Category: Character Development
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Character development in “Les Miserables”
Yesterday I wrote about how I didn’t like The Sun Also Rises because the whole point of the novel is the LACK of growth and moral development in the characters. That’s really important to me! I’m in it for the characters. Who are they as people? What are their goals and purpose in life? What…
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Why I didn’t like “The Sun Also Rises”
Recently, I wrote about the challenges that we as authors present our characters with. I talked about how it’s important to bring them face to face with the challenges they need, even if those are not the challenges they want. Reflecting on how facing challenges makes us (and our characters) grow reminded me of the…
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The challenges we need
Fiction can fall flat for all kinds of reason. One major factor in such a failure can be that we’re getting plot wrong, as the writer, because we aren’t giving our characters the challenges they NEED to grow and develop. As human beings, I think that acknowledging that we grow only through challenge–that is discomfort,…
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“Clue! The Movie,” a JFK documentary, and multiple possible endings
I just watched a cool documentary about the JFK assassination called “Frame 313” (a reference to the infamous Zapruder film.) What I liked about it is that it presents the evidence for and against 5 plausible theories to explain the Kennedy assassination. Was it Oswald acting alone? Was there CIA involvement? Was it a mob…
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Write what you WANT to know
It’s common advice to writers to “write what you know,” and that’s for a reason. What you know is where you have to start. It’s what you have. It’s a springboard to launch into plot and to make characters’ reactions to plot developments ring true. It can make writing therapeutic, among other things. But is…
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Character drives plot (the big lesson from my first novel)
My very first novel was only read by a handful of close friends. I never self-published it because it was awful. It just didn’t work. I titled it Life’s Little Jokes. I reread it more or less recently, and I realized WHY it doesn’t work. It’s a complete melodrama, but that’s not why it doesn’t…
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On trust
I watched “The Italian Job” last night. I hadn’t watched it in about 12 years or so, and had only seen it once before. Something that struck me is a saying of the main character’s father, which she repeats: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” That’s an intriguing line. I’d…
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On secondary characters
I’ve seen two related memes recently that stuck out in my memory. The first says something like, “I’m 35 and have yet to receive my call to adventure. I’m starting to worry that I’m not a protagonist.” The second says something like, “I never received a letter to Hogwarts at 11. I never discovered a…
Creative Writing with the Crimson League 