Creation.

And God said, "Let there be,"

I find it interesting that when I act creatively I cannot coerce my actions into bearing fruit. When I write I cannot force words onto the page. When I make up fictional characters I cannot pull them out of my imagination like I was pulling up a plant. When I draw or when I sculpt, I cannot simply put lines on a page and make it look interesting. It has to just happen.

and there was.

When I create characters for games or for books, I find myself meeting them like I would meet people on the street. I see them in my mind, I observe their actions, and from there I can find the character's personality, visage, and other things.

God shaped the man from the dirt and breathed into his nostrils, and the man lived.

Creation is not entirely a matter of allowing created things to appear in my mind. I also put a good deal of conscious thought into the matter. I have met the character, but I choose its goals, I figure out how it would act in a given situation based on what I learned when I met it. I take the nebulous creature and give it form and shape. I give it a life to live.

Like all created things, the characters I create can only live one life. That's what makes them so real. If a character could just be placed in one reality or the next, then what would be the point of it living? Sure, it might do some cool things, but what would the character be about? Would it have goals? Would it have purpose?

Somehow, I doubt it.

And God looked at all He had created, and it was good. Indeed, it was very good.