RB> So how do you get ideas for characters, and know which
RB> particular mix is going to spark?

 Since replying to this last week, I've found an excellent example. I
said that I base them on real people changed around (to protect the
innocent), but the problem is a limited database. If you need a
monster it's easy to reprise Hitler or Hannibal Lecter, they are only
charicatures. The *real* people have to act and interact as real
people do, and there are not too many you know well enough to make
that work... maybe five.  

 At present I'm reading Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON (the whole
900 gages of it - I'm rapt in this bloke), and he obviously has the
same problem he solves in a simple way... he recycles the same
characters in all his books, using the same names! The last one I read
was THE CONFUSION set in the 17th Century, written last year. This one
was written  in 1999 set in WWII and the present, but the characters
recur (same surnames) and one of them is possibly the same person,
immortal.

 Stephenson is clever! It adds another dimension when Bob Shaftoe is
a jarhead US Marine in WWII and one of Cromwell's a few centuries
earlier, in another book. It makes a statement that people don't
change.

 Stephenson is the only American author I know who successfully
writes about England and gets it right... and to cap it off he writes
about Australia with the same authority, and the Philippines, and
Japan. Americans *always* trivialise other nations; not Stephenson.

 When someone sets himself up as an authority, my first move is to
pick holes... but I can't find any! I'm actually beginning to believe
that Stephenson has been to all these places, and done all these
things.

... [later]

 Aha! I found a mistake! The hero is in Oz, having shipped into
Brisbane from New Zealand via *Fremantle*... which is on the other
side of Oz, 3,000 miles away! Found one!

 A minor flaw was that he called the hotel in Brisbane the
"Canberra." I have no idea if there was a hotel called that in
Brisbane in 1941, but I do know that Queenslanders *hate* Canberra
(our national capital) with a passion, and would have been more likely
to call a hotel the Tojo or the Hitler. I notice that he does not
mention any Brisbane street names. My guess is that he couldn't find a
street map of Brisbane on the Net, but at least he knows that General
Macarthur had his headquaters there.  

 Thank goodness Stephenson is not perfect. He was beginning to worry
me. I supoose he has similar flaws when he moves the story to
Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. That's the trouble with authors, they
are really good liars. 

Regards,
Bob
   

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5