Writing Meme - Day Nine

Generally a character will come to me out of the blue, from some random bit of inspiration. Sometimes I'll just get an idea for a story and a character will come with it, other times I'll have the idea for this or that type of character and the story eventually forms around them. One of the more random ideas for a character I've had comes from my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel. Originally it was going to have one protagonist, but while trying to pick out a name for her, I somehow came across the idea of Lindsey sounding like Lynne Z. And once I thought of Lynne Z., I figured there should probably be a Lynne A. And so just like that, I had another protagonist. She eventually became Linae, who didn't like Lynne, but was forced to work with her anyway.

A more straightforward example of how I come up with characters can actually be found in my latest character, Mona, who is actually an OC for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. She originally came about because I was wondering what Brent's parents were doing during the movie's timeline (so much is made of Flint's relationship with his father, but what of Brent's parents?). At the time I was under the impression that Brent's parents actually owned the cannery, so my thought was that they were off trying to recapture their fortunes, mainly through making a prosperous match for their son. So I thought that they could find him a wife from a family that owned a chain of grocery stores. And since I was also under the impression that Brent (and by extension, Flint) was 27 in the movie, I was trying to figure out why this girl of probably the same age wouldn't already be married, which I answered by making her extremely introverted. UNLESS she was in one of her family's stores, in which case she because very friendly and talkative. Over time, she lost the introverted side and Brent's parents moved out of the picture (since I figured that they probably didn't own the cannery), making way instead for a slight childhood friendship between her and Brent, from when he actually went to events outside of Swallow Falls. I haven't actually done anything with her yet, but she's fun to think about.