Thank you to Book Lovers Inc. for inviting me along to the blog today. I thought I might chat a little about how I come up with the characters in my stories.

Every writer I’ve spoken to in the past has a different formula for coming up with their characters. Some start out with a physical description or maybe have an actor or model in mind. Some use character charts. Sometimes a character will appear fully formed in a writer’s mind and demand their story be written down. Yes, sometimes I do get a faraway look in my eyes when I’m talking to people and that’s because the characters in my head are carrying on a distracting conversation. But, at that point they have to be a fully formed personality. For me the beginning is always a flaw or a behavior quirk. No-one is perfect, graceful and eloquent, even supernatural beings have their faults.

For my debut novel, Shades of Atlantis, I had a basic plot that needed piecing together but I needed the characters to bring it to life. Triona, the main character, began her nervous habit of rubbing her thigh. I thought about the kinds of situations that might make her nervous, how she would react in those situations and with the people she encountered. From there she began to develop her personality, soon after her physical appearance evolved. Her personality dictated everything down to the kind of clothes she would wear and the bedroom she would feel comfortable in.

With Caleb, the recent arrival to the town where Triona lives, it was his all or nothing attitude. Caleb does nothing half-way. He is either invested to the point of folly or he sits back and allows things to happen. He gets incredibly frustrated if circumstances demand he step out of this mind-set and it makes him extremely stubborn.

In the very beginning Triona sees Caleb as being perfect and successful at everything he does. She doesn’t see until later it’s because Caleb thinks if something isn’t working, he should just give up. Meeting Triona forces him to reassess this way of behaving, although he struggles with it throughout the book.

That’s how I come up with my stories. I figure out the characters I’m dealing with, place them in the plot and watch how they react and grow until they finally figure out what’s going on and achieve some resolution. The end. =)

Thanks for reading.

About the Book:

Since the death of their parents, Triona Pryor and her brother, Ben, have lived with their aunt and uncle in Camden, Maine. Now in her senior year of high school, Triona loves her family and friends, but she has always felt that she didn’t quite fit in…in Camden, or anywhere else.

Enter Caleb Wallace, the devilishly handsome man who has recently moved to Triona’s small town. While their attraction to each other is instantaneous, it also proves to be dangerous…and deadly.

When tragedy strikes, Triona flees to London for solace and to start her life anew. It’s there she discovers from an unlikely source that her family has been keeping secrets from her – secrets about not only her birthright, but her ultimate destiny as well. Armed with this knowledge, Triona finds herself thrown into a whole new world and into a battle to save the lives of everyone she loves.

About the Author:

Carol Oates has never been one to remain still for long. After her parents’ mad dash to the hospital through the empty city streets of Dublin, Ireland, Carol made her debut into the world in the early hours of Christmas morning. Since then her pace has not slowed down in the least.


Carol was introduced to the world of supernatural books when, as a child, her family moved to a coastal suburb on the northern border of Dublin known as Clontarf, famous as the birthplace of Bram Stoker, the prolific author responsible for breathing life into the legendary story Dracula. This stirred in Carol an early passion for reading about all things supernatural. Combine that passion with a deep interest in the history and folklore of Ireland, as well as an active and vivid imagination, and Carol Oates the author was born. Carol’s love of writing about anything not entirely “human” emerged, and the premise for her debut novel, Shades of Atlantis, was born.


Carol still lives in Dublin, but spends a great deal of time traveling though the counties of Ireland and Northern Ireland with her partner and son. When not travelling through the countryside, Carol spends her days at the office and her evenings immersed in the world of Legends and Mythical Creatures.

Where to find Carol: Website, Facebook, Twitter