Characters: Where Do They Come From?

Yesterday, I spent the day retooling a novel I'm trying to write.  It's called Daughter of the Scribe, where the main character is exactly what the title says she is, and she's tasked with protecting a magical artifact.  It goes on but my plot was limp and I felt like I was pulling teeth while writing it.  I'm reworking the plot today, but before I could do that, I had to look at my characters.  I needed to figure out what was wrong with them in order to figure out what was wrong with my plot.  When I did that and tweaked the main character - same background but different life experience growing up - the characters around her changed for the better.  The plot is fitting into place and makes it something that I want to write.  She's now a thief who can kill you with an arrow from an impressive distance and I changed how she grew up.  Instead of living the life of a scholar, she grew up with her uncle who trained her to be an assassin and thief.  She's still the daughter of a scribe but she didn't grow up with her father.  Now, he was disappeared by an evil king and she needed to change her life goals, but there comes motivation and, therefore, plot.

My main character, Liliana, when I think of where she comes from, is not from just one person.  My life, while not as jarring as what happens to others, changed completely due to something outside of my control.  At the same time, this character isn't me.  She's not just one person, but she's someone who's story is familiar to a lot of us.  She adapted and she might or might not be okay.  She might be okay on the outside but inside, she just wants to curl up away from the world and make it go away.

What I'm trying to get at here, if you're still reading and not just rolling your eyes at me, is that there's no one place where I get my characters from.  When I look at all of my characters, from Power to when I first started writing Mystery of the Dark to where I am today, there's no one single person or thing that defines them.  I think that gives the character strength because it makes them easier to relate to.  I think, well more I hope, when I publish and you read my stories, that you see a bit of yourself in the characters I put forward.  It might not happen but that's my hope.

Readers, where do your characters come from?  Are you like me, where there's no one point or person, but they're several different little things put together?  Or are your characters pointed to be the one person that touched your life, no matter how briefly?  Feel free to leave your answers in the comments and, until next time, keep on writing.