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.Ā
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 Emperorās nephew, and then the Emperorās son. Then Cog needed a āguardianā in his life, and Christian was created. Then he became Alexanderās 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 youād never hear from him again.Ā
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 wasnāt just a spokesperson, but actually trying to get poor people out of the gutter? What if he was working with aristocrats, but now theyāre all dying heās losing money and getting pissed? I wonder if people will ship them they probably wonāt. And then eventually they became sort of necessary toĀ each otherĀ as characters. You canāt have one without the other - itās just Christian & Gaz. Their story is so tightly knit I actually canāt 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 āthis is a thingā and then they all sort of come to life with eachother and make their own stories along the way.