Has an editor or critique partner said, “Your character is flat” when offering feedback on your story? Or perhaps they worded it another way: “Your protagonist didn’t grab me,” or “This character needs more depth.”

However it’s phrased, being told we’ve missed the mark on a character is a bit of a gut punch. But it’s okay. Flat characters, like anything else, can be fixed.  

A flat character is one-dimensional, lacking the depth and human complexity required to feel true to life. Not only do they seem unrealistic, they also fail to capture a reader’s curiosity or interest.

Flat characters can be written as such on purpose: a surly shopkeeper unwilling to bargain on price or the nosy neighbor trying to unearth your protagonist’s secrets. These types of characters have a small role or specific function (comic relief, mentorship, etc.) and don’t need a lot of depth.

But if an important character is seen as
shallow or boring…we have a big problem.

Characters are the heart of a story. For readers to care about them, they must feel like real people. Distinct personalities, belief systems, emotions, and histories shape them and their behavior. Personal needs, desires, struggles, and worldviews give them depth. All this, and a capacity for growth, is the magic recipe that will draw a reader in. 

What Causes a Flat Character?

Characters can feel underdeveloped for many reasons, but it often comes down to one thing: something essential about them has been overlooked. Some common offenders:

Shallow Backstory

A character’s past influences who they become, how they behave, and how they view the world around them. If a character’s backstory is missing, weak, or generic, their behavior may lack credibility or be inconsistent.

The Cure: Go deeper. Explore their past, including their emotional wounds, experiences, life lessons, fears, and insecurities.

Tools to Fix Backstory Issues: The Emotional Wound Thesaurus and One Stop for Writers’ Character Builder Tool.

A Too-Basic Personality

A character’s personality should contain specific traits that emerge because of their history/upbringing, the people who influenced them, and formative their life experiences, both good and bad. When writers gloss over the building out of a unique personality, they tend to give character ‘typical’ traits and so they come across as generic and unrealistic.

The Cure: People are complex, and characters will be, too. Spend time thinking about who your character is and why, and the traits most likely to appear in their personality. Be sure to also understand how negative experiences lead to personality flaws (and the behaviors and tendencies that go with them). Each character should have a mix of traits as no one is ever all good or bad.  

Tools to Fix Personality Issues: The Positive Trait Thesaurus, The Negative Trait Thesaurus, and One Stop for Writers’ Character Builder Tool.

Over-Reliance on Character Tropes or Stereotypes

Due to their familiarity, using character tropes (e.g., the villain, reluctant hero, or absent-minded friend) can fast-track the reader’s understanding of a character’s role. But leaning on one too hard turns them into a stereotype or cliché, which is a huge turnoff.

The Cure: Use any trope generalizations as a starting point only. Do the work and make each character someone fresh. Readers loved to be surprised by interesting and meaningful qualities that elevate the character in ways they didn’t expect.

Tools to Help Fix Overused Character Types: The Character Trope and Type Thesaurus or One Stop for Writers’ Character Builder Tool.

Tunnel Vision

Characters who are only about one thing—the mission or goal, proving loyalty, success, etc.—come across as one-dimensional and unrealistic. For readers to connect with characters, they need to have relatable life layers. Relationships and social interactions. Dreams and desires. Responsibilities. Quirks, interests, problems.

The Cure: Real people can get obsessive about certain things, but they have other things going on. To give your character a better balance, imagine their entire life, not just the plot of your story. Explore how your character’s professional life or obsessions may collide with their personal life.

Tools to Help You Create Dynamic Characters: One Stop for Writers’ Character Builder Tool and The Occupation Thesaurus.

A Lack of Drive

In the real world, it can take time for us to know what we want, but in fiction, characters must be motivated and act. If your protagonist is wishy-washy about what they want or can’t settle on a goal, they’ll come off as weak.

The Cure: Characters who lack urgency when it comes to choosing or achieving a goal need to be put in the hot seat. Raise the stakes. Add conflict and tension. Make it clear that doing nothing leads only to pain and consequences. Additionally, know your character inside and out (#1) because past trauma, fears, and negative interactions will point you to their soft spots and unmet needs.

Tools to Fix Unmotivated Characters: The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, The Conflict Thesaurus Volume 1, Volume 2, and The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus.

