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While I have not yet begun the words in a row prose writing that will create my American Folk horror novel, I have been hip-deep in character design and creation. This has been a blast.

Most of the novels I have written have been science-fiction set in quite distant futures. For each of those I did create characters documents, studies, and histories but there is something very different doing the same for characters that exist in the here and now. (Well, effectively the here and now. There are no supernatural entities and threats in the real world but aside from that the world of this next novel is our own world.)

That means as I create the backstory and history of the characters it’s important to know the world as it was when they were that age. Being in to 20s in the 1960s is very different than the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

While the historical context and its effect are fun to research and think about that hasn’t been the most enjoyable aspect of this part of the process. It’s the spontaneous evolution of the characters as I make the notes.

When I started this phase I knew some of the really big things that were going to be in various characters backstories as it compelled their natures and motivations. For me, something changes at the moment of actually making the notes in the various files. Writing the comments ignites new ideas, new aspects of the characters come to mind and insert themselves into the history. This ripples out to characters that they are associated with and changes them. The big boundary lines of what I originally envisioned act like guardrails, keeping the character enough on course that the novel will still work as intended, but now the characters can go faster, further, and higher into the storm I have created for them.

Man, I am having so much fun.