The Character Interview: 30 Questions to Ask Your Protagonist Before You Write

Most protagonists arrive on page one fully dressed and slightly out of focus. You know their name, their job, maybe the colour of their coat. Then, three chapters in, you need them to react to terrible news, and you have no idea whether they would cry, make a joke, or start washing the dishes.

The character interview fixes that. Borrowed from journalism, it means sitting your protagonist down before you draft and simply asking them things. You write the answers in their voice, not yours. Nothing here is a tidy character sheet; the aim is to hear someone speak, and to notice where they go quiet.

Set the Room Before You Ask Anything

Treat this as a real conversation rather than a form to fill in, and it will give you real material.

• Write in first person. Let the protagonist answer as "I", not "she is the sort of person who". The grammar keeps you inside their head.
• Give it fifteen minutes. Thirty questions in one sitting produces sludge. Three short sessions will give you sharper answers.
• Do not tidy as you go. Keep the tangents, the repetitions, the odd turn of phrase. That is the voice you are hunting for.
• Answer out loud if you stall. Speaking bypasses the part of your brain that wants everything to be sensible.
• Let them lie. When an answer sounds rehearsed, write it down anyway and add a note in the margin. The lie is often more useful than the truth.

The Thirty Questions

Work through these at whatever pace suits you. Skip nothing on the grounds that you already know the answer; the questions you find boring are usually the ones hiding a scene.

Six questions about voice and daily texture

• How do you take your tea, and who taught you to make it that way?
• What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
• Which phrase do you use too often, and who notices?
• What do your hands do when you are lying?
• What sort of person do you become when you are tired?
• What is the funniest thing you have ever seen? Tell it without laughing.

Seven questions about want, need and the story they tell themselves

• What do you want more than anything right now, and what would you trade for it?
• What do you tell people you want?
• What do you need that you would never ask for?
• What is your explanation for why things went wrong?
• Who would you have to become for your life to be fixed, and why does that frighten you?
• What are you afraid people will find out?
• What would you do if you knew no one would ever know?

Seven questions about history

• What is the earliest thing you remember?
• Who was kind to you when nobody else was, and what happened to them?
• What is the worst thing you have done that you would still defend?
• What did you have to learn to do before you were ready?
• Which place can you not go back to?
• What was said about money at your family table, and what do you still believe because of it?
• Whose voice do you hear when you make a mistake?

Six questions about contradictions

• What do you believe about yourself that your actions contradict?
• What do you despise in other people that you quietly do yourself?
• What is the kindest thing you have done that you would deny?
• Where do you draw your line, and when did you last cross it?
• What do you want to be true about you that is not?
• What do you defend in public and doubt in private?

Four questions they would rather not answer

• Which of these questions made you pause just now?
• Who are you protecting by not answering?
• What would you change about your past, and why have you not changed it?
• What are you pretending not to know?

How to Tell a Good Answer From a Polite One

Polite answers could belong to anybody. They are vague, reasonable and slightly noble. Good answers are specific, cost something, and usually contain a small betrayal of the person giving them.

"I'm close to my sister." — polite.
"I ring my sister every Sunday and hang up after two rings, because hearing her pick up means I'd have to talk." — useful.

Watch for the moment the answers start sounding exactly like your own opinions. That is a sign you have stopped interviewing them and started agreeing with yourself. Push back. Ask "why" twice more than feels comfortable.

What to Do With the Answers

Once you have a page or two of material, do three things with it.

1. Circle two answers that cannot both be true. A protagonist who believes hard work solves everything and also believes the world is rigged is a protagonist with somewhere to go. That clash is your engine.
2. Build a one-page voice sheet. Five phrases they would use, three they never would, one physical habit, one subject they deflect. Keep it beside you while drafting; it stops every character drifting into your own voice.
3. Mark the evasions. The question they dodged, the answer they cut short, the detail they volunteered twice — each one is a scene waiting to be written, and probably a good one.

Keep Interviewing, Even Mid-Draft

The interview is not a one-off task you complete and file away. When a scene goes flat, ask the protagonist one question before you write it: what do you want here, and what are you pretending to want? The gap between those two answers is usually the scene.

You can also return to this list after a major turn in the plot. Some answers will have changed, and that change is worth writing down, because it is character development happening in front of you. If a question turns out not to matter, cut it and ask a better one. The point was never the list. It was the voice on the other side of it.

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