“I live with them for a long time in my head. When I first start writing about a character, I don’t know them that well. It’s through the process of writing of putting them in scenes, and contemplating them—when I’ve spent more time with them—that they take on more flesh. When I start writing, I have a lot of characters that I’m not sure what their place in the novel will be…And some characters recede as I put more flesh on them. I think I don’t really need them; they’re not giving me anything. Or they’re there for a particular effect, and that’s it.”

—  Tracy Chevalier

On how she formulates her characters in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-tracy-chevalier/ in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23)

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Tracy Chevalier15
American writer 1962

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