Or as I like to call it, stewing.
This is something I preach to my composition students: the first step of writing anything is just to think about it. When I see people posting on social media about writing their first novel, it’s 99.7590%* times that they have an idea and want help figuring out how to put it down on paper. In order for the story to come to life, the characters have to be born.
I have had THE strangest places and times that characters or plot bunnies pop into my head. You’ve likely heard the “I was at the grocery store and had to quickly write down my idea” bit. When I’m teaching, I have lengthy commutes, so most of my stewing happens while driving. I believe I have 160-something voice notes on my phone currently. I should probably clean those up.
Side story: Deriek
I was probably in 7th grade when one of the characters closest to me was “born” (you will find him in Fire Heart). I had my absolute favorite character that I RPGed with, wrote short stories with, thought about all day at school. Then one night, I was watching VH1 and a video I’d seen multiple times came on.
For some reason, at that particular moment, WHAM he fell into my head; name, attitude, some backstory, relationship with favorite character. It was seriously a headrush.
Now, he was born that quickly, but he has stewed for a number of years to become the character he is today (but he has a full life story from birth to death, so there’s plenty of extra information of no importance to anyone).
Back to characters. We have to get to know them. In our brains, we have to imagine (or let them tell us) how they would work their way through situations not only in our planned novel/novelette/etc. but in situations outside of the story’s world. We need to understand their past before the story to understand the WHY of their thoughts/actions in the story. We need to see what could be in the future to understand the possible ramifications of their choices in the story. This will likely never reach your readers, but I promise you that your character will have more life in the constructs of your final story.
And sometimes, it takes forever. One of my current WIPs, Lucky, has been stewing in my head for probably 4 years now. I am sure I could word vomit the whole thing out because I have the story’s plot sorted out, but I’m waiting. The characters are still coming to life in my head. Random things in my day-to-day existence cause tidbits of the character’s voices and actions to bounce through my brain. Lately, one of the sidekick characters has been the loudest, and only 1 of the 2 protags is speaking to me, so I’m still stewing until those protags start chatting more.
My other WIP that’s further along, A Blacker Beauty, has been stewing, but it’s ripe now. It’s 1st person, so once the protagonist started talking to me, it just took off. But how long has it taken to stew? Probably 3-4 years. My short story Dane Reaper came to life in about a week because the protagonist just leaped out at me and started shouting out his story.
This is why I like having multiple works going at once, allowing me to bounce from one to the other as the characters and plots strike me. My writing partner and I like to refer to it as “who’s on the bus” or “who’s the loudest on the bus”. The mental image is a school bus full of characters. Sometimes certain ones aren’t riding the bus that day, sometimes the ones that are riding are quiet, sometimes they're loud. Sometimes no one is on the bus. Sometimes they are all there screaming their heads off and punching each other to get to me first.
Stew. Birth those baby characters.
TL;DR - Get to know your characters away from the page before you put them on a page.