People all approach character creation in different ways.

I find it unusual how invested some people are in the characters they've made- Giving them thorough and realistic back-stories, describing all their personal likes and dislikes and basically being very exhaustive when coming up with their characters.
-I don't think that's wrong, rather I don't do it that way so I don't understand it very well.


My approach is pretty hands off mostly: For My Pinky TA characters they're just made to serve the story, not the other way around. Any back-story stuff I do for her is only to come up with new ideas to make a comic about, not to build her character for myself... I don't know much about how Pinky, or Ace, or Cc actually think about things generally, I'd find them very challenging to write about as first person characters.

I think I treat them as external characters: they're not me. They're like other people that I write about who happen to be doing the stuff in my story... but like other people, they'd have their own thoughts and feelings that I don't know about and that I'm completely unconcerned unless they have a bearing on the story at hand.
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Are there better ways to do it?
How do you do it?

I see these strange exhaustive check-lists of character creation that people recommend you use and I just find those ridiculous. Is it any good to go that way?.

Depends on the type of comic.
For a more serious comic I give the majority of all the main characters their own story regardless of whether they're a protagonist or not. Usually the events would then tie in with the protagonists at somepoint. Likes and dislikes doesn't usually have a point to me, however stuff like fears and limitations are great for exploiting.

ozoneocean
Are there better ways to do it?

To be fair I don't think that's something you can tell someone what to do.
It's stuff like that which makes comics unique.

When I'm coming up with characters, this I was I do:

-The first concept of the character- usually a few sentences, or a rough sketch. At this stage, I don't know a lot about the character apart from how they will serve the story.

-Development of the initial concept- I build on the concept of the character, adding in things like a few personality traits, a fashion sense, strengths/weaknesses etc. There's a lot more drawing at this stage too. I work out the character's look here.
I may also come up with backstories at this point, but that depends on the character.

-Development of the character within the story- Most of my character development occurs very naturally during the scripting stage of my comics. For some of the comics I'm currently planning, I have written scripted conversations/situations between characters, which have helped to develop them, and may or may not actually be included in the final comic.


I find that for me, this way works just fine. I'm not a fantastic writer, but I think that some of the characters I've come up with recently are some of my strongest purely because I've allowed them to almost 'develop how they want' within the comic story itself. This also means that a character who I originally thought would be minor, suddenly becomes a more important character to the story. Also, a character may start out one way, but because of events in the story they may become someone very different by the end, for better or worse.

I personally feel that this sort of natural growth of characters works really well, because it can lead to many interesting plot twists, character arcs, and relationships. I also find this method very fun, because even though I'm the writer, I may not always know what a certain character will have become by the end of the story, which keeps things exciting for me! :)



I'm not even sure if what I was typing made sense. It was just the random ramblings of a crazy comic girl lol.

Usually, I come up with a person to fit whatever role I need fit in the story. A doctor, a spiritual person, whatever. I think age and gender first and then design them. After that, I consider a personality for the character that I think would either fit the role best or provide the most interesting/rounded/realistic character. I like to try to put it into words if possible, so I can just think of that to keep them in character whenever I write script for them. (Example: Young, laid-back priest, charismatic and empathetic.) If this is a significant character, I then proceed to consider what motivates them. If it is important to the story, I consider past experiences, family, etc. If not, I don't worry about it. Sometimes I like a character and give them a bigger role, and at a later point, I fill in these details when needed -- maybe even give them a connection to other characters in the story. Some people think I come up with all of these details in the beginning, but I don't. Most of the time, I'm just "winging it," and some background character I didn't intend to be much of anything is suddenly revealed to be someone's long lost brother. XD (I know, it's terrible! I do it all the time, and I should be ashamed!)

However for the MAIN main characters, I thought of a lot more details and personality quirks in the beginning. Mostly personality traits and general motivation, though. I needed to consider enough to get in their heads and relate them to each other, but I didn't think of too many details. Those got filled in in time (part of my "winging it" style). Oddly, the characters I put the least planning into initially turned out to become some of the biggest "favorites" among readers. The ones that changed the most from my initial concept are really interesting characters to. A couple of the main characters started out loosely based on people I know but ended up being developed in a completely different direction, so they are nothing like the people who originally inspired them.

Someone
For some of the comics I'm currently planning, I have written scripted conversations/situations between characters, which have helped to develop them, and may or may not actually be included in the final comic.

