by Sue Weems |
Sometimes I have students who say they don’t like to write. I suggest that perhaps they haven’t found a subject or story worth writing yet. Then I ask them if they have any scars.
Inevitably, the stories pour out of them, and they point to their arms, their foreheads, and their legs revealing skateboarding mishaps, fights, and sometimes deeper trauma.
Scars often hold an entire world of story. We wanted something and the pursuit of it left a mark.
Giving a character a scar can be a cliché or it can be a fast-track to deeper character development. When you’re creating characters with scars, execution is key.
by Pamela Fernuik |
There are several ways to reveal who your character is in a story: through how they dress, their posture, and through what they value. But the best way to determine who your character is is through their action.
Not sure what your character might do? Put them through the Starbucks Character Test.
by David Safford |
When we read books, books with characters we love, we can learn how to write our own characters by studying what details the writers included. There are so many details about your characters you could include in a character description, but which ones do you need?
Let’s look at the advice Stephen King gives in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft about good description and see if applies to Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
by Sarah Gribble |
Names — character names or the names of people in real life — are a big deal. Parents-to-be pore over baby name books for months looking for that “perfect” name. Even naming a pet can take time. You want the name to be perfect, to mean something, to be unique but not too “weird.”
Naming a character, especially in a longer piece of writing, can be just as agonizing and is definitely just as important.
by J. D. Edwin |
You have created a character. You’ve named them and given them a colorful past, as well as lots of fun personality traits. Your character steps into your story . . . and suddenly you find that they’ve fallen flat. How can you fix them?
They’re boring. Those personality traits you meticulously picked out for them just aren’t showing up. Your character goes through the motions of the story and you wonder why this interesting, unique character you’ve worked so hard on is missing that luster you imagined.
Not to worry: there’s a simple, two-step fix to give your characters voice and personality.
by Matt Herron |
Are you looking for a character sketch template that will make your character building easier and more fun?
Scrivener has an amazing character sketch tool that you can use to develop better characters.
In this article, you’ll learn how to sketch a fictional character and cast that will make you proud. Read on for a hands-on walkthrough of how to use Scrivener to create characters, from character profiles to their physical descriptions, and then some.
