On characters

   

     "If there is one thing I have learned, it is that you must have at least some emotional connection with every soul who figures in a story. You may like them, love them, find them disgusting or hate them, but you must react to them in some way. You must see them as real and treat them with the same respect you would accord someone you meet in the street. Only then can they take on any life of their own. And they do. I always love it when people I have invented start behaving unexpectedly, as real people do - being themselves, in fact."

    Diana Wynne Jones,  Reflections on the Magic of Writing