weird at first, but you can do it. You are basically feeding all of this information about this character into your subconscious mind, then allowing your subconscious mind create the actions of this character. You might find what this character ends up doing even surprising to you.

This is excellent thought! Thanks for this^. It just occurred to me, after reading your reply, to introduce some quirky behavior of the art teacher, something weird about him/her. I happen to portray a lady art teacher whose nature is one of bullying and taunting of students who are not too good, although she is excellent at art.

 

[Vinayaka]

When I was young, I was very shy...couldn't talk in front of an audience, etc. So I invented myself a role to play...his name was Derek...started using him sophomore year of high school...I could turn him off or on at will by senior year...eventually he became a part of my total person...

works the same way creating characters...of course, I haven't made any money off creating characters...

Hmmmm .... I had a student who couldn't talk in public for his shyness, but give that kid a puppet, and he went off the deep end with humour.

 

[Vinayaka]

This is excellent thought! Thanks for this^. It just occurred to me, after reading your reply, to introduce some quirky behavior of the art teacher, something weird about him/her. I happen to portray a lady art teacher whose nature is one of bullying and taunting of students who are not too good, although she is excellent at art.

For humour, it's pretty easy to do goofy, or simpleton. We all know somebody to base that off of.

 

[Viraja]

For humour, it's pretty easy to do goofy, or simpleton. We all know somebody to base that off of.