Where do characters come from?

Great characters make great drama, great fantasy, great adventure.

So where does the writer draw them from? For me, it’s from one of two places:

1.Copying them from other works of fiction.

This is — as I’m sure you’d expect me to say — not a good idea. And yet, how often do we see Indiana Jones and Bridget Jones dressed up in a different costume and given a different name? How often do we see clichessuch as theexpendable yet funny African Americanrepeated over and over? This is, I believe, o...