Good morning everyone. This week I wrote a blog post for Rock the Book about creating awesome characters. Read it here: Internalization: the first step to creating deep, believable characters
For me, character is the thing that makes or breaks a story. True, you have to have other stuff, too. Plot, voice, language, and so on. However, if you’re going to focus on improving one thing that can make your writing drastically better, my advice is to aim for the characters.
Character is the heart of your story. When your characters become real, plot will fall into place around them, because the characters’ realistic, true-to-life decisions will drive the action that happens in your story. When your characters become real, your world-building will become real, because those characters will inhabit a real place in your imagination. And yes, when your characters become real, your dialogue will improve, which in turn will help the flow and language of your story, especially if you happen to be writing in first person. Character has an incredible trickle-down effect that will improve everything you write.
So, if you want to know the single most important part of my personal character-building process, go check out that article. It’s actually a lot of fun, and no, you won’t need to fill out any silly worksheets.
Hope you are all having a fabulous day!
Check out the beginnings of my character….
Say something!!! :)