P.D. Workman asked P.D. Workman:

How do you get inside the heads of your characters? Especially the ones with severe mental illnesses?

P.D. Workman A lot of it seems to be innate. I have always been a very empathetic person and able to get into people's heads and see their viewpoint. Sometimes when I am working on a dysfunctional character, I'll come across the diagnostic criteria for a mental illness and realize that they fall squarely into the diagnosis for that disorder. I have intuitively brought all of the characteristics together without knowing the name for it. Other times, I start with a particular mental illness or disorder in mind, and build a character and a story around that.

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