Character research

As I'm writing my work-in-progress, I still do character research. Sometimes this comes at interesting times like when I'm watching a movie. My family watched G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra the other night, and the person who played Captain Duke (Channing Tatum) really struck me as a great actor, but it made me think of my hero as well. Thus spurring some Googling, and ta-da, I have a little better grasp of my hero.

Images and the way people act and react are something I love watching, so movies are great for me when I'm contemplating characters. I also turn to music, which I get a lot out of lyric-wise, and I have a fondness for Youtube and watching music videos. So that's another place I go for character ideas.

I had another incident the other day when I was listening to Pandora.com while writing, since if I'm on the computer, I tend to be listening to music as well. And so, I heard a song on Pandora that I'd heard previously, but with the scene I was doing that had the villain and my heroine in it, it struck me differently, and the song epitomizes my villain. I was doing a dance and all excited to find that out. My hubby probably thought I was weird since I made him listen to it again with me (on Youtube), but I was perky and content after that.

Maybe I've given something useful for others to try out, but I certainly know this works pretty well for me. =)