Character

Blogs
Story Problems: Four Major Issues Writers Face, Part I of III

Story Problems: Four Major Issues Writers Face, Part I of III

Identifying and avoiding story-related issues in your writing that weaken the experience and characters. While the following list is not exhaustive, it does reflect some of the most glaring issues facing stories today. Ignore them at your peril. Three are character based and the final issue affects every aspect of story. This is part one of a three-part series. More to come.

read more
Interrogating Your Characters: How Asking Questions Will Lead to Stronger Stories (Part 1 of 2)

Interrogating Your Characters: How Asking Questions Will Lead to Stronger Stories (Part 1 of 2)

The only thing that matters in fiction is why. Why does what is happening matter to the protagonist and other characters? Why should we care? It’s not enough for things to happen to your characters. You have to know what it means to each of them and how it affects their lives. This means you need to know what makes your characters tick. Why they make the choices they do. Why they react the way they do. Why they don’t just walk away.

read more
Writing the Emotional Arc (Part 2 of 2)

Writing the Emotional Arc (Part 2 of 2)

A story hinges on the inciting incident—the event that pushes a protagonist outside of her status quo and forces her to move in a new direction. The inciting incident presents a choice: to stay and deal with the new circumstances or to move beyond what’s comfortable to go after what the protagonist really wants, facing new challenges along the way. It really isn’t a choice since it wouldn’t be much of a story if the protagonist stayed where she was. Thus, the inciting incident starts the journey.

read more
Writing the Emotional Arc (Part 1 of 2)

Writing the Emotional Arc (Part 1 of 2)

The point of any story is to engage the audience or reader. It’s why the hook is so important; it’s the part of the story that grabs the readers’ attention and makes them want to know what happens next. But the ultimate goal is to make your readers’ care about what they are reading or watching.

read more
Wants vs. Needs (Part 4 of 4)

Wants vs. Needs (Part 4 of 4)

Abraham Maslow identified human needs in his Hierarchy of Needs (as described in the last blog). But later in his career, he expanded his hierarchy to include Cognitive and Aesthetic Needs (both of which fall under Esteem Needs) and Transcendence Needs that served as the final level—the level to which we all aspire once our Deficiency Needs are met.

read more
Wants vs. Needs (Part 2 of 4)

Wants vs. Needs (Part 2 of 4)

In the first blog in this series, we explored what wants and needs are in their most basic form. Now we’ll look at how they can be used to design plot and characters. [Warning: This blog includes spoilers for some novels, so if you have not read the books or seen the movies, be forewarned.]

read more
Character Wants vs. Needs (Part 1 of 4)

Character Wants vs. Needs (Part 1 of 4)

Stories are about character. Sure, you can have an action film with little more than special effects and plot (think Transformers), but those kinds of stories have little emotional impact. They are fun while you’re watching them, but they don’t linger. They don’t make the audience think. Or feel. For those reactions, you need characters who want things and need things.

Wants and Needs are two elements that drive stories. They determine plot and character. Story and resolution.

read more
Introducing Characters (Part 4 of 4)

Introducing Characters (Part 4 of 4)

This is the final blog in the How to Introduce a Character series. In the first three blogs, we touched on the basics, tips on how to introduce characters, and examples from both films and books. This blog will complete the examples and ways to introduce a character, whether main or side.

read more
Introducing Characters (Part 3 of 4)

Introducing Characters (Part 3 of 4)

In the previous two blogs, we looked at some basic advice and criteria for introducing characters—the lifeblood of any story. Now we’re going to go deeper and look at various examples of the ways in which you can bring your character to life the first time you introduce them to your reader. As you can imagine, this is a huge topic, so these examples will be broken into two blogs to finish out this series on character introductions. Now to begin…

Ways to introduce characters:

read more
Introducing Characters (Part 2 of 4)

Introducing Characters (Part 2 of 4)

The first blog of this series laid the foundation for character introductions. Now we’re going to go deeper into ways to introduce characters. The final two blogs in this series will explore each type of introduction with specific examples and explanations.

Bringing your characters to life begins with the introduction, no matter whether it’s in fiction or film, it’s how you choose to begin that matters. There are many options:

read more
Introducing Characters (Part 1 of 4)

Introducing Characters (Part 1 of 4)

Characters make stories. They are why we read. They are how we escape into someone else’s life, experience trials foreign to our own. They provide inspiration to keep going during struggles. Getting to know them helps us learn and feel. They change us.