Distanced Emotions

Showing a character’s emotion, even when they’re trying to hide what they feel, is one of the most important tasks a writer has. Emotions are central to the human experience, and readers expect a front-row seat to whatever the character is feeling. When someone is closed off or seems imperviable to vulnerability, readers find it unrealistic.

The Cure: Become an expert at showing your character’s emotions, even when they try to hide what they feel from others. Readers must always be in the loop to empathize and feel invested. Understand how each individual will express emotion in their own way based on their personality, comfort zone, and backstory.

Tools to Help You Show Authentic Character Emotion: The Emotion Thesaurus, The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus, and The Emotional Wound Thesaurus.

Inadequate Internal Conflict

A well-developed character should have inner struggles, doubts, conflicting needs, fears, and insecurities, all of which make certain actions and decisions agonizing for them. If a writer doesn’t know a character well enough, their struggles will seem generic and readers will feel disconnected from their struggles.

The Cure: Understand your character inside and out, especially backstory and unresolved wounds that haunt them (#1). Know their life, their stresses, their pain, and how loyalty, expectations, or beliefs may tear at them so you can show powerful, meaningful inner conflict. Use psychology in fiction to show inner turmoil in ways readers recognize as they’ve experienced the same tendencies themselves.  

Tools to Help You Show Internal Conflict and Psychological Processes: The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, The Conflict Thesaurus, Volume 1, and The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus.

Little to No Growth or Change  

In any story, characters will face challenges—often life-changing ones. Even in a flat arc, where the protagonist remains steadfast in their beliefs, they should still learn, adapt, and navigate obstacles in a way that feels authentic. Primary characters who respond to every problem the same way, repeat mistakes without growth, or remain rigid in their viewpoints can feel unrealistic and unconvincing to readers.

The Cure: All roads lead back to characterization. Go deeper. Get to know your character, and why they think, act, and behave as they do. Choose specific conflict scenarios that force them to confront misconceptions and fears that lead to change and growth.

Tools to Help You Write About Change and Growth: For growth journeys and the path of change, try The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. The Conflict Thesaurus Volumes 1 and Volume 2 are packed with help to craft powerful conflict that will strengthen and support character arc. The Character Builder Tool will take all your character-building information and create a character arc blueprint for you.

You can fix a flat character. It’s worth the effort because once readers bind themselves emotionally to a character, they’re hooked. If you’re lucky, they’ll enjoy your characters so much they’ll seek out your next book, too!

READ NEXT: How to Write a Protagonist with True Depth

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post How to Avoid Flat Characters in Your Story appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We’ve talked a lot around here about why characters need flaws. Those negative traits make characters relatable to readers, they contribute to their arc, and, oh, a whole bunch of other things. Flaws are especially important for any character navigating a change arc, where their weaknesses are keeping them from success and growth is necessary for them to realize the need for change.

Most of the time, creating flawed characters isn’t too hard. But it’s more difficult for certain kinds of characters than others—particularly if you’re writing a character defined by kindness or niceness. This is the nice guy/girl trope, and while it can work for a protagonist, it’s most often reserved for secondary characters, such as a friend, ally, or love interest.

The nice guy or girl is defined as being a decent, kind, and morally upright character who tends to make good decisions. That makes the question of flaws more challenging because this person, by definition, is good. It’s their defining trait, what readers should associate with them. The key to making to make this kind of character realistically flawed while still maintaining their defining goodness is to be careful which negative traits you give them.

Pick Forgivable Flaws

Not all weaknesses are viewed as equal; some are more accepted than others and are easier for readers to ignore or write off. If your nice guy character is prejudiced, violent, or cruel—those flaws are strong and could easily override their positive qualities to the point that readers will no longer see the character as good. So consider weaknesses that are less extreme and more acceptable, as we see with the following nice guys and girls:

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Esmerelda’s kindheartedness and empathy are offset by her naïveté. This is often a sign of weakness, but it makes her vulnerable and often goes along with her positives, making it an easy one to overlook.
• Pride and Prejudice: Charles Bingley lacks assertiveness, letting his sisters and Mr. Darcy influence him and override his own desires.
• Birdbox: Olympia, by her own admission, is too soft, and you know straight off that she’s not going to make it. (Extra points for the backstory in this movie that lays the foundation for her flaw.)
• Frozen: Olaf is so friendly and eager to help, no one really notices that he’s not so bright.
• The Bear: Pete, the main character’s brother-in-law (whose niceness is a welcome change in this dysfunctional family) is a little too nice. His attempts to help make him look awkward and not very capable and show that he has no clue how to work within the family.

