Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.
As a writer, you always read in two minds: You read as a reader and you enjoy it, and you look at it as a writer, and you just admire the architecture and the construction.
The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
I read a lot of the books that I love again and again and again and try to understand how the writer did it.
I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.
Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character.
No one has ever used historical examples, near or remote, with the detail, precision, and directness to be found in every page of Shaw.
