One of a writer's most essential tools in telling a story is their characters. Well-developed characters can draw your readers in, create sympathy for your protagonist, make them fall in love with your main character.

Of course creating these life-like characters almost always involve drawing on the characteristics of real people. Clearly you can't create a character that's an exact copy of someone you know. (Unless you're writing their biography.) 

I recently found myself in the (un)fortunate position of arriving at the airport to discover my flight had been delayed. Most people would get all in a huff about it. As a writer, it's the perfect opportunity for me to observe people's behaviour and study their mannerisms without influence. Being stuck at an airport for two hours is a great way to practice character development and building back story.

That is probably the words most uttered by novice writers starting out.

There's no definitive answer to that question, though some may reason that there are numerous books, courses and on-line 'tutorials' that will teach you where to start. As any experienced writer will warn you - check the author's credentials. Can I teach you how to fly a 747 if I read the technical manual but have never actually managed the controls? Likewise, I may hold a degree in English, qualifying me to talk about the intricacies and nuances of the English language Ad Nauseum and have written numerous articles and thesis's on the subject. Yet I have not written or published a single work of fiction. How can I be qualified to teach you how to write a novel? (Disclaimer: I don't hold a degree in English and avoid Ad Nauseum discussions whenever possible.)

So where does one, novice or experienced, start? What gets the creative juices flowing, urging you to sit down and write?

A friend of mine recently asked me if I plan every little detail of my novels before I start writing.

After giving a bit more thought, I realised that the real question wasn't whether or not I planned everything before I start writing, but more whether everything goes according to plan when I do start writing.

If I answered 'yes' you'd probably not believe me. Especially if you're a writer yourself. So how much planning do you do and how much do you go with the flow?

A while ago I posted a short story onto one of the numerous writer/readers/critiquing sites. The majority of the feedback I received was relating to spelling: Corrections on words such as neighbour, colour, socialise, etc.

Based on what I was taught in English class, those words were spelled correctly, though, according to my readers, they weren't. With a groan, I realised that I walked head-on into the old debate of British vs American spelling: most of the readers were from the US.

Many will argue the fact that when you write, you must use the American spelling. Particularly if it will be published on the web. Others argue that you should use British spelling, as that is proper English. So where do you draw the line?

One of the first pieces of advice I was given when I started writing was "Write what you know." A very valuable piece of advice. Twenty years ago when I started writing, to me that meant that I was very limited in what I wrote about.

Today, with sites such as wikipedia.org and Google, you're no longer restricted to simply write what you know. If you don't know it, research it and find out.

Case in point: When I wrote my first draft of The Fourth Portal, I needed one of my characters to explain how a microscope works. Set a few hundred years into the future, Character A was an engineer used to computer scanners that provided a three-dimensional, interactive representation with the capability to enlarge images too small to see with the naked eye. Character B, on the other hand, was a technology collector, collecting instruments dating back to the early 20th century. One of these included a microscope. Having never before seen a microscope, Character A had to be told how a microscope worked.

So where to start?