Spooky and I spent a good portion of the day just talking about the book — characters, theme, setting, plot, etc. This is usually what I do instead of outlining, writing character profiles, etc. Just talk and think and wait.

That's similar to what I do, except I just talk to myself. I'm actually having a difficult time building the things lately--I've been thinking how with Boschen and Nesuko I was drawing on characters and places that I'd talked about and developed all through high school without actually much writing anything about them. I'm kind of having to start from an unfamiliar square one.

I had a creative writing teacher who made the class write up character profiles, which I kind of enjoyed, but I always felt like the profiles were pieces unto themselves and writing a story about the characters felt superfluous.

most the central characters are carnies

That's what I like to hear.