I do this too. I have lots of loose papers with conversations or scenes in them that define characters really well.

Someone
I see these strange exhaustive check-lists of character creation that people recommend you use and I just find those ridiculous. Is it any good to go that way?

No. I don't think those are useful at all to story writing. Ask your own questions relevant to the role in the story. I think those lists are more valid for obsessive role-players than they are to writers.

So, I have a tendency to completely reuse characters from old stories. All the characters from Koji Takahashi are from an old comic I used to post on drunk duck under a different user name, but I've completely recreated them. I tend to take a basic purpose and feeling and build a character around it. From there, their backstories and personalities come together as I create the plot. They become even more life-like as I actually draw the pages and type up the dialogue. It's kind of like getting to know a new person in real-time.

I try to stay very far away from those big premade lists you're talking about. I usually only use them when I have characters that are too similar and I can see what needs to be changed. I like the process to feel organic.

For the actual creation/developement part, the most important part for me is to feel them, especially the main characters. I mostly create character for written stories that are told at "I" perspective, which I continue to do in my comic, so it is very important that I know how the person thinks. I gotta be able to "wear" them in a certain way. What he/she is like in general(good/bad guy, loner, psycho, obsessed, etc). Once the character is set as well as the story, all the details usually fill up quite naturally. If it doesn't, I have a tendancy to think the character is not the good one. To me, creating a character can be a little like getting to know someone new: you don't ask a person a "list" of pre-made questions, you listen to him/her, try to understand that person. You make links through the different stories and anecdotes you are told.

Someone
For some of the comics I'm currently planning, I have written scripted conversations/situations between characters, which have helped to develop them, and may or may not actually be included in the final comic.

I don't write much notes other than what's directly in the comic, but I tend to start to imagine different conversation, interactions, events that won't necessarily be in the story but that builds up the whole thing. I do lots and lots of vizualisation, and probably too much for my own good.

Someone
They become even more life-like as I actually draw the pages and type up the dialogue. It's kind of like getting to know a new person in real-time.

That's an interesting way of putting it and to a degree I do it myself. In fact I do most things people have mentioned.

The lists things can be useful but too many people think that just by creating a list they create a character. I tried doing one for the cast of Malefic and quickly decided that most of them would even answer such absurd questions.


Where I sometimes fall down is getting it all across in the story.

Before introducing a new character, theres this long winded internal debate I go through whether or not introducing a particular character is necessary.

But when I introduce them, I MAY tend to put a long winding back story on them depending on a number of factors which mostly boil down to:
1) Do I really like the character?
2) Do the fans like the character?

For instance in my old comic, Brood Knight... Mara-Nina was just intended to be an offshoot character from an older story and concept I done. She was supposed to be just a minor villain who later converted. But for some reason I cannot explain, I ended up liking her so I decided to cast her in the lead female role in the Brood Knight storyline.

Same thing goes with Claudita ... who is a recurring character in both Brood Knight and MAG-ISA. I originally intended her to be a one-shot character who will no longer appear in future installments. But because the fans liked her... I decided to rehash her in MAG-ISA.

Aside from that, I'm developing a liking for Claudita. And I plan to develop her storyline further in subsequent sequels to MAG-ISA.

Sometimes though, some life events and/or new accumulation of knowledge tends to influence character development and introduction of new characters. Anyone with half a brain who reads my comics will figure out that my comics tend to reflect my personal life on some level... even though the story is PURELY FICTIONAL.

Alot of my characters tend to be based on various parts of myself and parts of other people I have dealt with. Go look up "parts therapy" under psychology to understand this concept more.

Or maybe... I really am a multiple-personality demon possessed satanic super soldier. lol! (thats a joke. dont take this last part seriously. lol)

Genejoke

Someone
They become even more life-like as I actually draw the pages and type up the dialogue. It's kind of like getting to know a new person in real-time.

I really agree with this statement! I'm a very spur-of-the-moment type of person, especially when I'm writing a story or fleshing out a character. I know how I want my characters to behave, but I don't feel the need to think up things like what their favorite food to eat is or their blood type. I think I work more with the behaviors and the personalities of the characters that I want in my story and how such personality types react in the situations I'm planning to include. When I get the story going and the character interactions start and connections between the players in the story are revealed, more of the characters' (true) personalities come to light as well.