Show How the Flaw Creates Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the primary driver for reader empathy, because when you can show that a character is vulnerable, readers soften toward them. And when their flaw is the thing putting them at risk, readers tend to focus their antagonism more on the trait and less on the character.

Know (and Show) the Why

Why is your character disorganized or impulsive or a worrywart? Where does their flaw come from? There’s a reason people are the way they are. Many factors can play into flaw development, including

• Negative influencers, bad role models, and abusive caregivers.
• Emotional wounds and painful memories.
• Unjust/unfair experiences.
• Negative life lessons.
• Environmental exposures (such as growing up in a dangerous neighborhood and developing certain flaws that aid in survival).

PSST: The One Stop for Writers’ Character Builder helps you explore these and other factors that contribute to the development of authentic and well-rounded characters.

Delve into their backstory to see which flaws make sense and where they might have come from. Then you can give readers a plausible and heart-tugging reason for the character’s unattractive trait—something outside of their control that has made them the way they are. Readers will overlook even a really unpopular trait if they see it’s the result of the character being hurt, wounded, or influenced in some way.

One of my favorite examples of this is Melvin Udall from the movie As Good as It Gets. (Okay, so he’s not a nice guy; he’s a total jerk. But the vulnerability principal applies to flaws in all kinds of characters.) Abrasive, prejudiced, selfish—you dislike Melvin on sight. But then you see that his behavior is the result of an untreated mental health condition that has left him isolated and alone. He actually craves community, but his off-putting flaws make it impossible for him to connect with anyone. And suddenly, you’re rooting for him. You want him to be and do better.

Showing the “why” also ensures that the negative trait you’ve chosen makes sense for the character. It wasn’t picked off a list and just plugged into their story—which is good, since that’s not how traits form. It developed like real-life flaws do, from past experiences, wounding events, and influencers. So make sure you know where the flaw came from, and be sure to show that to readers.

This post is a response to a question from one of our readers, which I originally replied to via a quick video in one of our newsletters. If you have writing- or industry-related questions you’d like us to answer, we’d love to address them. And to receive our occasional newsletter that contains answers to these questions along with other helpful writing advice, sign up here.

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Making Nice Guys & Girls Realistically Flawed appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

How to handle a character’s backstory is a universal struggle for all of us writers. How much should we include? How long should a flashback be? When is it okay to give a character’s backstory? Is backstory even necessary?

As an editor, I’ve seen it all. Books that start with a long flashback, books that don’t provide the reader enough footing in a character’s past, and books that nail the balance of keeping the front story moving while sprinkling in backstory.

First, the undeniable truth: Whether we like it or not, backstory is necessary. Otherwise, that inherent feeling that your character needs whatever you have planned in the front story isn’t there, spurning your reader on to find out if this story will help them be okay. Backstory is the battery pack that fuels your novel, giving it purpose.

The good news is that you only need to develop that which is relevant to whatever made the character not okay in the first place.

Long-Form Flashback

Crafting the origin scene is virtually a must in order to establish exactly what happened in the past and to explore the misbelief (also known as the wound or baggage) your character has. In knowing the character’s trauma and how it’s shaped them, you’ve given yourself a road map for what your front story needs to undo.

After that, it’s helpful to develop a few relevant memories that might help your character reach aha moments within the front story. Events that they look back on with new eyes and that afford them perspective shifts as your front story progresses. These might be past incidents that seemed one way at the time. But now, thanks to your front-story plot, the character sees them for what they actually were. The fear they once had is noticeably diminished, earning them inner growth and change.

Shorter Flashbacks

Let’s talk about developing your character’s backstory through shorter flashbacks, even within single sentences. Rather than presenting the reader with fully-developed memories, you might break the flashbacks you develop into digestible chunks that could be scattered throughout your story.

How to Choose the Form and Length of Flashbacks

It helps to think of the depth of the trauma as proportionate to how long you wait to share backstory and how much of it you share. In other words, if the trauma is deep and awful for your character, we will need time to be readied for its reveal, just as the character needs time to confront it. And then, when it comes, you might need to give it breathing room through what’s more of a flashback scene. Things like being held captive, losing a loved one, making a deadly mistake, or witnessing a violent act warrant may fall into this category.

