Developing Characters

Where do you find your character inspiration? Do you base them on someone you know personally? A famous person? Are they totally fictional? Or do you mix it up?

Me? I mix it up! Their role and/or plot of the manuscript determines if I can draw from personal experience or if I have to "borrow" from someone in the lime light. It's not always good to use someone you know as the basis of a novel ESPECIALLY if their "character" is going to be a baddie! lol Now if you feel fairly certain that person would never in a million years read your piece then it might be a risk you feel safe to take!

I typically don't make a character entirely fictional. I always seem to find someone on TV/Movies or papers/magazines, that I get some characteristics from.

Do you gather pictures for all of your characters? Or just your Hero/heroine?
When you are writing that character...do you have that picture in your mind?
I don't always gather hard copies of pictures but I DO develop them in my mind when I create that character's description on their sheet.
When I develop my character sheets I don't go as in-depth as some of my author friends. I know some of you who will sit down and create 5 page interviews! I'm always amazed by that! I, on the other hand, create a 2-3 page one depending on how much the character "talks" to me as we are chatting :-)
My interviews usually cover subjects such as: Name (full name), eye/hair/skin color, age, sex (can't always count on the name to determine this :-) ), body build, scars, tatoo's, hometown, current city,current occupation, occupational background, education level, special skills/training, family dynamics, what was their childhood like, hobbies, favorite color, favorite food, pets, clothing style, and whatever else I think may be important to know about him/her. Not all of my interviews are the same. I base them on the character and their role in the manuscript.

What tricks/techniques do you use to develop your characters?

Where do you find your ideas for your novels?

I was read an article by Christina Dodd titled "Romance Cliches For The 21st Century" in the August edition of the Romance Writers Report. It got me thinking (hard to believe I know..lol) about how I come up with my story idea's.
The majority of mine come from news stories, a "scene" I've witnessed either in my previous Fire/EMS/911 Dispatcher life or when I'm out and about on errands, or from TV shows based on real life crimes such as Forensic Files, etc.
Where do you get your inspiration from?

Hanging my head in shame....

Is it really August already?? I think someone's messing with me! As you all can see by the date of my previous post...it's been a FEW months since I've updated my blog :-/ Thanks to the encouragement of a few good friends (June, Kelly, Lexi, Pam and Denise) I'm back at the blog thing :-)

I've managed to renovate my guest bathroom and my office that is just for ME...and get a full-time job since I was here last. Not sure how much I'm going to like the last! lol Playing that by ear. My darling hubby says I don't have to work outside the house if I don't want to, that I can stay home and concentrate on my writing, but the guilt of not helping with the bills on a regular basis is a difficult cross for me to bear at the moment :-) Ask me again in a few weeks how I feel about this! lol
My goal is to write daily. I write every chance I get both at home in the evenings and on my lunch hour.
I have set up both long term and short term goals for my writing career and they now hang in a prominent place on my cork board.
I'm going to share them with everyone here.
I've set my goals up as follows:
Long term goals: One, Two, Five and Ten Year Goals...I've used an individual index card for each and this is the format I used and an example of my One Year Goal:

One Year Goal: To write and query two full novels
Date Goal Set: June 4, 2010
Target Date: June 4, 2011
Date Achieved:

Then for each long-term goal I have listed, I also used index cards and broke it down into specifics. For example these are the projects I'm going to work on to complete it.
Goal #1 Complete "Where There's Smoke"
Date Goal Set: June 4, 2010
Target Date: December 31, 2010
Date Achieved:
Goal #2: Query WTS
Date Goal Set: June 4, 2010
Target Date: 1 Week after completion of MS- January 7, 2011
I have done this for each of the novels that I intend to complete within this One Year time frame.

I then came up with a "plan" to help me achieve each of the small goals, and in turn, each of the big ones as well :-) This is posted above the short-term/long-term goals. Here it is:
1. Develop my main characters in four days.
2. Plot out the story in one week, using line-per-scene format, planning each scene at two-thousand words and the entire MS at 60-100k words. (This will vary depending on target publishers.)
3. Write the first draft at ten pages per day, finishing the first working draft in 26 working days. (This will vary between 26-40 days depending on word count.)
4. Revise the first draft in one month, or less, using one-pass revision technique.
5. Find publishers that accept unagented queries for this type of novel, and send two query letters a day until I've covered my field of first choice publishers.
6. Find recommended agents for genre and query them. This can be started after first draft is finished.

Do you have short/long-term goals in place? And the plans to help you reach them? If so, how do you keep track of them?