I had wondered about the discussion question but thought maybe we weren't doing that this time around since it's hard to get assignments in on time every week already. Do enjoy the questions so am happy to give my responses.

1. How do your characters come to you? Are they based on you? Do you base them off others you've seen or read about?

Well, it's probably easy to tell that the characters aren't based on me since I'm very much not a gay man. Though some readers think I write about my own life when I attempt to write them in first person. My sister did once ask if I were to transition F to M, if I'd be a gay man. lol

I get my characters from a variety of ways but mostly they just develop over time as the story comes together in my mind. I've had a few with inspiration from people I know but that doesn't last long. I tried with my epic fantasy story to base characters off me and my friends from high school but for some reason, the characters insisted on getting personalities of their own. Silly characters.


2. How do you build your characters? Do you use books to give you ideas, or describe them from what you see in your head?

That is a good set of questions but I can't really say exactly how I do things. I have gotten a couple of ideas from other books and characters. Like, I am not much of a sports person even though I've played many growing up. We didn't have ice hockey in small town Wyoming. So, the idea for a hockey player is from all of the m/m hockey stories I've listened to from the library, some more than once. I also don't really describe the characters because I want to give the readers the chance to pick some images on their own. But I do need to work on description in my writing.


3. Do you use the same flaws for your characters in all the stories you write? Why or why not?

I don't use the same flaws because I don't focus on listing off traits when I crate the characters. Their flaws develop along with the storyline. Like the one I'm working on now has one character who is very argumentative (in school to be a lawyer), acts kind of rude sometimes and is very oblivious. But his not paying attention helps because the other character struggles if too much attention gets put on him. The flaws depend on the character and the story. I would imagine it is better to use different flaws, but I also don't go in and purposefully focus on making notes on the characters unless it's required for something like NaNo prep.