Thumbing through Rebecca Makkai’s twitter, I came across a tweet with a link to some of her grumblings on the distinction between setting and characters. In the post, she defines characters as: A character has motivations, needs, fears. A character moves closer to or further from their goals. A character affects other characters, and is affected by them. Most characters change. A character is a physical being existing in space and time, and a spiritual/psychological/emotional being existing in time.