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.
