The more novels I write, the more I learn about myself as a writer. My process has become more fine-tuned, so I recognize when I’m going to get frustrated and start to question why I ever wanted to write in the first place (right about the 30k word mark), and I’m slowly weeding out my crutch words. But there’s one thing that is always new, and that’s the intricate dance of how I get to know my characters.

I’m a social person, and the getting-to-know-you phase is no different just because my characters are figments of my imagination. I know age, hair color, and physical descriptions from the start, but it’s their personality that takes a little longer to discover. In The Trail Rules, the main character is Mike, a 16-year old girl who wasn’t as willing to share her thoughts as my other characters. She’s introverted, unsure of herself, and has no idea what she wants to do for the rest of her life. While my teenaged self can relate to the last one, the other two were a bit of a challenge.

One thing we do have in common is our love of the outdoors. She starts mountain biking because of her boyfriend and discovers that being in the middle of the forest calms her in a way nothing else does. While her boyfriend tries to hold her back, she meets a new group of friends who don’t just challenge her to push her limits, they assume she can do it. I learned that she needs that extra motivation to go after a goal, almost like she can’t give herself permission go after what makes her happy.

Because Mike is more introverted, I had to work harder to show her growth without writing a book that’s all internal monologue. (Don’t worry, it’s not!) My other main characters tend to blurt what they’re thinking and deal with the consequences afterwards, but Mike needs to think things through a lot longer, which makes the last scenes in the book delightful because she loses her filter. (I won’t say why because spoilers!)

This post originally appeared on Jean Book Nerd.