BoM/TWS Message Forum

"Nobody knows anything," screenwriter William Goldman famously said of Hollywood and formulas. That's because of a deeper rule: "Nobody knows what they like until they trip over it."

As a reader I don't look for particular qualities in characters. I just want to be compelled by them.

As a scribbler, I scribble out stuff for characters to do, and sometimes the scribbles turn into interesting, compelling shapes. It's like doodling, where the thing you doodle sometimes looks like a sketch for an interesting thing, so you rough it out and polish it up into something finished.

Some people make up characters ahead of time. I can't do that. I have to discover them by throwing them into a story and watching what they do.