It’s interesting to me when I write how, no matter the amount of planning I do before I start, the characters always reveal things about themselves as I go.
I didn’t, for example, know until I started writing the story that Bailey Griffin, one of the main characters in my current work in progress, would swear more than Adam in Hazbin Hotel. (iykyk)
I didn’t know that Bailey is questioning his sexual orientation; having always believed he was straight despite having had, um, interactions with guys, now that he’s discovered that his fated mate is another man, he’s starting to think more deeply about who he’s really attracted to. (When I planned the character, I thought he was gay…he corrected me on that in the first chapter.)
I didn’t know that Bailey served five years in jail for the accident that ended the life of his fiancee. (I knew he caused the accident. I didn’t know how long he served until I started writing the story. For that matter, I didn’t know until I started the story that the person who didn’t survive the accident was his fiancee instead of just a random person he didn’t previously know.)
And I didn’t know until chapter NINE of this book that after Bailey was released from jail, the “friend” who gave him a place to live, who is older and had been friends with Bailey’s parents when Bailey was a kid, sometimes made Bailey pay his way by means other than money…
Part of the fun of writing for me is discovering more about the characters and more about the world, though it isn’t exactly fun when I learn about things like Bailey being put in a position of trading himself for food and housing when his money ran short. The universe my books are set in is one I started building back in 2010, but even now, 16 years later, I’m still learning new things about it. The characters constantly throw me for a loop; sometimes I swear I’m not actually creating the stories, I’m just taking dictation. (I am creating the stories. I am the one who types, whose brain all of this stuff comes from or at least comes through. No AI is involved in my writing process or in the cover art I create for my books.)
Picture of a thin man in, probably, his early to mid 30s, with blue eyes, short reddish-brown hair, and a stubbly beard and mustache also reddish-brown, wearing a denim shirt over a white T-shirt; this is my mental image of Bailey Griffin.
