hecvte:

Hey, anon! I got this message while I was at work so I’m sorry if it’s a bit late! I can’t tell you exactly how I do it because some things just click into place and sometimes it feels like magic mixed with sheer dumb luck. But here is some of my advice to you!

Read:

• Exploring someone else’s world, their paracosm may help to inspire your own.
• The first major book series I read was Harry Potter (surprise, surprise), and when I was younger (though I am embarrassed to say, lord help me), I was in fact in love with Harry Potter, he made me happy (I also had a serious crush on Sirius Black @ baby me, wtf) so I used to imagine myself as a character in HP that came along and fixed all of Harry’s woes, I was his light, his princess in shiny kickass armor, and soon this fictionalized version of me took on a character of her own.

Fanfic & Retellings:

• If anyone ever says fanfic isn’t ‘real writing’, they can bite me. Fanfiction is valid, you’re pouring your heart and soul into the work, and not just the work but the characters. As with retellings (of myths, fairy tales, etc.) the world and the characters were already built, but the moment you write for them, for that brief inexplicable moment, those characters are yours.
  
• Let them be yours. And then let those characters spawn, let that world expand, and then cultivate those characters you find in that other world that are truly your own and bring them into your own world.

All in a name:

• Sometimes seeing a specific name or even a word that reminds me of a name, conjures a picture or a voice, fills my head with this creature’s story. Knowing the meaning or the origin of that name can add to the back story and depth of a character (i.e. why did their mother or father or parent name them this?).
  
• This site is actually pretty fucking awesome for choosing names.
•  Sometimes, I have to find a picture first, seeing a model or an actress can sometimes give depth to a character because when you know what they look like on the outside, you can start building the inside or vice-versa when you have a character in your head all built up and then you find that one picture of that one model that completes them.
  

Research:

• Characters are a by-product of the environment they live in much like actual people. If your character lives in a world where robots have become sentient and want basic ‘human’ rights, study robotics, philosophy, dystopias, when you’ve created a world, you can decide how your character is going to react to that world. Are they rebellious? Are they afraid of robots and must learn to get over that prejudice? Will they fight for robotic rights? Will they be the villains of the tale? What are they going to learn from this world?
• History has always been an inspiring point for me, other and ancient worlds have always spoken to me so I research them, I get to know the people and the world, and then set my characters loose on it, how would they have reacted if they lived in a village that was hit by the Black Plague or taken over by Vikings?
  

Headcanons:

• Create headcanons for your characters. If you see a text post on tumblr that says ‘imagine your otp’ than imagine your own characters. Play those headcanon games used for someone else’s fictional characters and play with your own.
  
• Come up with a list of random facts about that character (i.e. Emily is the kind of character who will listen to Vivaldi when on a heist but prefers electronica on her days off. Her favorite color is periwinkle. She has a cat named Buffy [after the show], and her favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip.) Knowing all those tiny, seemingly insignificant things will bring depth to your character, those little things make us who we are.
  

Believability is subjective. There are going to be characters who are too good to be true, either they seem too perfect or they seem to imperfect. Use your own emotions and experiences to give credibility to a character, if there’s something in my life that I cannot control, that has significantly left a mark on me, it’s something I can deal with via my characters, I can work it out through them even though it might not work in real life. I can take my anguish and my sorrow and my humor and wrap flesh around it and send it off into another universe with another name.

I read recently (I think it was on maggie-stiefvater‘s blog) that writing characters is like writing a thesis paper and you’re trying to convince everyone reading them that they exist. I know I probably mangled that quote but I like it, and I think it speaks to what we do as writers. We make these worlds and these characters and we ask others to accept them, to believe in them, and love them.

I really hope at least some of this helped? It’s about 2am for me (I didn’t get home from work until after midnight) and I’m a little worried it’s all over the place, but I hope it makes sense!