Being an artist, my world revolves around color, form, and function.

I tend to be methodical, concerned with thoroughness, and attention to detail.

So, this is what I do…to make my characters come to life.

After giving my characters a name, I start hunting for photos of people who resembled my characters. I have an idea of what they look like, but they don’t start coming to life until I find images of people who look like…the characters in my head. However, sometimes it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes, I stumble across a face that looks like the character in my head first, and then it takes me a while to find the right name.

Naming a character is not always easy, sometimes my characters go through several name changes before I find the right one. Thankfully, most of them have their original name. I’m not really sure why some characters are easy to name and others are not?

After giving my characters a name and a birthday, I dig out this book “The Power of Birthdays, Stars & Numbers – The Complete Personology Reference Guide by Saffi Crawford and Geraldine Sullivan.” Which I purchased from Amazon.com. This book has a wealth of information, about every single birthday.

This book is one of my favorite writing tools for character development.

I use it over, and over again.

I read the information, to see if it fits my character. Write the important stuff down on a legal pad, then type it into a Word Document, and save it to a file. Each and every character has a file, no matter how large of small their part is.

Then I make a list of positive and negative traits for each Zodiac sign. This is so helpful!

https://melindamariealexander.com/zodiac-traits-keywords/

And now I have everything I need…at the tip of my fingers.