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I'm working on another novel and today I'm creating characters.  It's exciting to have a blank page but also daunting. 

There are six women in the story, all very different. I've given them names (yesterday I researched the most popular names in the years they were born.)  

Creating characters in a novel needs careful thought. Yes, you can change them but it's better to have them clear in your head from the start.

Now I need to flesh out their characters because although they are very different, they interact closely with each other from the very first scene. I need a clear idea of who they are in order to develop the scene where they meet over a roaring log fire in a country house. 

I'm going to map out their appearance, their key characteristics and why they are at the event. I do this on an A4 page, by hand, so I can scribble changes on it as I go.

And when that's done, I'll get on with writing the first scene. My daily target is at least 1000 words.

Not everyone works like this. You might like to dive in and make changes later on. I've listened to many successful writers who all write differently. Deborah Moggach described how she has to know exactly what is going to happen from the beginning to the end of her novels, before she starts. 

  In reality, character often reveals itself gradually, through attention, patience, and a willingness to stay with uncertainty for a while. If you’re not sure yet who your characters are, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong — it may simply mean you’re still listening. 

 If you’re working on a novel and finding the characters hard to pin down, you’re not alone — and it’s often something that benefits from being talked through rather than solved in isolation.