When writing about the alien races, how do you get yourself "into their heads"? How do you put yourself in their position and write from their point of view? I imagine it is quite different to how you write for a human character as you have to take an entirely different history and culture of species into account.asked by X3rx3s

That is a good question.

That IS a good question! Uh, give yourself plus one points. Good job.

I think at the end of the day, you're still talking about a person. Whether they're Xi'An or human, this is a person who has wants, has needs, has things that they're trying to achieve... things they don't like... stuff like that. I think in any given day, most human beings wouldn't take into account history and culture, but that colors how they interact and how they do stuff, so it's... I don't think it necessarily dictates their behavior, but it just sort of skews how they might react to certain circumstances. But I dunno, I always try to keep the character and what they want as sort of the focus.

Who is this specific being? I mean, that can be a thing that you get hung up on, 'cause you think in your head, "oh, Banu act this way," and then you end up writing stereotypes instead of characters.

Right!

Which, even with our alien races, I think we're trying to avoid that.

Yeah, we want them to feel complex, and interesting, and you know, as dynamic, and intelligent, and exciting, and complicated as humanity is - you want to give that sort of aspect to the aliens as well.

But trying to reverse the thought, and think about how weird humans might seem, and what are the weird things that humans do, to kind of get that frame of reference. Have you ever been walking along and just look at all the people driving around in cars and wearing clothes, and thinking like if this was animals doing it, it'd be the strangest thing you'd ever seen. So, something like that. Is that weird? I feel like Mark Skelton all of a sudden...WW & DH: [Chuckling ensues]