How I develop my Characters and their Personalities

To build a character,  I first look at their zodiac signs, and research the negative aspects of each sign. For instance, if one of my characters is an Aries, I look at the worst possible traits of that particular sign.

I also base them on personal experiences and personalities of people I’ve known or met, but I won’t say who, or when. ;-)

Sometimes if I’m especially affected by a personality type, it becomes inspirational and I can develop a whole new character in minutes. It really depends if I’m inspired or not. I write more from feeling than I do from just creating a character for the sake of it. I have to be fully inspired by it.

Some characters are minor players in the background, so I don’t really develop their characteristics fully (since I kill some of them off), but I write about them or include them just enough to make them part of the story. They become the motivational driving forces behind the main characters.

There are days when I really struggle coming up with a new character, and there are times when I could write for days straight about a character and become so focused on them. I have to be in the right mood, with the right music. There are times when I’m so uninspired by my surroundings, it could take a while to come up with a new character. Mood and setting are everything to me when I write.

Much of the characters were developed in my original vampire trilogy novel (“The Guardian, Revenant, and Dominion”—the original novel, not the graphic novel version), the one I turned into a comic book. Gabriel (Book 1) is by far my favorite character because he is so evil, and from there I was able to come up with more characters based on his personality and motivations (He is a serial killer so it was easier to come up with other serial killer Guardian Angels). But their personalities had to be different and distinct. Janos (Book 2) was by far the most complicated character I had to develop, because his personality was so intense. The original novel dealt deeper into his life, and it is much harder to convey all of that into a comic book. Which is why I try to give glimpses of how my characters interact and what motivates them to do what they do in the comic series. It’s hard to fit an entire novel into 24 pages, but I try to include what stands out the most about their personalities and how they came to be who they are.

I also threw myself into the comic book series (Book 3)  because of course, I always wanted to be in a comic book series (my character is also part of the original novel). My character is by far the hardest to really write about and develop, because I’m basically writing about myself, so it becomes rather personal. So I tend to develop the other characters around me a lot more. Who says I never put a 100% of myself in my work? lol!

Each comic book is written when I decide where I want the characters to go—whether I want to kill them off so the story can continue in a new direction or as a reason for another character changing or doing something, or I find that I create another character because of a backstory or an incident. it really depends, and if it makes sense in the story. But that’s how my mind works—I am constantly thinking about where I want to story to go, why my characters do what they so, and what’s next for them. It also depends on where I am at any point in my life. Like the time I was taking martial arts, a comic book will have more martial arts in it. If I’m traveling or if I’m in certain atmospheres and places, the story will reflect it, and not only that, it will reflect the people I meet in certain situations. I could meet someone only once and build an entire character around them. It depends on how they make me FEEL.

So that’s my process in a way. I know, I’m rambling. But you all get it.