Interesting case I have.
I am planning characters right now for a future story. Though not so much as I only intend to write a short story, so I only need enough for the story's longevity. However, my current story that I'm writing is just an experiment, as in it was only intended to last like 10 chapters. That means that the characters were literally nothing but blanks, only rendered by the very ludicrous title I gave it and only named due to the first name that came to my mind, Elon Musk. The characters were intended to be as one dimensional as possible just to fulfill the 10 chapter quota I estimated.
Then the story started getting traction. After realizing that the story could be fleshed out, I figured that maybe I should start planning somethings, but I never did. The story continue to just be written as I go and the characters have to be designed on the fly.
A strange phenomena happened. The characters started to be fleshed out by their own will, in some strange way. I have nothing planned except for the story's title. That is literally the only thing that was planned and only due to the weird premise I thought of. Yet, the story itself started building the character's personalities. It has gone beyond just a dumb scenario into some deep dive into the psychological, and the characters are all in it for the ride.
Though there is a limit to this. The beginning seems disconnected to me now. Since this story started out with no planning, that is to be expected. So the characters are more or less basic in the beginning, and now they have transformed into something more. I'm quite shocked at how well it has worked out.
I might do this again after the story ends and see how the characters develop in another experimental story, should I chose to. For now, I'm planning a more structured story and I need to make those character bios, but this was a very interesting experiment for sure.
He says, imagine the character you are writing is walking down the street and they run into an old acquaintance that they haven't seen in a long time. How the character greets the acquaintance will tell you a lot about the character. (give it a try with the characters in your story. fun little thought challenge.
)
Sure. Let's try it.
... and she never had any friends due to her social anxiety!!!