Another Writing Weakness Discovered...

It's fun starting with real live human beings. I once read an article about a couple of very bizaare twins that lived in the UK. I kept the clipping and they morphed into a pair of suspected witches in my medieval novel. I felt like I could look into their eyes and facial expressions and see who they were. Pretty cool.
Linnea

Although my characters kind of start out as a basic paper doll, I add attributes as the story goes along. I borrow habits, quirks, expressions, physicalities, and personalities from people around me. By midway through, the characters have become real. Then I'll go back and build on the character earlier on in the story.

The population of the whole world around us gives us everything we need to create
characters.

allen

My characters are real people.

No. They're not real people in the sense that I'm using flesh-and-blood people. They're real people in that I no longer "create" them. They come to me fully formed, talking about their pasts and their problems, etc. It's just a matter of getting to know them.

I have to say I have based some characters on real people I know, but just for fun - and the people always know that they are in my stories.

I'm with Birol on this one, usually my characters are made up, but are pretty fully fleshed out. I can't quite understand how one could write a character otherwise. Maybe it comes from my acting background, but I can't write a scene unless I understand the complex motivations behind each individual. Heck one of my favourite things is having the tiny secondary characters have full histories and unique personalities, you never really get to know them in the book, but I know . . . Actually maybe it has less to do with being an actress and more to do with my having a god complex . . .

Ooh! Just remembered a fun game that might help you with fleshing out original characters and not stealing already existing characteristics (which is totally cool, but only one of many ways to create interesting three dimensional characters).

Whenever I am waiting for someone in a public place I like to people watch. What I sometimes like to do, is cast certain people as different characters, so like I'll see one person and think, "He's a monk. But he's secretly having an affair with his sister's best friend, and now is questioning his faith . . . " etc etc. Often I like to cast them in period pieces - "He's the land owner of some the most fertile property in southern England. Though he's strict, his tenants adore him because he is just and fair. His son in law though is an evil man, trying to convince him to sell off all his property . . ." etc etc.

I dunno. It's fun. And gives you something to do when your friend is late meeting you.

Toothpaste said:

I have to say I have based some characters on real people I know, but just for fun - and the people always know that they are in my stories.

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I've based a few on real people. But unless they're minor characters, they've ended up doing something totally out of the blue to remind me that "no, I'm not Paula, I'm Elly."