Recalcitrant characters!

[Agent Double Oh Zero]

Ugh. Tearing my hair out.

My characters will not talk to me. I REALLY need to figure out what it is they care about most, so I can give them a great opening scene. (And so I can immediately threaten it, but they don't need to know that!)

Things I need to figure out:
What they do every day.
Organizing the chaos that is what they do every day into something resembling a reason for getting involved in the plot.
Something about their everyday life that they're not happy with, that isn't completely cheesy, which can actually tie into the plot.

So, other than character sheets, and headcanon character interviews, are there any other nifty little tricks you guys like to use to flesh out your characters?

[Siana Blackwood]

Get them to finish the sentence "Nothing is more important than..."

Twice.

(Toby would answer with "vengeance" and "my family", which gives me everything I need to torment the poor boy.)

[Agent Double Oh Zero]

Ah, the ol' third thoughts. (I usually go three levels.) Gonna take a whack at it again, now that Aurana's opened up a bit. :-)