Roughly eight years ago, I wrote about the opposite of this. While I still find that idea compelling, let’s look at this from the other side. Back then the message was not to set everything in stone, but if you have an interesting character concept, just research it. There is someone in history who’s life applies to what you are doing.

For example: Do we know how someone would act in an apocalypse? Not really, but maybe. Kind of.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Man of the Hole. Not a lot is known about him. The name is a reference to his tendency to dig a hole wherever he lived, but that’s a weird quirk to focus on, because he was the last survivor of a genocide inflicted upon his people, a small, unknown group in the Amazons who were clearly very isolated. This wasn’t a fast incident. No-one really knows when it started, but probably in the 70s, when other peoples in the Amazons had similar fates, but what was left of his people were killed in 1995 by illegal miners.

Since, as far as we know, he never talked to anyone after that, and stayed away from everyone else, in a sense, from his point of view, he lived through an apocalypse. He was found dead a few years back (2022) roughly at the age of 60, seemingly having been waiting for his death in a hammock. So, he died in 2022 and his people had died in 1995, which means that he lived alone for 27 years.

Yet, many people say that if they were alone like this, they would rather die than continue. Man of the Hole makes a strong case for the opposite. He isn’t alone either. There have been other instances where people have been on their own for extended periods of time, like Juana Maria (not her real name), the last surviving member of her tribe who lived on an island off the coast of California for 18 years in the mid-19th century (and died soon after being “rescued”).

In general, having a wide knowledge-base will make you more creative. So, when you want to explore a specific kind of a character, why not look into examples of such people in real life. Sure, you could use fiction as a basis as well, but many of those characters are not as compelling as real people.

Also, it’s just interesting to find someone who has very unexpected feelings regarding something. Like, many actors feel traumatized for having participated in overly sexual movies, but the kids in Saló have taken a very opposite stance. They had be naked through most of the shoot, but they just found it all funny. There might be cultural differences, but Italy isn’t really known for being very progressive.

It’s not that you can’t find interesting examples in fiction as well. One of my favorite movies is You Were Never Really Here. It’s about a veteran who suffers from PTSD and has suicidal ideation… actually more than that. His job, which isn’t helpful in this regard, is finding children who have been trafficked. He is quite brutal. Now, (spoiler) his mother is murdered and he doesn’t take it well. However, when he finds the murderers and has had his revenge, what happens?

Well, (still spoilers) this is one my favorite movie scenes of all time, as one of the killers is bleeding out on the floor, our “hero” lays down next to him as they sing along to a song on the radio. Sure, there’s going to be some amount of incredulous “whys” regarding this, but I think it was a very interesting choice. This act of vengeance didn’t actually solve anything. His mother is still dead. Maybe the thing is that it just allowed him to finally mourn.

Now, how do you come to these kinds of idiosyncratic character choices? Just being random doesn’t work, but if you try to understand people and how they work is beneficial here.

Also, don’t let media poison you. Back when New Orleans was flooded, there was a lot of reporting on how people were trying to survive. However, when it was footage or images of white people going to grocery stores to find food or water, they were gathering supplies, if it was black people, they were looting. Media doesn’t really want to tell real stories. They want to make stories that sell. If they need to take a specific point of view, they will.

Again, regarding these natural disasters. Media likes to emphasize things like looting, when in actuality, it’s very few people who will do that for reasons other than survival. Also, it’s not every person for themselves. Instead people generally organize quickly and will help each other. Only when things become truly desperate, will people fight for food or anything like that. We’ve just been taught to be fearful of that.