Quote
YolandeC
However, for those who have written original fictions, before you embark on your journey, do you already have all personalities, traits, behaviors of your characters lined up ready to go, or do you conjure up the plot first and later on mold your characters into someone who magically make everything work?
Yes and no. Others may disagree, but this is my experience.
I usually have at least one character in mind and a general idea of the setting. The combination of character and setting gives a lot of guidance for the plot. I normally wind up writing at least 10,000 words before I can write an outline of the plot. At that point I feel like I know the characters well enough to predict how they'll act when confronted with whatever. This isn't to say that I don't know more or less where the plot is going when I start, but there's a difference between knowing that someone's death will form the climax of the plot and knowing all the circumstances that lead to it. I really can't predict that kind of detail until I'm more familiar with both the characters and the world they inhabit.
Secondary characters tend to exist to serve the plot, while main characters drive the plot. Characters will catch me off-guard, though. In my current project, I wound up starting over after about 30,000 words because a secondary character turned out to be a major character and things had to be rewritten. (A lot of that original draft has been reused, but even then I wouldn't say it was a waste of time. It was all helpful in developing the characters.)