If you don't mind a similar question... What do you think your 'process', I guess, is when you come up with characters? I mean, it sounds like most of the depth and detail to Clockwork's cast comes from having thought about and tweaked and kicked them around over time, but where did the first concepts come from? Were you trying to think of characters, or ones to fill specific roles, or did you have ideas you wanted to use in a character or...? I'm curious since I always blank on character ideas.
I create them and they sort of take their own form after a while. Gaz is a good example, and I mention him a lot.
The story originally started with Cog and Alexander, and it was just about Cog learning magic to try and cure Alex of his curse. Then Cog needed a best friend, and Boris came in. Then Boris become the Mercian Emperor’s nephew, and then the Emperor’s son. Then Cog needed a “guardian” in his life, and Christian was created. Then he became Alexander’s cousin, and in turn an ex-Arcadian aristocrat.
But Gaz was supposed to be a sort of background character that you only ever saw once or twice. He was supposed to feature in a chapter where Cog learns about the rich/poor divide in Arcadia, and that was it. He was literally the spokesperson for poor people for those few pages, and you’d never hear from him again.
Then I thought about - Christian would go to Arcadia constantly and eventually start sleuthing to find out what is happening with all the murders. But it seemed sort of boring to have him do it alone. Alexander and Cog make up their own team, so neither of them were an option. He has issues with Leonardo, and Ruby has her own thing going on. Then I thought - what about that Gaz guy? What if he had his own reasons? What if he wasn’t just a spokesperson, but actually trying to get poor people out of the gutter? What if he was working with aristocrats, but now they’re all dying he’s losing money and getting pissed? I wonder if people will ship them they probably won’t. And then eventually they became sort of necessary to each other as characters. You can’t have one without the other - it’s just Christian & Gaz. Their story is so tightly knit I actually can’t remember what I was going to do with Christian before.
So basically Gaz went from a one-shot background character to one of my most interesting main characters. They all start out as “this is a thing” and then they all sort of come to life with eachother and make their own stories along the way.