1. Pick a creature to base it off of. Will your alien be rabbit-like? Or perhaps you've decided to combine features from multiple creatures, and create your own alien chimera.
2. How intelligent will they be? Are these aliens going to be mindless monsters that threaten the landing party, or are they the keepers of all wisdom that find childish species like humans to be both pitiful and adorable?
3. What is their level of technology? Can they travel the stars without any worry that their ship will malfunction? Or do they stare up at the stars from their cooking fires and wonder what those twinkling lights might be?
4. What is their culture like? Are they warriors? Healers? Do their laws command that certain foods only be eaten on Rigel's Day? How do they react around those not of their species, who don't know the ancient rituals in both their hearts?
5. Can they survive on earth? What do they breathe? How do they respond to the radiation from a yellow sun? Are daisies a deadly poison that they must avoid any contact with?
6. What do they eat? Are they carnivores? Herbivores? Do they even need to eat, or do they receive all the nutrition they require from the light of the stars?
7. Are they robotic? Who says that your aliens have to be made of flesh and bones?
8. How do they communicate? Can they speak English, or must they use a complex series of signals and pheromones to convey their desires? Can they even communicate with humans?
9. How long do they live? Are their entire lives lived out in a human blink of their eye, or do they spend centuries in their species' equivalent of diapers?
10. Are they friendly? Are they bent of galactic warfare that will leave them as the only species left, or do they just want to be left alone? What would they do if a human fell from the sky into the middle of their most populated area? Eat the strange creature, lock it up for study, or simply groan and call for an interplanetary officer to come write a ticket for yet another human who doesn't understand what a no-fly-zone is?
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