Where did you get your inspiration for all... â€� M.L. Rio Q&A

Elle Dunne asked M.L. Rio:

Where did you get your inspiration for all the characters? Did you start with an archetype and go from there, or did you start with the character and modified them to fit with the archetype as you went? :)

M.L. Rio I wish it were that simple! The characters, in their earliest iterations, were the result of my asking myself, "If you were to walk into a room where a small Shakespearean troupe was rehearsing, what personalities would you inevitably encounter?" And the fourth-years are what, after about six months of outlining and character development, I had to work with. I didn't at any point stop and say, "No, this person can't have that trait or say that thing because it doesn't conform to their archetype," or "This is what this character must do or say to conform to their archetype" because real people don't have archetypes. They're much more complex than that; thus also to good fictional characters. (In IWWV there's actually quite a bit of conversation about the students being consistently typecast and why that's often problematic. The short answer is that expecting real human beings to fit neatly in character categories established by drama or literature doesn't work.)

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