But what makes character creation a little difficult for me in The Rose Killer is that some of the characters go through a "metamorphosis" of sorts throughout the story. Some behaved differently in the past then experienced major traumatic events, and thus have changed the way they act and react to things. Others are very two-faced and behave in opposing ways depending on who they're around, yet their different behaviors branch from their single core personality. And a some are psychotic or snap and have very irrational behavior xD.

Now that I think about it, I think my character "theme" for The Rose Killer is typical characters (the brooding detective, the pretty woman he falls in love with, the mean mobster guy, the pesky reporter...) with extremely atypical backgrounds.

Also, like mentioned before, some characters I make up end up taking on a slightly different role than what I had planned (biggest example of this is Parker; he wasn't supposed to be a main character at all but then I suddenly thought up a creative use for him :D). If think of an idea of character that deviates from my plan, I just include them because I don't believe anything should be set in stone (of course I do this within reason; I don't want a story of 100+ characters to remember! I think it's important to not "forget" any characters and make sure at least the main ones get "air time" in every chapter; it's so hard to do this when there is a sea of characters and the reader, and sometimes maybe even the creator, forgets about some characters).

So I think character creation is sort of like making a friend, which is a sentiment mentioned before. When you get to know someone, it's sometimes unnecessary to ask them what sort of things they like, you can somewhat guess. Also, a lot of people know what makes their best friend angry or happy. I'd like the readers to get to know my characters in this way, which is a slower method of character development than a handy full character bio, but I find it more rewarding. :D

I don't get the whole character sheet thing. I tried a couple and they just don't seem to work for me. No character should EVER be clear cut enough to be put on one of those things without leaving a lot out.

Maybe it's just the way I create my characters, but every time I've tried this format to keep notes of them it's always resulted in my giving up. Especially when it comes down to describing the "Personality Type". I even tried myself in one and it didn't work out.
It's just plain lazy. And the simpler the story, the more you'll need to focus on characters in order to save a comic/film/game.

Sure, Mr Example may like apples but it doesn't really let you explain why most of the time. It may be for as simple a reason as the taste or texture, but maybe he likes them because the smell reminds him of a perfume his ex used to wear or of the days when you could actually pick them instead of them being grown in vats with no need for the lengthy growing process due to the earths population getting so big that orchards no longer exist?
Sure, some of these things include whys and hows but you're not creating a computer program here. You're creating a character. Something with reasons why he/she/it behaves the way he/she/it does. Reasons more complex than can be put down in a simple format. And hows and whys are only the tip of the iceberg in ways creating bios doesn't create fleshed out and realistic characters. If you were maybe creating a wiki page or sorts for a character alredy created then I guess it would probably work but you'd have to be careful there, too.

The same goes for the Mary Sue litmus tests. There's no context to them! But then again I've only ever taken ONE [katfeete.net] that didn't class my characters as Marys/Martys. Maybe it's a personal bias? I don't think so but don't take my word for it. Everyone has their own process.

I tend to imagine the character visually first. Then add, subtract and change both the external appearance, body language, personality and backstory equally as time goes on until I'm happy with what I get. I tend to focus primarily on how they all meld with each other.
Some I've been working on for months and years to get right. But it's satisfying in the end when they all take their true, final shapes and fit as the missing pieces for the jigsaw no matter how long it takes to do it.

Many characters I've created are loosely inspired by people I know, at least more central characters tend to be. For me it's easier to understand a character's mindset this way. However, in the case of secondary characters I find I fall back on cliches quite a bit. Lately I've become more interested in how characters talk and even went so far as to make pages of notes on how dialogue ought to be written for individual characters. Like this one guy likes using these phrases, this one lady will always enunciate clearly etc.

I find character checklists, worksheets or whatever a bit silly too-- For whatever dumb reason I always think of how the character personally would respond to the questions presented when that's obviously not what you're supposed to do. Needless to say I don't find them terribly helpful, but occasionally they're good for a laugh.

I try not to overthink things. When I create a new character, I don't really feel the need to craft a bible for them. I don't have an elaborate backstory or a four hundred page tome of their quirks, motivations, and needs. I believe that doing such a thing will actually hinder the character's growth.

I try to let the character grow organically while I'm writing and drawing them. I'm under the impression that I don't really know the new character yet, and that as time passes by things will fill themselves out. A backstory will gestate and then come into bloom when it is ready to do so. Quirks, motivations, and needs will arise as the character goes through their paces.

