One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is: “How do you come up with your characters?” My normal answer is “My characters have to speak to me before I can get to know them, and in order to do that, I must see their faces.”
Some of you are scratching your heads, thinking Wait a minute. This is 2014 and she writes historical fiction. Well, yes, I do, which sometimes makes it harder to find those faces. The Internet is one source I use to hunt for my characters. Photography websites or historical research websites often feature portraits of people, and once in a while I will find a picture in a magazine or advertisement that I can use. But my favorite activity is to prowl antique stores for vintage photographs. I have been known to sit on the floor with a box of dusty old pictures, carefully looking into each face to see if the person’s image tugs at my heart.
Isn’t it peculiar that people did not smile for photographs a hundred years ago? Their serious expressions only fuel my curiosity as I study their countenances in the tintypes. Often I find stacks of vintage pictures of children or siblings. Who would cast something like that aside so it ends up in a box in the corner of an antique store? Seeing those abandoned pictures makes me sad, and I yearn to imagine who they were, who they loved, and whose lives did they touch. Did they fulfill their dreams? Did they marry and have children? Did they live long enough to see their grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
I’m often struck by the pensive look in the eyes of a woman who 
seems to be peering off over my shoulder, as if watching for someone. I can almost hear her imploring me to tell her story, and I wonder if her heart has ever experiences the flutters stirred by love. Did she find the man of her dreams, or was her heart broken?
Sometimes a photo will depict a man whose features are chiseled by life’s hardships. What circumstances caused the lines across his brow, and what might bring a smile to his eyes? Occasionally I’ll come across a picture that begs to represent an antagonist in one of my stories. His expression is layered with pride or arrogance or greed. I snatch up those pictures, because I have to be able to envision the bad guy as well as the hero.
One of my current writing projects is a story set at the end of World War I, and features a character who witnessed the horrors of war and came home with physical wounds and scars on his heart. While searching through a goldmine of photographs in one antique store, I found pictures of uniformed soldiers standing in front of what appears to be their home. I wonder if those soldiers made it home. Who took those pictures? Their mother or father? Was it the last time they ever saw their son?
Another story on which I am working is set in the Flint Hills of 
Kansas, and one of the characters is a quiet man who lets others take the spotlight. He especially becomes tongue-tied around a special young lady. His cousin is the opposite: outgoing and charming with the ladies. So I needed photographs of these men who contrasted each other—one reserved and one cocky.
Those dusty, vintage photographs reveal a wealth of history if I allow my imagination to dream it. Telling their story somehow releases them from the bonds of a 3” X 5” piece of tin or cardboard, and frees them to share their lives with readers.