Exchange of Realities

It’s easy to think you know what a character is—backstory, skills, motivations, the whole nine yards. But sometimes, you really don’t get what makes that character until you’ve gotten a chance to use her voice. And more often, it isn’t just the voice you need, but being able to see how she interacts with other characters.

Hence, the cross-universe conversation. It doesn’t actually have to be between multiple universes, though if you’ve got ‘em, why not use them? The main point is just to have the character talking to someone she would never get to speak to otherwise. So the conversational partner might be from her world’s past or future (this is noncanonical, though, so no fair letting her use whatever she learns!), from a part of her world remote enough that they could never feasibly meet, or even from another story or game entirely. The conversation partner doesn’t even have to be one of your characters; I’m sure you have friends who have figments who could put up a pretty good chat.

One thing that helps with these conversations is to have either a context or a topic; you don’t expect these two disparate characters to be saying “How’s the weather?” while twiddling their thumbs in a pocket of nowhere, now, do you? So your context might be an activity or a location they’ve both happened into; for instance, one of my college friends and I used to do long conversations in various characters’ voices while playing a Parcheesi-like board game, often using the game itself and the metaphors it created to set us off. On the other hand, context might not matter so much as topic; I have another friend whose primary character in my game tended to get into cross-universe conversations with my primary character in someone else’s game based on the clashes in their viewpoints. And of course, there’s no reason not to have both, particularly if one or more of you wants to work with grounded body language; is there any reason you couldn’t have your character discussing politics with a long-dead ancestor while engaging in your world’s primary racket sport?

Note the general tone of the conversation as well. Holding an interview-style conversation is good for factual information and things the character definitely knows about herself, but it’s a little too targeted for emotional context, so you might learn why the character thinks she’s doing something or what she tells everyone about why she’s doing it, but you’re less likely to learn why she really did it. On the other hand, something that feels more like a normal conversation and doesn’t target so much as cleanly segue into the topic might not be as good for facts, but the more comfortable feel of it means the emotional context will be less guarded. And of course, there’s the underlying emotional context of the conversation itself; you’re going to get significantly different results from an argument than from a friendly exchange of jibes.

Format is also a thing to consider, depending on your purpose. A conversation in which you’re just trying to get the voice and body language of a character is best done live, preferably with a friend. On the other hand, if what you’re looking for is subtle emotional context and you don’t have an eidetic memory, a text format will probably be more convenient (I favor autologged or save-windowed IM when with a partner and word-processor when alone, but your style may vary); you can pore over it looking for subtext as long as you need to.

Ever tried this? Has it worked for you?