I feel that it isn't something I should force.

Interesting to read various approaches. I actually operate almost the opposite of OzoneOcean; the characters themselves run the story.

My Process
I have a sort of mental 'morgue' of characters who don't have a central storyline, but with personalities I've already fleshed out. When I'm bored, I'll mentally picture them interacting with other characters I like -- it gives me an idea of how they tick.

When it comes to writing, I either have a character that I write a premise around, or a premise that I write a protagonist for. Alison's Education, which ran in my college paper, was the former while Super Temps was the latter.

With an ongoing story, it's all about the protagonist and his or her goal. Once character and goal are established, I figure out where they should start in the story, and then how -- from their perspective -- would they accomplish their goal from there. Supporting cast are added as required, and I either pull them from the 'morgue' or flesh out enough details for them to serve a need. Once I have a handle on the character, I make sure that each one has their own interests. I also make sure characters have two sides, one that they show to the world and their true self. It keeps the storyline dynamic although it's more challenging to write as well.

Morgue characters are easy to adapt, since they have personality traits that I just adapt to the world. For example, Cursive of Super Temps is a one-shot, but she's a 'morgue' character so I just modify some of her traits based on the world she lives in. Cursive's original past was very dark, but since that's not appropriate I removed those dark elements... and she's basically just a more well-adjusted version of the original. Other characters, like Jenny, were there originally to serve a purpose but got fleshed out when I saw their potential. After they've been around for a bit I get a good idea as to what made them the way they are today.

Creating a 'morgue' character

In case anyone's wondering how a 'morgue' character gets created, I believe what I do is take an existing piece of fiction that interests me, and I insert a character I think is lacking from the cast -- someone who'd shake things up. I then tweak the chracter's personality traits over time. Since 'morgue' characters are created to fulfill a need in fiction I'm interested in, it's really easy to add them back to my own stories when just such a character is required.

Create a detailed bio?
I don't think it's necessary to write a detailed bio down to blood type and favourite foods unless it's important to the plot. What is important is that every key character -- especially villains -- are fleshed out enough that you know the reasons for their actions, because this defines who they are -- especially in less dramatic situations. For example, if you have a hero who pretends not to be heroic -- why? Is the character a master manipulator and needs to keep up a cold persona? Does the character view it as a weakness? Afraid? This is doubly important for a villain to keep them from doing stuff just because "Hey, I have to show he's evil evil evil!" even though the action is stupid, stupid, stupid.

Someone
To me, creating a character can be a little like getting to know someone new: you don't ask a person a "list" of pre-made questions, you listen to him/her, try to understand that person. You make links through the different stories and anecdotes you are told.

Someone
I don't feel the need to think up things like what their favorite food to eat is or their blood type. I think I work more with the behaviors and the personalities of the characters that I want in my story and how such personality types react in the situations I'm planning to include. When I get the story going and the character interactions start and connections between the players in the story are revealed, more of the characters' (true) personalities come to light as well.

Someone
I don't have an elaborate backstory or a four hundred page tome of their quirks, motivations, and needs. I believe that doing such a thing will actually hinder the character's growth. I try to let the character grow organically while I'm writing and drawing them. I'm under the impression that I don't really know the new character yet, and that as time passes by things will fill themselves out. A backstory will gestate and then come into bloom when it is ready to do so. Quirks, motivations, and needs will arise as the character goes through their paces. I feel that it isn't something I should force.

Here are snippets of what I really agree with. I don't use lists either; it would definitely hurt rather than help the development of my charas.

I do know someone who does use lists, and he's a very good editor-type person, so I don't think using lists is an inherently bad or inferior form of scripting. I guess it just depends on your writing/thinking/processing style.

Air Raid Robertson
I try not to overthink things. (...) I don't have an elaborate backstory or a four hundred page tome of their quirks, motivations, and needs. I believe that doing such a thing will actually hinder the character's growth. I try to let the character grow organically while I'm writing and drawing them.

I really agree with this. The characters that are dearest to me are treated exactly like that. It's just that I can have faith in that they will evolve organically - that I don't have to force things.

But sometimes, I will also have to just figure out "mechanically" how to treat a character, how to describe them, what to have them say or do. But usually, these are the characters that serve a purpose within the story. However, the characters that really matter to me are those which the stories are written for. I think that behind every story of mine, you will find one or several strong characters who the story is written for.

