Hey there!

My Aunt Lauri (hi Aunt Lauri!) recently asked me how I develop characters. I'd said in an interview somewhere that I don't feel like I create characters so much as I get to know them — which I understand sounds absolutely unhinged.

But it really feels true.

I meet every character when they first arrive on the page — just like the reader does. And through writing, I get to know them. It doesn't seem like I'm making up details about them, so much as uncovering those details one layer at a time.

One byproduct of this phenomenon is that I often know just as much as you do about my characters. :) If a piece of character backstory is written on the page, it is Known. If I've left it out of a story, I probably haven't figured it out yet.

That’s not to say that the character isn’t fully formed when I start writing. They’re there — I just don’t always understand them very well at first.

This can make outlining a story kind of frustrating, actually.

I can't just come up with a plot and make my characters follow the outline — they all have their own moral codes and habits and ways of moving through the world. And, as I get to know them, I often find that my carefully-outlined story isn't true to how they would actually act in a specific situation.

It's a very fulfilling process, but it does make for slower writing than if I could just get my characters to fall in line instead of coming to life. :)

Some authors develop intensive questionnaires about their characters, writing extensive backstories and listing out their preferences in ice cream flavor.

If you asked me any of those questions, I could probably answer them — but those answers don't really emerge from the shadows until I actually need them.

A good example of this is Manu's complicated history with his father in Pressure Point (Bulari Saga 3). I knew he came from a troubled home. From writing Negative Return, I knew he had a younger cousin he feels he failed to protect, which he finally shared because I kept wondering why he felt so protective of Toshiyo.

But when I started writing Pressure Point, I felt a strong sense that Manu's father needed to show up in his life. It was a distraction from Manu's job at hand, but, as in real life, unexamined traumas from our past never resurface at a convenient time. They burst into our lives when we're already stressed and emotionally raw.

In Manu's case, his fraught relationship with his father needed to bubble up in order to force him to deal with the damage that had been dealt to his relationship with Jaantzen through the preceding two books. Without that pressure, the tension between them would have never been forced to resolve.

(I talk more about this in the essay series on Writing Villains that I included in the Bulari Saga Travel Guide.)

That went a bit off the deep end, but I've been in a contemplative mood lately, and Aunt Lauri's question really got me thinking!

I really do love getting questions about my books and writing process from readers.

And speaking of questions you might ask me...

Kickstarter news

My Bulari Saga Travel Guide Kickstarter has met its first stretch goal!

Stretch Goal 1: Your burning questions, answered

We hit our first stretch goal, which means that I'll be writing a Q&A section to include in the Bulari Saga Travel Guide! So hit reply and submit your question. You can ask me anything you want about the Bulari Saga, my writing process, my inspirations, character backstory — everything is fair game!

And remember, if we hit our next stretch goal ($3000), I'll be asking you to vote on which scene in the Bulari Saga you want me to write an alternate character's point of view of.

Speaking of Kickstarters, there are a bunch of cool sci-fi ones going on right now. Here are a couple to check out:

ENDING SOON!! The Gunn Files by M.J. Herron​

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COMING SOON!! The Lost Star Chart (A Lost Orbits Novel) by Jeannette Bedard​

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BOOKFUNNEL PROMO!! Strong Women​

P.S. I seriously want to hear your questions! So hit reply and let me know. And if you want a copy of the book so you can read the answers, you can order it on Kickstarter!