So if they’re not us, where do our characters come from? They might be drawn from our lives, like the boss we hate or the old man who sits in the four seats down on the left side of the commute bus and tells stories to anyone who’ll listen about his war experiences. They might be amalgamations — of people we’ve known, characters encountered in fiction, or told to us in stories by relatives. And even though, within the story we’re writing, we might never see all of their life, they should have that life, not just be a prop, carried onto the page for their one line then stuffed back into a character closet.
