I think we're defining "know who they are" in slightly different ways. *grin*
I too have had scenes like that. In point of fact, there is a scene in the "Hidden Queen"/"Changer of Days" books which was the seed and the kernel of the entire story - a young woman who has been robbed of her gift of Sight and just "sprung" from a dictator's dungeon, trying desperately to see the army that's been sent after her and her three companions - two of them twins and both her cousins and her foster-brothers, children of the house where she had been sent to foster when she had been very young, and the third a young man who had also fostered there - there is a definite "something more" between these two, this last young man and my protagonist, although this particular scene doesn't get into it at all.
Their personalities are SHARP. They are all completely real characters who react in completely real ways, according to their personalities. Their names were Anghara, Kieran, Adamo and Charo. And I could not have have written that scene, however sharp the personalities were in my head, without knowing that about them, without knowing that if I walked up to one of them and tapped him or her on the shoulder and asked, "who are you?", they would be able to tell me their name. INSTANTLY.
(By the way, it took me nearly three quarters of my damned story to GET to that scene...)
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Date: 2007-01-29 05:20 am (UTC)I too have had scenes like that. In point of fact, there is a scene in the "Hidden Queen"/"Changer of Days" books which was the seed and the kernel of the entire story - a young woman who has been robbed of her gift of Sight and just "sprung" from a dictator's dungeon, trying desperately to see the army that's been sent after her and her three companions - two of them twins and both her cousins and her foster-brothers, children of the house where she had been sent to foster when she had been very young, and the third a young man who had also fostered there - there is a definite "something more" between these two, this last young man and my protagonist, although this particular scene doesn't get into it at all.
Their personalities are SHARP. They are all completely real characters who react in completely real ways, according to their personalities. Their names were Anghara, Kieran, Adamo and Charo. And I could not have have written that scene, however sharp the personalities were in my head, without knowing that about them, without knowing that if I walked up to one of them and tapped him or her on the shoulder and asked, "who are you?", they would be able to tell me their name. INSTANTLY.
(By the way, it took me nearly three quarters of my damned story to GET to that scene...)