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I used to take a person I knew IRL and make changes to suit the story. That way, I managed to have a ready built person I knew, whose reactions I understood and had seen, and one that was easy to manipulate. I guess I've been writing and creating for so long now that the characters just appear to me. Often, a character will appear to me first, and I will fit them into whatever idea the character suggests. But, like my current novel, I usually have the idea and then put character ciphers into it, which I then flesh out into "real" people. As a pantser, this process happens in my head. But, really, characters are now people who live in my head. 40-odd years of writing, 25+ years of doing it seriously have seen an entire population grow within me, and now I can find myself borrowing bits from past characters I have written (or based on IRL people) and amalgamating them into a new form in my head and populating the new story, making my world even more crowded. |