Characters are why we care. They are why we keep turning pages and stay glued to the screen.

read more
Negative Character Arc

Negative Character Arc

There are three main types of character arcs: positive, negative and flat/static. This is the second of three blogs that will analyze these types of character arcs. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)

read more
Positive Character Arcs

Positive Character Arcs

There are three main types of character arcs: positive, negative and flat/static. This is the first of three blogs that will analyze the three types. First up: Positive arcs. Caution: Spoilers ahead.

read more
Character Arc: Steps for Developing the Arc (Part 3 of 3)

Character Arc: Steps for Developing the Arc (Part 3 of 3)

This is the final blog in a short series about developing a character arc. The first blog defined the character arc and its importance. The second discussed how to begin developing that arc. This final blog offers concrete steps to take to create a fully developed character:

Writing a character is like giving birth to a fully grown person. You are in charge of making them from how they look, walk, speak, act and everything else that comprises a person. Here are some tips to bring them to life:

read more
Character Arc: Developing the Arc (Part 2 of 3)

Character Arc: Developing the Arc (Part 2 of 3)


Characters need to be a fully realized, complex people with virtues and flaws. They need convictions and fears, hopes and worries, and skills to help and hurt their progress. Most importantly, they need to change. This is the crux of character development. But how do you do that?

read more
Character Arcs (Part 1 of 3)

Character Arcs (Part 1 of 3)

When we read a story, we want to get pulled into the lives of the characters on the page, to connect and engage. We want to struggle with them. Fall in love. Experience everything they do. We want to see them change. That’s how their journey becomes ours.

It doesn’t matter how amazing a setting or world is if there is no character for us to identify with or rail against. It’s the characters who pull us into and through the story. Characters who prevail and share their triumphs and failures with us. Ideally, these characters change somewhere between the beginning and the end.

The course of a character’s story is called a character arc.

read more
7 Questions to Ask Your Character: The Stanislavski System

7 Questions to Ask Your Character: The Stanislavski System

Studying acting is a great way to learn how to create characters as a writer. In my last blog, I wrote about what I’ve learned from acting. In this blog, I am going to delve into the Stanislavski System of acting.

Constantin Stanislavski is recognized as the father of modern theater. He created a system of acting that dug deeper into the emotions of the actor and the work. He created a series of seven questions to help actors approach a character. I have listed those questions below with tips for how writers might use these questions to create better characters.

read more
18 Lessons for Writers from Acting: Bringing Characters to Life

18 Lessons for Writers from Acting: Bringing Characters to Life

In many ways, I learned more about writing from my music and drama classes than I did from my writing classes. I learned about rhythm, cadence and flow from music. How to build tension and action to a crescendo in the work and then how to release it for a satisfying ending. Those are the building blocks of music theory. I learned how to explore character, motivation and emotion in my acting classes. All of those are valuable lessons for a writer.

My writing classes taught me the craft, but music and acting taught me how to add depth and bring those mechanics to life.

read more
Characterization (Part 2 of 2)

Characterization (Part 2 of 2)


This is part two in Developing Characters. You can read the first part here. It talks about creating characters that are complete, like people. This part is focused on the big answers you need when creating a good character.

read more
Characterization: The Basics (Part 1 of 2)

Characterization: The Basics (Part 1 of 2)

Building a character is harder than making a friend (which is not a small statement for an introvert to make). This is, of course, if you don’t make a habit of analyzing everything about your friends and their every action, which would be both presumptuous and rude, at the very least.

read more
Are Your Characters Motivated?

Are Your Characters Motivated?

Writing requires motivation. It is that thing that requires caffeine, purpose and often a Herculean-sized will power, not to mention the real possibility of therapy.

Motivation is what propels action in both people and characters. It was what gets your butt in the seat and the words flowing, whether like creeping lava or a flash flood.

Motivation is what keeps you coming back day after day to write, even when you don’t feel like it.

The truth is there are days when sitting down to write is not easy, before the first word is even conceived. But no one said it would be easy. It’s not. It is also not the point of this article. We all know writing is hard. (You can talk about your personal motivation with your therapist or friends.)

read more