But if the trauma is something less dramatic (a best friend moving away or losing a sentimental object, for example), it’s likely not necessary to wait to share the past, nor should it earn tons of page time. In fact, waiting to share this sort of backstory or doing so in long form will likely backfire because the reader will gauge that withholding and pontificating weren’t necessary for something on that level. It may even feel melodramatic at that point.

No matter your backstory reveal form, whether it be long-form or short bursts of memory, it helps to tap into your left brain. Something I always encourage clients to do is to scene track. This exercise not only helps you outline your novel’s scenes in a bare-bones way, it allows you to keep your eye on all those plates novel writing asks you to spin. Using this task to monitor backstory reveal can be truly helpful to ensure you’re on the right track.

Some Final Backstory Tips

It’s largely advised not to include lengthy flashback until something like 10% or beyond in your novel. The reader needs time to slip into the flow of your front story. If we’re asking the reader to orient themselves in the front story and then to step away to backstory too much or too frequently, the reader can’t settle comfortably into your more current timeline.

Look within your front story for little seeds to generate one-line backstory hints. If your character was in an awful car wreck in the past, maybe you’re showing their hand trembling as they reach for the car door. Hence, a backstory clue is born and you keep the front story moving. Maybe they were robbed by someone wearing a red knit cap in the past. Within your front story, we see your character take a different route to work after someone with a red knit cap appears ahead on the sidewalk. Boom—an interesting clue emerges, pointing to the past. You can use details in the current timeline as springboards for hints of the past based upon how your character reacts when encountering them.

Keep flashbacks as tight as you possibly can. We’ve all been in stop-and-go traffic. Each time you weave backstory in, it’s akin to hitting the brakes on a lovely car ride. The energy of your front story wobbles and the reader starts asking, “Are we there yet?” They itch to get back to the current timeline.

Show, don’t tell. And yes, this rule applies to flashback. The more you evoke what it was like for your character to be in that pivotal moment way back when, the more your reader feels like you’ve transported them to the past.

What backstory methods have you used successfully in your own writing? Are there stories you feel achieve the balance of backstory?

Happy writing!
Marissa

MARISSA GRAFF - Resident Writing Coach

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over seven years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Marissa below.

The post Backstory Balancing Act appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character…

Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge

ABOUT THIS SECRET: While there are legitimate uses of monitoring (say, placing a legal wiretap on a suspect’s phone, collecting intel as a private detective or undercover cop, etc.) privacy laws and heavy regulation usually require it be disclosed or in plain view (but never in a private space such as a bathroom). However, what’s legal and what isn’t doesn’t concern characters on the unsavory end of the spectrum—criminals, Peeping Toms, captors, hackers, stalkers, cyberbullies, blackmailers, or other characters who operate outside the law. This entry focuses on these character types.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: A Secret Being Revealed, Being Attacked, Being Unsafe, Discrimination, Government, Persecution

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Having to keep people at arm’s length so their activities are not discovered
Being torn over monitoring another if feelings become involved
Developing an obsession that takes over their life
Being unable to have genuine relationships (due to a fear of discovery)
Not seeking help for mental and emotional conditions that may be lurking beneath the surface

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Avoiding friendships and personal connections
Having a secure area to plan and store items needed to monitor (computers, hard drives, etc.)
Taking precautions to stay undetected and not raise suspicions
Being disciplined (resisting temptation to take things too far or get close enough for discovery)
Following certain protocols to stay undetected
Being someone forgettable (being polite but not memorable, seeing boring and harmless)

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Being a recluse, causing others around them to wonder what the character is up to
Carelessness (sloppy hacking, obvious daytime survellience, etc.) that is noticed
A cold, detached demeanor (that makes the character memorable to others)
Being discovered in a place they are not supposed to be
Not hiding monitoring equipment well enough, leading to its discovery

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Circumstances that suddenly change (like a loss of privacy)
An unforeseen challenge that the character is unprepared for
Needing to take in a roommate to keep up with costs
Having a nosy neighbor or family member
Becoming attached to a target

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?

This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.

So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.

This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.

Maybe your character. . .

