Once the Idea is in order and the Plot is decided upon, the characters must be found for your stories. There are a number of ways characters have ventured into my stories. The oddest one happened about a month ago. As I was falling asleep, a voice spoke in my head. "Hi. I'm Valentina Heartly. With a name like that I should write a romance novel." I haven't found a story for her as yet but the ideas are slowly forming.
Often when developing characters, I use Astrology. Now I don't cast their entire charts but I look at the Sun sign, the Moon sign and the Rising sign and combine these to make a person come to life. Then I use one of the many baby name books to find the right name.
Sometimes the characters are well established and are part of a series. At present I'm working on Murder and Iced tea staring Katherine Miller, now married. Along with Robespierre, he Maine Coon cat, I know her almost as well as I know myself. This time I am using many of the characters from the other stories in the series. There are also new ones. There's the Mayor, his wife, his two children and his "yes" man.
I once found a character in a research book on Egypt from a single sentence. "Mermeshu was his name." Amazingly he took form and set forth on a time travel story.
How do you find and name your characters? Sometimes, for me, this takes the msot time but I love Plots and they come fairly easy.
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For me, sometimes the plot comes first and I have to find the right characters for it, and sometimes the characters come first and dictate the plot. In series, I sometimes pick a secondary character from a previous book to be the protagonist in a later story. After writing so many books, it can be difficult to find names for them, but I usually consider their culture and look for names with special meaning. Thanks for sharing your process.
ReplyDeleteLoved how you built a character and story based on the sentence, "Mermeshu was his name." Love it!!
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