“Developing characters” is one of those “behind the scenes” elements of writing fiction that I find people are curious about. It’s more art than science, because we’re talking about portraying living, breathing human beings, and every writer goes about it in their own way. My approach to character development is simple and is designed to make my characters three-dimensional, with depth and breadth, good and bad.

Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t begin my writing process by coming up with my characters. For me, the beginning of a story is an idea, a question, or an image. For example, in my romantic suspense novel, “Death in a Carolina Swamp,” I received in my mind’s eye, out of the blue, an image of an abandoned American World War II submarine, smothered in lush jungle trees and thick vines, lost to civilization. How did it get there? What happened to the crew? I had no clue. I needed characters to tell the story.

What characters did I need? Well, for sure, the person who discovers the submarine. Then, a person who knows all about submarines and can act as a technical resource. Next, a love interest, because my genre is romantic suspense. Finally, I needed a villain, who after something, maybe a secret that lay dormant in the submarine, or a treasure. These are my three point-of-view characters (the first two do double duty as love interests), ready to be developed into believable humans, with physical attributes, life histories, motivation, a moral compass, and strong opinions about the other characters.