# Grace Lynx Jenkins on Characterization: Building Realistic Characters, Psychology, and Writing From Experience

Grace Lynx Jenkins on Characterization: Building Realistic Characters, Psychology, and Writing From ExperienceIn this episode of The Neil Haley Show, Neil “The Media Giant” Haley welcomes bestselling author Grace Lynx Jenkins, author of Sight, for a conversation about characterization, psychology, personality, and what makes fictional characters feel like real people.Grace defines characterization as the process of showing an audience who a character truly is. That can include appearance, interests, personality traits, relationships, motivations, flaws, and the choices a character makes throughout a story.For Grace, characters are the most important part of storytelling.Her books are heavily character-driven and influenced by her background in psychology. She believes a plot works best when the people inside it behave consistently with who they have already been established to be.Rather than forcing characters into situations simply because the plot requires it, Grace asks a different question: What would this person logically do in this situation based on everything I already know about them?That approach allows the plot to grow naturally from the characters.Grace begins with what she calls a basic mental biography. She visualizes the character, identifies major personality traits, flaws, motivations, and physical characteristics, then gradually adds smaller details as the story develops.But she warns writers against over-describing appearance.Newer writers sometimes want readers to imagine a character exactly the way the author does, so they provide enormous amounts of physical detail. Grace believes that rarely works because every reader will visualize a character somewhat differently.The goal is not to control every detail in the reader’s imagination.Instead, the author should establish the character’s general appearance and, more importantly, create such a clear personality that readers understand who this person is.Grace says the real test of characterization is whether readers can suspend disbelief and think, “This feels like someone who could actually exist.”That remains true regardless of whether the story takes place in the real world, fantasy, science fiction, or another fictional setting.Neil and Grace also discuss where characters come from.Grace says her characters are not usually direct copies of individual people. Instead, she takes personality traits she has observed in herself and others and combines them in different ways.She especially encourages writers to examine their own weaknesses when creating flaws.If a writer struggles with perfectionism, anger, insecurity, jealousy, fear, or another issue, that real experience can become useful material for building a believable character.Grace describes herself as a “write what you know” author.Her psychology background also gives her another resource. She can research psychological conditions, motivations, behavioral patterns, and emotional drivers when developing characters, while combining that research with real human experiences she has observed.The conversation then moves into a broader idea: every book contains something of its author.Grace believes every written work is, in some way, an extension of the person who created it.A novel can reveal what interested the author, what they struggled with, what they believed, what they feared, what they wished for, or what was happening culturally during the period in which they were writing.That is why Grace believes literary analysis should consider both the author and the historical context surrounding a book.When studying literature, understanding who wrote the work and what was happening during that time can provide important clues about themes, characters, and meaning.For Grace, publishing a book means sending a small piece of yourself into the world.That does not mean every character is autobiographical. It means the author’s experiences, observations, beliefs, imagination, and understanding of people...