LOVE him! The fact that you can sum up who he is and what he does so nicely is a great example of how helpful this technique is. He's Spooky Steve. 🙂

LOL vent away. I agree. Epic fantasy does like to throw in so many, many people. Even if they only give me "Hundar, the blacksmith" it helps.

Hahahaha!

I wish some of the epic novels out there referred to people by roles instead of describing them, their backstory, and how they got their names. If they show up in one chapter and possibly once or twice more in the book, I'm happy to read "the blacksmith" (comic relief character) or "the moll" (constant thorn in the side) rather than being forced to recall who "Brander" and "Marnie" are. With an eReader, I can search for the first occurrence of each name, but it pulls me out of the story.

That's not exactly the focus of this article, but I just had to get this off my chest.

Stay safe!

Awesome! Do you know beforehand, or do you discover those roles as you write?

Aw, thanks! I LOVE traits that mix badly. That's so much fun. Especially when you need characters to get along, but still butt heads.

I know, right? I thought this exact same thing when I read the post, Christina.

I LOVE it when you post here because I always learn something. Thanks for this food for thought. I certainly give people character traits that mix badly with each other just for the conflict, but I never really sat down and thought about roles. So cool!