Character Development: Inside My Slightly Unhinged Brain 🐺

Tomorrow’s Behind Closed Pages is going somewhere I probably shouldn’t be allowed to take you:

Inside my character development process.

Every author has a different way of building their stories. Some are Planners—they have every detail mapped out before they type a single word.

Some are Pantsers—they sit down, start writing, and figure out where the hell the story is going along the way.

And then there are the wildcards:

Plantsers.

If you’ve been around me for more than five minutes, you can probably guess which category I fall into. 😂

I approach writing with a delightful combination of:

“We’ll sit down and see what happens today.”

and

“I know these characters intimately and I know exactly where they need to end up.”

Basically, I know who needs to get from Point A to Point Z. I just don’t necessarily know about all the questionable stops we’re making along the way.

For me, that means the strongest foundation I can give myself is knowing my characters really, really well.

Because my characters drive my plots. Their personalities, decisions, reactions, relationships, and occasionally their terrible life choices determine what happens next.

Which, of course, circles right back to my ongoing theory that I may have multiple personalities.

I won’t be sharing all of that particular subset of information—or the voices in my head—just yet. 😉

But tomorrow, inside Behind Closed Pages, I’m going to walk you through my character development process as though I’m transcribing my actual inner monologue while I’m doing it.

It’s probably going to sound crazy.

Unhinged.

Possibly difficult to follow.

But we’ll get through it together.

If getting a peek inside the wonderfully chaotic brain behind my stories sounds like your kind of thing, The Howling Quill Society is where you want to be.

Awooooo, bitches! 🐺🖤