Need Help: Character-based Stories

[Makou]

Okay, so... I'm new to this James Joyce phenomenon. From as far back as I can remember, I've been writing stories that have a heavy reliances on plot. So, you can see why I'm tearing my hair out now; just recently, a fellow writer of the literary magazine challenged me to write such a story. I'm... using sticks for paddles here, guys. Any help is seriously appreciated.

[mDuo13]

1. Don't plan too much ahead. It won't help. You won't necessarily know how your characters will react in abstract, simple terms. You have to sort of think through their situation, and write it as you go.
2. Come up with some quirks for your character and some things that are normal. Try to think what would happen if you put them together. What if you had a paranoid pizza chef? Would he be afraid of people adding more toppings while his pizza is in the oven?
3. Just throw your character into some random situation and come up with a response that takes into account the quirks. Like, if your character is a photographer, maybe he can't help but think of everything in terms of lighting and camera angles.

Maybe that's useful. Who knows.

[Chun]

If I've ever learned anything, original characters aren't made in a day; they're created when they want to be, and when you aren't looking for them.

Sometimes it's almost appalling what creates a character that is different from the rest. It simply relies on their intuition or a single preference to an object.

To put it plainly, make a generic avatar in your mind. Have him/her live in your mind world, and emulate circumstances. What would she do if this died here? What would she do if she got more change than she needed? Those kind of awkward intonation/character definitions create a unique character. Eventually you'll get a gist of how that particular character really would react as if in actual reality.

Think of one, dream of it, play with a it a bit, and in time the character will really be "live" in your mind. The more time you spend with "her", the more you can be insightful/deep.

Don't cop out on the events. "She likes to eat this! She is happy all the time! Happy eating girl and oh noes event!" Those make for shallow fanfiction levels of character literacy. Exercise a monologue technique and first-person viewpoints. It is then you will find a true view and realistic attachments/concerns.

...the only hard part is finding the time to write them all out, at least in my case.

~Chun