Creating Characters...and living with them

There are three ways to create a character. For me at least.

 #1:There are those characters who just come to you and who already live a life of their own.
Example:  My main character is called Wanja. From the beginning I knew pretty much everything about him without having to think about him or artificially creating him. He was just 'there'. I knew exactly what he looks like, where he came from and where he is going, his virtues and his flaws. He was like a friend you have known for a very long time.
Another character ,a police officer, presented himself to me with a very distinctive accent (Cockney). I hadn't planned him to talk with a Cockney accent, it just happened as I wrote. At that point I wasn't confident wether I was able to keep up his accent and wanted to change his dialogues into standard English. I wasn't even able to change 2 sentences into s.E.. The character rebelled, in my head. It felt bad and it just didn't work. It didn't look good and it sounded even worse so I had to give up (to a fictional character
_I _ created, mind) and let him talk in his precious Cockney accent. Basically it's his fault that I had to change the whole setting of the story (I had planned to set everything somewhere in Russia, hence the name Wanja, but then came along this officer and literally made me set the novel in south England).

#2: Other characters need to be carefully constructed.These are the ones who don't come to me like Wanja or the Cockney police officer but are essential for the story.
With those characters I usually start with the name (which can be a pain in the arse to begin with; I might write a blog post about names, now that I think about it). The connection between character traits and the name (either/and the meaning and the sound of the name) is very important to me. So for one of the more nasty characters I chose the name Clayton Barrett. Clayton, because it sounds very hard when you say it (and because it reminds me of a horrible disney character  ;) ) and Barrett, because it again sounds very hard and means something like dispute/argument.
Next thing would be his looks. While I could see my characters of category #1 very clearly in my head, Clayton Barrett was more of a blur. I kind of knew what he looks like, but for the facial details I imagined a person I know so it was easier to describe him. His character traits were quite clear to me though because they are quite important for the story, so I didn't have to work on them that much.

#3: Real life inspired characters. They are slightly similar to #2's although they tend to come to me like #1's.
Example: I was writing about a group of children coming towards main character Wanja. One of those children immediatley highly resembled my cousin when he was five, so I decided to go with it and use my cousin as an inspiration for that character. Giving names to those characters obviously isn't hard ;) .


Once I had established my characters and had been writing about them they became part of my everyday life more and more. One day I decided to take a short 3-day break from writing to recap everything.
In the night of the second day without writing though I had a very vivid dream.
I was standing outside a building where I had left Wanja before I took the break. The door opened and out came Wanja and walked up to me, through the snow. He stopped in front of me, looked me in the eyes and said:

'Why have you stopped writing? This is my story and my life, you know. You can't just stop writing and leave me hanging like this. I want to know how the story and my life continue. I HAVE to know. So would you please go back to your computer and write?'
He then turned around and walked back, into the building. And I obeyed and started writing again. I had a really bad conscience, even though he's 'only' fictional. He is alive now. Alive in my mind, but alive (and obviously self-determined) nonetheless.

The beginning and Status Quo.

It all started in November of 2012. I had taken a class called 'Creative Writing' and soon found out that I could do my 'praxis studie' ( sth like a practical experience) for my studies in this class. Since I am studying The English Language, Lingustics and Literature (with focus on British culture and history) but don't want to work as a teacher later (in which case my 'Praxis studie' would have been in a school - No, thanks!) I was quite happy about the opportunity. My lecturer gave me a few choices from which I chose to write a novel of 50 000 words. I had always wanted to write a novel and thought, "I might as well do it now and earn a few credit points with it".
Very early on I realized that I couldn't just write 50 000 words. In our class we were advised to leave our inner editor at home and just write whatever comes to mind. I can't do that. "If I do this, I am going to do it properly, maybe I can even get it published when I'm done," I said to myself. Luckily I don't have a deadline, so I decided to take my time about it and write the best novel I can at this point.
It wasn't hard to think of a plot - I chose to make a very vivid dream I once had into the novel. This was a dream which very well might have been a children's film: There were children, a roller coaster and Santa Claus. But I didn't necessarily want to write about Santa Claus, so I thought about ways to digress from the 'plot' without changing it too much. So I made a few alterations, created characters and strands of plots on the basis of the dream and soon I had a very promising outline.
As I wrote earlier, I can't leave my inner editor at home. I have to check every sentence, every pragraph thousands of times for the right choice of words, the right use of grammar, spelling and coherance. I am not a native speaker of the English language so it was quite hard at first to form good sounding sentences without repeating the same words over and over again (Oh, how I hate reiteration of words).
Therefore it took me much longer to write and finish a chapter compared to my classmates.

Until now I have written about 12 000 words. I might be quite slow, but I don't have a deadline and so I cherish the freedom I've got. I always go back to previous chapters I wrote, to check, correct or add things and am quite proud of what I have accomplished so far.
My lecturer has complimented me several times on my writing style and other people who have read parts of my writing gave me raving reviews as well. So I might be on to something. I just might. And this keeps me going.

You need to start at some point...

I am writing a novel . So I've decided to start a blog. You might wonder, why start a blog when you are completely occupied with writing a novel?
I hope this will turn out as a diary and a way for me to keep up with my progress, write about my inspirations and what it feels like to create characters and live with them.
 I _could_ do this in private, I know, but I have the feeling if it is written down online there might be some little extra pressure to keep up writing the novel and actually finish it.
So feel free to follow me on my journey of hopefully becoming a published author :)