However, there is another aspect competing with characters - it's not the story as much as the concept. I don't think I'm much of a storyteller - I think stories are a series of more or less meaningful events. I have to say I'm not really interested in events. I'm interested in what things mean. If things happen in my comics, it's because I'm trying to figure something out that involves them. So, the two important ingredients in my comics are characters and concepts, and these can merge. Characters often embody concepts that are interesting - or vice versa, I'll try to figure out what a character that seems interesting to me embodies.

Of course, there are also charismatic characters, who don't have to mean anything beyond their sheer awesomeness. People you fall in love with don't have to stand for anything beyond what they are. Some of my characters are like that.

Like most things in life, I approach character creation from the left ... carefully and quietly, hoping to catch it unawares.

My approach towards my characters is that I think of it as if I'm writing a biography for the ones that are important for the story.

Logically, all these events has to affect the main character(s)and the story you are telling. If you really think of it, the beginning is still the middle. Which means is that in real life, you are born in a middle of something. There was life before you were born and there will be life when you die (God forbid).

Another way, think of yourself as THE character you are creating. Give your character obstacles and try to solve them in his/her's place.

For villains, what made a specific villain evil? You could give him/her a back story telling off what are the conclusions to lead him/her to this approach. Why did they become evil? There has something had happened to inspire a villain. It could be someone's death, humiliation when he/she was a child, thinking he/she has a good purpose but doing it all wrong, the list goes on and on and on. It depends what kind of character and story you are trying to develop. At the same time, villains have feelings even though they are evil. It makes them more three dimensional.

Another important yet weird approach, love your characters. They are still your creation and they need to be loved. What makes me want to keep on working on my comics? Because I love drawing these characters and I love to put them in different situations. Ann is my favorite character I created and I enjoy writing her so many scenarios and whatnot.

So, I hope this helps. Those were my 5 cents.

I useally start off with a vague image of the character in my head or a cool word that sounds like a name. Then I flesh out the character by asking questions and wondering what kinds of life experiences would turn someone into a character like that. The plot of the story useally comes out of these questions as well.

I wish I had my comic started already so I could reference characters to give examples for what I'm going to say here, but as soon as I heard the quackcast I knew I had to comment. Characters, after all, are my specialty, not to mention my favorite part of any story.

Here's my theory for comics: the three most important components are art, story, and characters. I rank these three components thusly: out of ten parts the importance of each to a great story are two parts art, three parts story, and five parts characters. Even a boring tale can be made interesting by a unique and fascinating character. As such, i is vital that you dedicate a lot of effort to character creation and development. Here's how I do it.

Getting started:

It really doesn't matter where you start in the slightest. The main character for my comic was built around a hairstyle, so don't worry about where you start, it's where you go that matters.

Design:

Design is more important than you might think. Not only is the audience more likely to respond to visually unique and appealing characters, but you are more willing to care about them. More than once I have done a redesign of one of my characters that I felt indifferent towards and had them emerge as a favorite.

Personality:

I might seem like I'm doing things backwards here, but base your character's personality around their design. The way I do things is that I look at the character and ask myself "what would a character that looks like this do?" and whatever the answer to that question is is what I give them... outwardly. When the character is alone, I have them do something completely different, often the opposite of what I had them doing earlier, or the same thing in a different way. This is hard to explain, and this is where I wish I had a year or two of comics under my belt before posting this, because several good examples are going to be in my comic. The basic idea is to undercut the initial assumptions of the audience to inspire interest.

Shortcomings:

For the love of God do not EVER make a mary sue. Make sure your character has one really big shortcoming. Weakness, hatred, indecisiveness, self-doubt, narcissism, all of these and so, so many more will work. Make sure there is only one main shortcoming, however. Even if the character is evil, it is distracting for him to be both bloodthirsty and greedy at the same time. He can have a little of both but he can only have a lot of one. This focuses and drives the character.

Relationships:

The most important part of any character lineup is their relationships. Friendship, rivalry, love, all these are necessary, but don't just have those relationships, mix them. A rival can be a friend, a friend can be a lover, and a lover can be a rival. Simplicity in relationships just doesn't work, so be sure to keep things interesting.

Driving force:

Basically your character needs a goal. A memory that haunts them, a prize that only the best can obtain, a significant other, ect. Don't make the character obsessive if you don't have to, but make their drive strong nonetheless.

