Can you believe it’s the last Friday of the month already? Not to forget it’s also the very last day of the month, and tomorrow is (finally) the first of March. Might I direct you to the 52 Weeks posting for March 7, 2013, where my favorite and most-published short is posted? Check it out – The Lion Roared – opens in a new tab so you can stick around and watch me torture myself pondering the characterization process…

Our fearless Blogging Circle leader, Ms. Keri asked:

How hard is it for you to create character relationships?

It mainly depends on the type of relationship. Not to drag out the well-beaten ‘write what you know’ yet again, I’ve drawn from experience for years, adding bits and pieces of people I know or observe into each character I create, and use their experiences (as well as my own) to formulate how they interact.

I used to go to malls and libraries and sort of people watch. Now that I’m home more than anywhere else, I watch people build friendships and relationships online, and see how they develop.

Do you pre-plan them or do you end up letting them develop as the novel goes on?

I have a pretty detailed background and mutual history for only two characters, Shay McClane and Jack Dawes from my Mirror/Dawes stuff. I used a biography-building worksheet to create what I needed to flesh out the images I had in my mind for the characters.

Everyone else tends to grow or stagnate according to whatever happens to be moving the story at the time. I’ve thought about using the same worksheets for my Galleys Between and other New Bedlam characters, but just now I’m liking letting them go where they will.

Have your characters betrayed you and paired up with someone you didn’t expect?

Hell yeah! At first, Nigel was supposed to be third corner of the triangle featuring Justine and Sana. Then Nigel introduced Jayce (only we haven’t seen him in the story yet), and Justine was led to Gary in the Between… so it became a triangle of Justine, Sana and Gary. Things just went in different directions!

As with plotting and planning, they may have been better behaved if I’d planned them out a little more, but this way I get to watch fictional beings create themselves.

Give us the story of how your favorite written characters got together and what makes their relationships strongest.

Ah… See now there’s a toss-up between Shay and Jack, and Justine and Gary. How about both, in lieu of photos of process?

Jack is semi-immortal, having only just lost full immortality by completing the tasks set out to him. One of those tasks was to take on the karma of teenage runaway Shay McClane. At 17, she was a rowdy, slightly privledged, wild child orphan being raised by a deviant psychotic aunt and two uncles who are just… ewww. When Shay continually runs away, her aunt calls on Jack Dawes, and over the years the two develop first a friendship, and then become lovers. Shay’s final karma was to kill her aunt… which Jack did.

Justine was trapped in the Between as a child, and trying to hide from herself from an alternate universe. Gary found her and kept her company for a strange, shifting amount of time. When Justine finally escaped, she thought Gary was dead, but found him again when she and Nigel went back to help save time and keep the universes from colliding.

*deep breath* It’s all kind of TL;DR, but it works for me.

What about you – how do you create the characters and relationships in your story?

’till next time…
<3 JL