A Goodreads user asked Shaun David Hutchinson:

I like your book The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley. Where did you garner the feelings and the depth of Andrew's character? It is so real and raw.

Shaun David Hutchinson Thank you! That's a really tough question, and one I wish I had an easy answer for. I've been lucky not to have lost anyone close to me, so I didn't have any actual experience to draw on. But I do fear losing my parents or my brothers or my best friends. I think about it more than is probably healthy, and I drew on those fears.

Honestly, I think the key to writing real characters is to not be afraid to let them be unlikable, to go places that make you uncomfortable. Drew does a lot of questionable things in the story, things that might make people dislike him even, but I think it's important to allow characters to do those kinds of things in order to show that they're not perfect. No one is. We're all pretty flawed.

I don't know if that's a great answer. I hope it is.

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