How I create my characters?

Sometimes my friends ask me how do I write so emotional characters. How they have such a chemistry? To them I want to tell my secret, actually, no this is not a secret but all the people who indulge in writing fiction, do the same thing. The characters we create are pieces of us, the voices we always hear in our head. And the chemistry they have is not just the outlining or development of the characters but it's mostly the journey of the discovery, both for us and the characters. Some of us bleed our hidden personalities and desires into the characters. They become indivisible part of us. Their feelings become ours, their pain, joy, success and love, all what they face is directly impacting us. When we struggle they struggle and their failures do bring tears of sorrow to our eyes. That is the reason when, either the character dies or we have to kill, its really hard to do so but with heavy hearts we do that and the pain bleeds through the readers' eyes. Even when editors ask us to edit some parts or delete any character sometimes we cannot take it and break down.

Mostly my characters or rather I say my pieces break free from me when I am watching something, or reading and suddenly a thought pops up,"what if?" Or "how about...?" Even sometimes listening to someone or any dialogue between other people, gives me an imagination and in that garden of my thoughts my free will starts dancing in some other form or with another identity and it wants to come out of my head and heart. For instance 'Dragon King Rhaevar & Mira' from "The Dragon King’s Bride" came out just while watching a fantasy drama that deeply impacted me. Infact two dramas. One inspired my characters and their love the other inspired their struggle and outcome. It's true that readers live thousands lives but as writers we equally experience those lives. We put our heart and soul into our creation.

I have no prescribed format to develop them, I just free write. I pickup from where my inspiration guides me. I sleep with the idea, I eat with it, even my daily life chores go on with the characters or stories developing themselves at the back of my mind. As I already said earlier, its the journey of discovery for both of us. Sometimes they just surprise me. But one thing is for sure, they are stubborn and don't listen to me. They want what they want. I have to go round and take a longer route sometimes to convince them or to get what I want them to have.

It's a good way to explore and experiment with my various moods, abilities and perspectives, different personalities and to tell the stories that matter to me the most and to live the lives I haven't got to live but dream to experience. 

This is how I or any other writer, for that matter, creates the characters. The words we write are not merely ink on paper in black white, the become part of us thriving with the live wire we lend them. This process is a challenging and incredibly rewarding journey.

Do you create characters? Or they are still hiding in your head? Would you like to share your process of creation or interaction?