Want to write novels that feel real enough to the reader to have been ripped from the headlines, whatever your genre? Think like a journalist. When you look at the classic questions journalists ask, the first one is generally WHO? In noveling terms WHO relates to character.
Get ready to take a deep dive into the concept of character. WHO are these people who've showed up demanding a place in your novel, anyway? You know they have a story to tell, and for some specific reason, you are the writer in the best position to tell it.
In this textbook/workbook you will learn how to build a distinct cast of characters with qualities that can be specifically attacked by your plot. There is instructional material that focuses on understanding the psychological aspects of character building, as well as the importance of physicality. All of this works in tandem with the worksheets.
This workbook serves as a full self-paced writing course, presenting theory on each aspect of character construction - and then offering step-by-step worksheets that allow you to apply what you just learned. The instructional material is designed to give you a basic foundation in creative writing theory regarding character development so that you understand how to build an effective character arc using the information you add into the worksheets.
Working through the entire WHO Relates to Character workbook will give you a comprehensive view of your characters inner life and a dossier to pull from while writing. In short, you get a reference source for your world - and the expertise on how to use it.
______ Approach uncovering character the same way a journalist approaches a profile piece.
Delve into understanding who your characters are and what drives them to act with a series of worksheets that will help you determine everything from psychological traits and archetypes to character skills and backstory.
- Define your characters' strengths and flaws, assign them a skill set. then get to know them through interviews and exercises, such as putting them into hypothetical situations through dilemma worksheets and uncovering parts of their backstories with involuntary autobiographical memory worksheets.
NOTE: The e-book version of this workbook links to printable versions of the worksheets. The page count is therefore different than the print book.
______ Hemmingway worked as a newspaper journalist before he became a fiction writer. E.B. White did a stint at the New Yorker. L.M. Montgomery was a reporter in Halifax before tackling Anne of Green Gables. Margaret Mitchell got her start as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. What these writers have in common: an excellent sense of character, and the ability to write clean prose that clearly puts forwards the characters' goals and motivations. This ability may well come from having mastered the journalistic art, which emphasizes creating a sound story that balances logic, research and emotional authenticity.
Even if you're working in a purely creative world, you can still use those principles, and learn to organize and research like a journalist, and to ask the questions a journalist asks either before or after you write your story.