Quirks:

Make them unique. If I could tell you how to do that it wouldn't be uniqueness, so I have nothing to add here.

And that is how to make good characters. I hope this has been helpful.

I ask myself: how much can I express my inner rage in this character and let him become who he is.

And for the girls...well one character was modeled EXACTLY after a girl I had a crush on at the time (who is a real bitch, you know?) so I guess that's who I model the girls off.

I honestly try to create characters on the spot most the time and usually they're me.

I think for most people characters come from different parts of their personalities, or from different experiences they have had.

Whenever I create a character, it starts off as an idea. Usually this is the idea for the entire series, since I believe that the main character and the series overall goal should be tied closely together.

Once I come up with the character, I let myself sit around for days/weeks and write unconsciously, whatever comes to my head about the character.

My notebook will be filled with random stuff, but some of it makes perfect sense. Obviouslly, some of these characters are taken from what I know. Or from what I would like to know or be. Or from the people who I interact with and know closely, except that are changed and things are tweaked to make the characters original.

I don't know if I write characters from parts of my personality, but I'd like to think that I don't do that. To me, that would feel boring, or amateurish. I never liked to write about myself. When I had to do that for college literature classes, I hated those topics.

While my classmates were writing poems filled with "me" and "I", I was writing a poem from the POV of a dog on a battlefield.

I don't like self-understanding; I like reaching an understanding of others. I do lots of research to get into another's head (in terms of formulating characters). The more foreign the mindset of the character is to my own, the better.

Same for settings and backgrounds.

I try to keep it simple:

-History
-Agenda
-Motives

Then I'll just come up with a situation, look at these three and figure out how they would react to the situation based on the aforementioned. Viola; plot!

I just listened to Quackcast 23.

You missed a golden opportunity to do a Scottish accent.

And it's not pronounced Phallic! Lol.

Anyway, I forgot to add that I start creating characters visually because usually when you meet someone new offline you see them before you know them. Not to mention that biologically a person's looks are usually defined before their personality and sometimes they can even shape it. There's plenty of pretty people with no defined personality because everything has always been handed to them on diamante tableware. They haven't experienced the real world enough to know what their opinions are of things.

I've been told I'm a very analytical person. This is true, and this got even more pronounced when I started reading the books of Scott Mccloud, who greatly influenced how I create characters.

I tend to see casts of characters as abstract models. There are primary elements, relations between those components, and lots of symmetry (I really, really like symmetry). This is why I enjoy the works of Carl Jung and Scott Mccloud. They take soft, subjective things like psychology or storytelling and they classify, systematize, enumerate, and model them.

But back to me. I tend to picture casts of characters as a technical diagram. Once when writing a story I pictured the characters belonging to a matrix and the main personality trait was what end of each axis they were placed on. Another time I pictured my character as belonging to a sort of color wheel with polar opposites placed at opposing ends and the traits moving in a spectrum. Something I particularly like to do is take a pre-existing system and imagine what each element would be like as a character. Take, for example, the system of the classical elements. Each element has an opposite and a likeness. The unchanging earth clashes with the transitive air, but shares traits with the stable water. Personality type models like the four humors or the alignment scale are especially good because they already describe a personality.

Because I enjoy symmetry so much, I tend give each character an opposite. In a prose story I am writing, the sociable, emotional, submissive main character is opposed with the introverted, logical, dominating love interest.

Some might say that my take on characters saps the creativity out of storytelling with it's order and structure. I think that when you used a simplified structure to create characters, it adds balance and cohesion to the story while still allowing conflict. Also, the structure does not define characters; it defines components which are used as a platform for characters.

I may have sounded crazier than I really am with this explanation. I assure you I am not insane (well, not debilitatingly insane), I simply like structure and things that fit together and make sense.

After reading some more of the above posts I can see my method is pretty out of place here. I guess creative people tend to be chaotic in their thought processes - doing things according to no plan or system. I like to think I am a creative person, but my love of order tends to mix with my creative side when in use.

im no very constructed at all when it comes to character creation. i get a little feeling or nudge about who they are or what kinda person i want them to be in the story, but not a whole lot more than that. the longer i have a character, the more deeper they become because things'll just come to me about their background, wether i need the info or not, and that's enough to help me understand what they would n wouldnt do. there's not a set of criteria questions i answer. i just find it too regimented, it works for some people, but not for me.