Using a False Identity

ABOUT THIS SECRET: A character who has made regrettable choices may need to distance themselves from their old life through a false identity. Perhaps they’re wanted by police, they tried to shake down a vengeful enemy, or they’ve adopted an alter ego to hide criminal behavior. This entry will focus on nefarious reasons for living under a false name.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: Being Attacked, Being Judged, Being Returned to an Abusive Environment, Being Unsafe, Death, Government, Losing Autonomy, Losing One’s Social Standing, Losing the Respect of Others, Persecution

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Being unable to have open, honest, and trusting relationships (lest someone finds out)
Needing to avoid certain places, people, and situations where they might be recognized
Never feeling truly safe or at ease (always looking over their shoulder)
Being restricted to activities that will not require a thorough document check
Having to choose a job for its anonymity rather than an interest or skill

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Changing their appearance
Being skilled at lying and deception
Aligning with the expectations of others
Moving from place to place, being nomadic
Moving far away from where they used to live

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Odd behaviors (a tendency to not touch things, pay only with cash, etc.)
Becoming morally flexible when certain opportunities come up
Being caught in a lie, especially over something that seems silly to lie about
A vice being discovered (such as gambling or drug use) that doesn’t fit who they claim to be
Pointing out things the average person wouldn’t know: See that guy? Stay away from him–he’s a pickpocket.

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Marrying into a family who have members in law enforcement
Witnessing a crime (or being the victim of one) and being questioned by police
Winning a prize unexpectedly, becoming the focus of local attention
Running into someone from their old life

Other Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Character Thesaurus Entry: Using a False Identity appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Every writer wants to write a character who stands out, drives the story to interesting places, and captures the reader’s heart. Why?

Because characters with depth sell books.

And of course, the key to creating someone who readers connect to comes down to knowing them inside and out, and carefully choosing each detail about them so each piece of characterization – their personality, experiences, emotional wounds, motivations, beliefs, struggles, fears, needs, and all the rest – weaves together into a meaningful tapestry.

One area of characterization that is often underutilized, yet oh-so-powerful, is the choice of job they do. Whether the work is so suited to them, it feels like their calling in life, or they chose it only because it pays the bills, their choice reveals their inner layers in an ultimate display of show, don’t tell.

In the case of a job they love and find fulfilling, readers will immediately gain insight about their core values, what gets them excited and motivated, and the skills that make them good at what they do. Let’s try a few:

An Animal Rescue Worker will love animals, have a lot of compassion, and be the type of person to step in and help others in need. They abhor cruelty and unfairness, and seek to stand against it. They will be the giving sort, ready to step in, stay at work late, go in early. They will have incredible patience, and be fixers, motivated by the chance to transform an animal’s life so they go on to find the love and happiness they deserve.

A Funeral Director will be someone who is empathetic, respectful, and carry the belief that all people, regardless of who they are, deserve a dignified end to their journey in this world. They are obviously comfortable with death, have a strong work ethic, handing long hours and an unfixed schedule, because a person’s passing is unpredictable. They will be detailed-oriented, and take great care, knowing the families they serve are placing trust in them to serve in this final way.

A Reporter is someone who pays attention, always searching for the story and how to convey information in a way that makes it accessible and interesting to their audience. They will seek to report in a niche they are passionate about, providing clues as to what they believe in, care about, or have deep interests in. They are investigative, detail-oriented, and good at putting together pieces that others may miss. They will be good at connecting with people, getting them to open up and share, but their focus and dedication to the work may mean the job comes first, and their real-world relationships are not as strong as the effort they put into them is unpredictable.

What about a job that the character may not love, but it fits their life circumstances?

The possibilities are endless.

A character doing a job they don’t enjoy (maybe a personal shopper or taxi driver tells readers that paying the bills comes before personal satisfaction because they are responsible.

A character working a manual job as a janitor may do so to avoid the stress of the career they trained for (an emergency dispatcher).

And what about a character that chooses a job no one wants to do (pest control technician)? Maybe it’s the perfect fit for someone in a witness protection program who values privacy and anonymity above prestige or a hefty paycheck.

Bottom line?
A character’s job isn’t a
throwaway detail.

