Dear Geist,

Have you got any advice on developing characters before the real writing starts? I mean after the outline, when you've got your characters and you know what part they play in the story, but before you start spooling out sentences. Some writers recommend you spend hours working out a character's favourite food, height, little tics, childhood traumas or not, good and bad habits. Others say just leap in and get surprised by your characters.

—Rohan, North Vancouver BC

Dear Rohan,

We know writers who get good results with one, or the other, or a combination. Why not give both of them a whirl? Choose a character who's about to come “onstage” and do the exhaustive description. Then write the first passage in which that character appears. Then put it aside without reading back. Next time you go to the writing desk, write another scene with a different central character who you haven't imagined in detail ahead of time. Set that one aside too. A few days later, when you've got some distance on the work, read the scenes and compare them.

FYI, here's what Joan Didion once said about writing fictional characters: “Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character 'X.' I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. Then I start to love them.”

—The Editors