Sometimes I'll get a premise, you know, for a book. In fact, I get those quite often. And I don't commit to it until I really know the voice of that character. It's almost as if the character is speaking to me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Honestly, I get character ideas from the most inane places. Sometimes a song will give me an idea. Sometimes I will just hear a snippet of conversation that ends up having nothing to do with the book that emerges.
Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.
Sometimes I hear a voice - sometimes it's the voice of someone I know. And sometimes that leads to a character, which leads to a story.
For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.
I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.
As I read, I start to form clear ideas of the characters and allow myself to be a proper conduit for this author's voice so that you will feel you have been on a seductive audio journey.
Any time you read a book and get attached to the characters, to me it's always a shock when it goes from page to screen and it's not exactly what was in my head or what I was imagining it should be.
The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.
I do tend to think that I've written a great deal out of my unconscious because half the time I don't know what a given character is going to say next.
I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.