It’s worth the time to pick a job that reflects the exact story you want readers to know about your character, personality, background, and life circumstances. If you need help brainstorming the right career, we have a giant list of occupations HERE.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post What Characterization Detail Gives Your Protagonist More Depth? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Being able to write realistic, consistent, multi-dimensional characters is vital to gaining reader interest. Doing so first requires we know a lot about who our characters are—you know, the obvious stuff: positive and negative traits, behavioral habits, desires, goals, and the like. But it’s not always the obvious parts of characterization that create the most intrigue. What about the things your character is hiding?

Everyone hides. We hide the goals we know are wrong for us, opinions that may turn others against us, or feelings and desires that make us feel vulnerable—basically anything with the potential for rejection or shame.

The same should be true for our characters. When characters are cagey out of a need to protect themselves from emotional harm, readers understand that. It makes the characters more authentic and can pique your readers’ interest as they try to figure out the secret or worry over what will happen when it comes to light.

7 Things Your Character Is Hiding

To add this layer of depth to your characters, you first need to know what’s taboo in their minds—not only what they’re hiding, but why. Here are some common things your character may feel compelled to conceal from others.

1. Desires

Desires are an important part of who your characters are. These desires drive their actions and decisions in the story. While these wants are often transparent, there are situations in which the character may not feel comfortable sharing them.

Maybe she’s secretly pining for her sister’s ex, or she longs for a career forbidden by her parents, or she wants to fight her boss’s unethical behavior but is afraid of losing her job.

Forbidden or dangerous desires can add an element of risk, upping the stakes for the character and making things more interesting for readers.

2. Fears

Everyone has fears. Many of those fears are perfectly acceptable, which makes it safe for us to share them. It’s the ones that make us feel weak or lessen us in the eyes of others that we keep in the dark.

Think about uncommon fears, such as being afraid of a certain people group, physical intimacy, or of leaving one’s house.

Unusual fears like these should always come from somewhere—maybe from a wounding event or negative past influencers. Make sure there’s a good reason for whatever your character is afraid of.

3. Negative Past Events

Speaking of wounding events, we each have defining moments from the past that we’re reluctant to share with others or even acknowledge ourselves.

What’s something that could have happened to your characters that they’ll go to great lengths to keep hidden? What failures or humiliating moments might they alter in their own memories to keep from facing them?

Wounds are formative on many levels, so it’s important to figure out what those are and how they may impact the character.

4. Flaws and Insecurities

Being flawed is part of the human experience. There are things about ourselves we don’t want to examine too closely and which we definitely don’t want others to know about.

For characters, these flaws often manifest as insecurities or negative traits (such as being weak-willed, unintelligent, or vain). Whether these weaknesses are real or only perceived, characters will try to downplay them.

But part of their journey to fulfillment includes facing the truth and acknowledging the part their flaws play in holding them back. To write their complete journeys, your need to know what weaknesses they’re keeping under wraps.

5. Unhealthy Behaviors

Sometimes characters exhibit behaviors or habits they know aren’t good for them. Maybe these behaviors stem from a wounding event or an unhealthy desire. Maybe they really want to change, but they don’t know how.

Whether it’s a promiscuous lifestyle, a gambling addiction, or a compulsion to self-harm, they’ll expend a lot of energy to keep these behaviors hidden.

Revealing these behaviors to readers, while hiding them from other characters, is a great way to remain true to the human experience while also building reader interest.

6. Uncomfortable Emotions

While it’s healthy to embrace and express a range of emotions, characters are not always comfortable with all the feelings. This may occur with emotions that are tied to a negative event from the past. It may be an emotion that makes the character feel vulnerable or is culturally unacceptable.

The character will want to mask any uncomfortable emotions, often disguising them as something else: embarrassment is replaced with self-deprecation, or fear manifests as anger. This duality of emotion is important because it humanizes characters for readers and adds a layer of authenticity that might otherwise be missing.

7. Opinions and Ideas

Everyone wants to be liked. To gain the respect of others, we often go so far as to sacrifice honesty.

If an opinion isn’t popular, your characters may keep it to themselves. If they have good ideas others won’t appreciate, they won’t share them—or they’ll get the ideas  out there in a way that allows them to avoid taking ownership.

Peer acceptance is important to everyone; that need, and the secrets that accompany it, is something that every reader will be able to relate to.

