We’re fortunate to have an English Professor numbering among our little writers group, and a point was made at the night’s meeting of stretching beyond ourselves to create character; to become (as is necessary) someone we might write about that is not of ourselves, but to expand upon what we might do as that character. Yea, it shall bring out the blackness of heart!
I have been stifled in my own writing by what I was and what I am. The good little Catholic schoolgirl that rebelled only explored through the secretive means and often got caught to find guilt in the scowls of the cowled faces of penguins.
And family; afraid that my writing may yet confirm their suspicions of the oddness of child number three. But family is gone, by death or by choice, and the freedom I sought is untested. Still trembling with memories of secrets and worlds, still intimidated by the associative dismay, yet I am too much in my stories as not what I was, or I am, and sadly, not what I could but would not, but an image of should that should not be.
I must take myself out, cover my ears and my eyes and let she or he who would take my place be.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Another method of generating character is to write your imagination of what that person should be/think/feel, then twist it with a dash of hot pepper sauce otherwise knows as “how they surprisingly turn out to be for real.”
Or just make it up. I dunno.