A Goodreads user asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Hi Lois. I recently read a few books of other authors, and as good as they were, I didn't relate to their characters as much as I do with yours. Do you have any kind of technique to help you make your characters life-like?

Lois McMaster Bujold It may be too global to be dubbed a "technique", since I don't think it's detachable from my whole writing process. For the viewpoint characters, it certainly involves mentally walking into their skins and bones, wrapping their lives and worlds around me, and looking out through their eyes as best as I can. For the non-viewpoint-characters, I suppose it has something to do with recognizing each is an independent actor in their own life, a kind of lite version of the foregoing. A form of virtual literary method acting, perhaps.

Pat, as always, has more wide-ranging things to say. https://www.pcwrede.com/complicated-s... ferex. A search on "characters" or "characterization" over there should produce more.

Ta, L.

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