***

Deception—whether deliberate or subconscious—is part of the human experience. When your characters hide things from others, they become deeper and more layered and avoid turning into clichés. They’ll come across as more authentic to readers, who will be able to relate to them. It also can build empathy as readers see the character headed the wrong direction. A lot of good can result from taking the time to discover what your characters are hiding. So put on your Nosy Pants and get to work!

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post What’s Your Character Hiding? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

A character’s backstory is where all the gold is buried in terms of their motivations and misbeliefs. Who we are in the present depends to a large extent on what has happened to us in the past. It’s critical for you to know your protagonist’s personal history—but that’s a pretty easy thing to work out. There are numerous character questionnaires available on the internet that you can spend hours filling out.

What you do with that information, however, is trickier—and everything depends on it. If you front load your novel with your protagonist’s life story or give them a variety of quirks and habits that don’t get used in any meaningful way, you will be squandering all that valuable information you amassed and possibly even turning readers away.

Creating Connection

In your opening pages, your main objective is to create connection between the reader and the protagonist. But we don’t usually connect with someone who tells us their life story. If we’re unlucky enough to sit next to that person on a long bus ride, we get up and move. We connect with someone who intrigues us, who makes us want to know more about them. We interact with them, watch how they behave and what they say, and develop our own ideas about who they might be.

Here’s the key: we should want to know more about your protagonist before we actually find out. When it comes to backstory, keep your readers on a need-to-know basis. Show us who this protagonist is. But don’t tell us why they are the way they are—not yet. That’s something you should hold back for later.

In fiction, we also connect with someone who has a strong voice. Contrary to what this might sound like, voice is not (or not only) about the way your character talks. Voice is about who they are as a person, and how that’s expressed in the things they notice and how they relate to what’s going on around them. This is why it’s so important to know that backstory. If you don’t, you won’t truly know who your protagonist is, and they won’t come alive on the page.

But then you have to use this information. If you’ve given your protagonist an extreme fear of heights but then their narrative goal has nothing to do with climbing a mountain or hanging out with their crush who lives on the twenty-seventh floor, that information becomes mere window-dressing. You’re not using it in a purposeful way—i.e. as an obstacle to your protagonist getting what they want.

Using Your Protagonist’s Backstory

We need to be strategic about our protagonist’s backstory: when to use it, how much of it to use, and how.

Use backstory to create intrigue. That means dropping hints and clues in the first half of the book that slowly get answered in the second half. There should be very little in the way of backstory in the first half of your novel. Treat your readers like detectives. Assume your novel is a puzzle they want to solve—and give them the space to do it.

Sprinkle backstory hints into scene. Rather than sitting your reader down and info-dumping a long passage of family history on them, give us one dinner scene. Show us how your protagonist interacts with their parents, their annoying siblings (and maybe their siblings’ spouses), their children, a server. Every one of these interactions can reveal character if you let it.

Build backstory hints into voice. Don’t give us a long history on how your protagonist is miserably single. Set a scene on Valentine’s Day. Make them walk past restaurants and flower shops. Give us some snarky internal monologue.

Don’t tell us they’re the bossy eldest sister. Show us how they behave with their younger sibling. Don’t tell us that baking is their life. Show the way they see possibilities for icing in the shape of a flower.

Showing your protagonist in action rather than telling us about them allows the reader to participate in the process of getting to know them. You are trusting your reader, giving them space to think rather than spoon-feeding them all the answers. And readers remember things better when they participate in them rather than being told about them.

What About Flashbacks?

Flashbacks are the uppity first cousins of backstory. Yes, they involve dramatization, which lifts them out of infodump territory, but you should only use them when absolutely necessary. Why? Because they come with a built-in disadvantage: whatever you’re dramatizing has already happened. No matter how interesting it is, it will necessarily lack both tension and immediacy. If your flashback is too long, it has the potential to create confusion in your narrative. By the time your reader returns to the present-moment storyline, they’ve forgotten where they left off.

If you must use a flashback—such as to dramatize the origin of your protagonist’s misbelief—the best course of action is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. The longer you linger, the greater the chance for confusion. Use cues to let the reader know when you’re moving back in time and when you’re returning to the present moment. Keep your reader’s ease of experience in mind. If they have to stop and think about where or when they are, you will break immersion and take them out of the story.

In Conclusion

The backstory of your characters is crucial to know, but like research, it is information and needs to be handled with care. Your job is to bring that information to life in such a way that it becomes part of what happens, who these people are on the page. You should never have to stop the story to tell us anything about your characters. The story should be showing them to us at every moment. That’s how you create the essential connection that makes us want to follow them right to the end.

