BoM/TWS Message Forum

I guess I'll start the commentary by saying that all the characters we meet in "Nine's a Crowd"  are entirely new. What do I know about them?

Well, I know their names and what they look like, because they derive from more-or-less randomly generated reference photos. Every day I use an AI image generator to crank out a dozen or so photos, some few of which I then save in a folder, and when I feel the need for a new character, I go looking through them, like a mugging victim looking through a police album of convicts.

I do this because I have found that a photo acts as a pretty good seed for a character, if they've got a "look" to them that is suggestive. This "Lorenzo" character, for instance, had a look that intrigued me, like he existed somewhere between Philip Fairfax (serious science nerd) and Geoff Mansfield (arrogant AP twat). So it gave me the idea of a serious high school student with a preppy background who is just enough of a jerk to (as Will puts it) use GPAs and class schedules as a "dick measuring contest."

The other kids who are showing up all derive from AI-generated photos that had some similar "bit" to them. I pulled out those that looked like they might go together, and their bits mixed up to suggest relationships and complications between them. (Even Caleb, an established character, suddenly acquired a new and unsuspected edge when Lorenzo wandered in and started up with him.) And so here we are.