This one's a bit personal.
I have this main concept on how I create characters where how absence affects people, how it changes people, how's their reaction, what choices they make, what becomes of them and ultimately how they reconcile with that absence- or do they ever.
These are basically my Before-After concepts which I keep going back to to remind myself that the story might have politics, violence, morally gray choices but all of them stems from something very simple- that whatever I'm creating revolves around people first.