Kerri asked Kasie West:

I'm probably older than your target audience, but I love your books for their real characters, and their cleanness. I can feel good about my teen daughter reading them, so thank you for that. My question is, what do you do to get in the headspace of your characters? How do you decide their motivations, or create their voice?

Kasie West Thank you so much! I'm happy you like them. And I read YA all the time and I'm much older than the target audience. Does that make us young at heart? Let's go with that. I just love the stories. How do I get in their headspace? That's a good question. I think knowing their strengths and weaknesses help. And then knowing what their driving force is for the plot of the book. What is their goal? If I know their goal and what is keeping them from their goal (character flaw wise) then I'm able to figure out what they need to learn or how they need to grow to reach that goal. Sometimes I don't know them completely until I start writing and putting them in situations and deciding how they would react. And a lot of times when I learn more about them through the writing process I have to go back and edit reactions or situations to match the things I learn while writing that particular character. :)

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