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I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

My public persona is badly warped and bears little resemblance to the person those closest to me know.

As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.

It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.

I try to distinguish my characters from each other.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.