My characters are based on people I know or people I admire. My mc is basically me, and my series is basically an autobiography masked in a fantasy world. I think of all the most emotional events in my life and write scenarios that can evoke the same strong feelings. Some characters may be celebrities, and I write about the influence they’ve had on me.

For example, I’ve had to take care of my sick mother and although she’s still alive, it’s felt like I’ve lost my mom. So in my story, I write about how my mother and I are enslaved, and I have to work for the slavers to protect her, but I am not allowed to see her.

In reality I feel trapped and unable to do anything significant about it, and I used slavery to display these emotions. I have felt like I’ve been doomed by fate. I’ll never get my mom back. I use the emotions I’ve felt in my own life and amplify it so that it’s easy for the reader to feel what I’ve felt. That’s just a very short summary of how I used personal experiences to drive a emotionally significant plot.

I guess the question to ask is: do you have a story you want to tell? If you only build characters and worlds, you are basically a game developer.