BUILD YOUR VERY OWN CHARACTER

Today, by popular request, I'm going to show you the stages I go through to get to know a character. I - like many writers - sometimes have this weird feeling that all my characters actually already exist out there in some alternate dimension, and that I'm not so much inventing them as, through the process of writing about them, gradually tuning in my aerial until I can see/hear clearly who they already are. And if anyone here is secretly thinking 'Is this the B*tsh*t Crazy Lady thing she was...