For this novel I’ve been writing scenes to flesh out my characters’ backgrounds. I’m basing the scenes on suggestions from author Stant Litore, who outlined his process in the Wonderbook, Jeff Vandermeer’s excellent writing book.

Stant says that he needs to know the answer to these questions in order to know a charcater:

• What moment defined the character’s relationship to their parents?
• What moment defined the character’s greatest desire?
• What moment defined the character’s greatest fear?

He sometimes writes out the scenes that go with these questions. I thought this was a great idea, so I started doing this myself. Most of the background sketches I’ll post here are scenes written to answer these questions.

Today’s background sketch features one of my protagonists, Ziwat. It’s a scene I wrote to answer “What moment defined the character’s relationship to their parents?”

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