That’s pretty much what I do with characters too, start with a need (villain, love interest, whatever) then think about what a general set of characteristics the person would have to fit what I need them for, then I just kind of feel what the character would react like and write that.
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I’m not great at planning. Which is not a good thing.
Typically I begin a scene by writing the dialogue and then dump prose in the in-between areas afterwords. Trying to write in a linear fashion just makes me impatient and frustrated.
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Ah. Give me ages and I’ll quill one nonsensical metaphor. Yet I can write a prize-winning poem in five minutes. My process is all too oft born of a shattered freeform and I mix and match words like baubles. I am currently tapping my lavender nails on hundreds of pages of out of context bites and endless dialogue collected over years. O, my dialogue addiction. Since I was a wee thing, since I was a child of night, ideas spring late and I then must pen the wall, jot on mobile, write on hand–anything to not forget. I then tend to build the world and story around my saucy randomness. It’s quite the quirk and I often feel such an unorthodox approach does both spark and hinder me…
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I just looked up ink and it’s amazing! It is much more powerful than CS and much closer to common programming languages. Wow it’s so awesome, thank you so much. Though I guess programming is a little more difficult than CS, but I don’t mind, since with power comes difficulty to manage but the reward is sweet in the end. Thanks a ton.
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I’m pretty sure my strategy could be described as bullshitting my way to victory. 
Mostly I just act as a sort of employer for all of my characters who come to me with backstories, family members and sometimes whole worlds and interesting plot ideas. Since I have too many ideas to count I let my characters pitch their ideas and if they are lucky they get put into eternal slavery… I mean get employed while being aware of certain risks, cough cough.
My writing style is peppered with a lot of parallels and symbolism, which kind of just jumps into my head so I write it down. I end up comparing crops to the soldiers of the sun that way, but I guess it works!
Really, I put a lot more effort into motivating myself to sit down and write than I spend time ripping my hair out for good plot threads. It’s mostly an organical growth and I let most of the characters and plots handle themselves, I’m more the interior designer than the building constructor.
It’s always the most fun to put an appearance to a character. Idea wise, I come up with mostly contradicting statements and go from there. I ask myself what if disabled people had superpowers? or this character carves bones, what could that lead to?. Mostly it’s just very ridiculous sounding ideas that pop into my head though. And then an army of characters all scream “I’M THE PERSON FOR THE JOB, PICK ME!”.
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