Phoebe Fox asked Sherry Thomas:

You always create characters with such rich, full emotional lives, and with great depth. With as many novels as you've written, is it a challenge to create fresh characters/conflicts for each one? Where do you get ideas for your characters' battles/flaws, and does that come first, or does it grow out of the plot idea?

Sherry Thomas Long time ago, when I first started writing, one of my wonderful sister-in-laws bought me a book on how to write and publish romances, which I dutifully read from end to end. I vaguely recall an article about characterization inside that listed all the possible personality traits and advised that the aspiring writer pick a few for each character.

I also vaguely remember that after I finished my first manuscript, which would later become PRIVATE ARRANGMENTS, I started on a space opera--heh--and thought to myself, hmm, I can't have this heroine be determined, because my last one already was, and I had better switch it up from character to character.

So I went down that list of personality traits and picked some new ones for this new character. !!!

It took me a while to realize that if I wanted to, I can write about characters with the exact same dominant traits in the exact archetypal conflict--there are only so many plots in fiction--over and over again and still never repeat myself. Not that I do, but it is eminently doable.

The trick is all in the specificity. People who grow up in the same house turn out to be vastly different individuals. Heck, even identical twins do not remain the same. Every body has different stories, when you give them the stories, you give them a history and a reference point that is different from anyone else's.

And my characters are always built around the conflict--they grow organically, but in genre fiction conflict is king and whatever baggage/flaws they bring with them must be what best serve the conflict.

Sorry for being so long-winded! :-)

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