The Dresden Files is great fun, as you might expect of a series that has a [spoiler] in Dead Beat.
Oh, gender. I would say that it's a problem for me too with OCs, because I see people first as people, not as their gender, but when it comes down to it I can at least flip a coin for gender. Personality? Not so much. Well, I guess you could use a random number generator to generate their Big Five personality traits, but I don't think that would work well with my process. But I totally get where you're coming from; it feels weird to have the genders be too unbalanced. (And then there's the times where you go, "yeah, it'd be maybe even more interesting if that character was the opposite gender...but that is not the story I want to/must write."
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Oh, gender. I would say that it's a problem for me too with OCs, because I see people first as people, not as their gender, but when it comes down to it I can at least flip a coin for gender. Personality? Not so much. Well, I guess you could use a random number generator to generate their Big Five personality traits, but I don't think that would work well with my process. But I totally get where you're coming from; it feels weird to have the genders be too unbalanced. (And then there's the times where you go, "yeah, it'd be maybe even more interesting if that character was the opposite gender...but that is not the story I want to/must write."