On Characterization

It was sometime back in high school that I really started being concerned with characterization. I don't know what prompted this--if I had to guess, I'd say it was about the same time I started reading a lot of fanfiction, and became familiar with the term "Mary Sue." (For those who don't know what that is, wiki it--if nothing else, it's one more bit of internet jargon to familiarize yourself with.)

Either way, I became hyper-aware of my characters, both as roles in the story and as people; and I hope, by this point, that that awareness comes through in most of the stuff I write. Characterization is probably the most important thing, to me, in judging the quality of a story.

When it comes to writing, I like my character growth to be as organic as possible. This used to mean writing out in-character journal entries, or filling out surveys; then I realized it was much faster to simply role-play the character, either online or in real life. The latter, especially, helped me get a really quick sense of how the character spoke, thought, and moved--things which are, in my mind, at the core of consistent characterization. The rest of the stuff is reasons and details.

At some point I became able to just sort of think to myself "I have this space in the story. I need /x/ sort of character," and wait. I'd compare it to putting out a "Help Wanted" ad--because that was what it felt like, the moment that an /x/-shaped character sort of...showed up. With these sorts of characters, I try to just give them space at first--I might write down their name, or talk about them with other people, but I don't actually write the character until they've "settled" and I have a bit of an idea of their backstory. Generally speaking, it isn't backstory I consciously come up with; where I used to have painstaking psychoanalysis of a favorite character's reasons for being the way they are, these days I just...ask.

And that's pretty much how I judge whether MY characterization's on-target or not--am I asking, am I listening to the answer, does the answer come easy and make sense; yes? Good.

So, nowadays, I guess I would say I don't "build" characters so much as get to know them, the same way you would people.

This probably sounds pretty schizophrenic to those who do things differently--SO! Let's hear your opinions on the matter. Am I nuts? How do ya'll build characters? How important is characterization to YOUR writing?