h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For me, creating and developing my characters was a voyage of discovery.

I started out giving all my significant characers a few key traits, like height and hair colour and a list of basic facts about their lives: where they were born, what their parents did, and an experience that shaped their lives. But I found out more and more about them as I went on.

Later on in my course, we were given character questionnaires, which ran to several pages, and covered outer questions like 'has he ever been seriously ill?' and 'what does she normally wear?' and inner questions like 'What is his relationship to God' and 'What are her friends like?' I found, at least with my main characters, I could answer most of these without doing any extra work.

I don't think I ever heard my characters talking to me, but I could almost see them. I can imagine Francois the chef in his kitchen, or my heroine Alison in her garden. And I did develop a fondness for them. At one point, the tutor suggested changing our proposed end. So, if we were going to kill a character off, we should try killing off one of the others instead. I found I could gaily kill off my anti-hero, or even my heroine, but I couldn't bear to kill off their teenage son.

That sounds like a rewarding experience.