How do you create characters?

R. Fox: The best characters, I think, are “captured” more than they are created. You observe real people in real situations, maybe combine them with other people you’ve observed, and then you can add in reasons they behave a certain way. Usually, the closer you stick to truth, the better chance you have of people saying, “Hey, I’ve been there.”

D. Drake: Once I have a sense of what the story is, and thus a vague notion of who these people, to some extent, have to be, then I think mainly in terms of dialogue. The things they say seem to tell me who they are. But you have to try to orchestrate them as best you can, and you can’t just let ‘em ramble for the sake of rambling — unless, of course, you’re Quentin Tarantino.