MICHELLE BARKER - Resident Writing Coach

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and editor who lives in Vancouver, BC. Her newest book, coauthored with David Griffin Brown, is Story Skeleton: The Classics. They are also the authors of Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling. Her novel My Long List of Impossible Things, came out in 2020 with Annick Press. The House of One Thousand Eyes was named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year and won numerous awards including the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in literary reviews world-wide.

Michelle holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and is a senior editor at The Darling Axe. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Michelle below. Michelle’s books

The post Behind the Scenes: How to Craft Compelling Backstory appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

One worry that can plague writers is whether their characters are original enough or not. After all, readers meet a lot of characters over time, so how can writers make sure their characters are fresh and interesting? How can they make sure their story’s cast has that WOW factor that ensures they stay with readers long after the book closes?

Luckily there’s a myriad of ways to make a character stand out through their personality, belief system, struggles, interests, and more. Characters will also have their own unique backstories, motivations and needs. This is why making time to uncover their inner layers is always worthwhile.

Today, let’s look at a specific area of characterization that can help you individualize your character: Talents & Skills.

Got Skills?

In the real world, we all have certain abilities. Maybe we have strong listening skills that help us get to the heart of a matter quickly so we can undo misunderstandings. Or we can haggle well and always manage to get a better price. Whether it’s singing, skiing, welding, or transforming pop cans into an ingenious whirligigs, talents and skills help make us interesting and memorable, and can do the same for characters.

As you can imagine, there’s a cargo ship of possibilities when it comes to special abilities. Some will have a big impact on the story too, so we want to think carefully about what talents our characters might possess. Start by considering…

A special ability should originate from your character. What fits with their personality, interests, education, or environment?

Think about what will happen in the story, and the problems the character must navigate. What skills might help them get past hurdles (and hopefully encourage inner growth)?

Consider their story role. A main character will face a crucible of conflict to reach their goal, and their special ability may influence events and/or be part of their growth arc. A lesser character’s skills, however, may not have the same level of importance.

Bottom line, a character’s giftedness shouldn’t be random. Considering the different types of talents and skills and how they can serve the story can provide lots of ideas, too.

An Unusual Talent or Skill

Some abilities are rarer than others, like the ability to talk to the dead, start fires with the mind, throw one’s voice, or use mentalism to gain information and influence others. When we want a character to really stand out we often think about giving them an unusual talent. And that’s fine as long as we know there’s a trade off: unusual talents generate questions that readers will expect to be answered in the story:

*How did this talent come about?

*When did the character discover it?

*Are they alienated because of this ability, or embraced for it?

*And finally, how will their skill impact the story?

This last one leads us to another reader expectation: that this exceptional ability will influence the story in a bigger way. So, if you choose an unusual talent, make sure to follow through on this expectation.

An Ordinary Talent or Skill

Some abilities seem a bit bland, like being skilled at fishing, sewing, or being good with numbers. You might be tempted to skip these and move on to something cooler like being able to hot-wire a car or throw knives.

Spoiler alert: ordinary skills can save the day, too!

*A skilled fisherman can be the only thing standing between villagers and starvation during a harsh winter in a lakeside community.

*A talented seamstress might save lives on the battlefield.

*Having a head for numbers might be how your character helps everyone survive when an Escape Room excursion turns into a psychopath’s maze of puzzles and traps.

Ordinary skills can have a big impact on the story in the right situation. They also resonate and feel realistic to readers. And there’s a message readers connect with, too: that anyone can make a difference, not just the Alphas of the world.

A Useful Talent or Skill

Most often writers choose a skill because it will help their character win. To find the right match, think about what problems the character will face and list out what abilities would help them navigate these situations. Then, challenge yourself to find options that aren’t obvious.

For example, a captive who is a skilled chess player can use strategy and out-of-the-box thinking to escape her captor. A teen who loves parkour might be the group’s only hope of climbing a cavern wall to the surface after a cave-in collapses the tunnel leading out.

“The perfect skill for X situation” can feel contrived to readers, so work to find something that fits the character’s personality, interests, and everyday life.

A Genre-Friendly Talent or Skill

Some talents and qualities show up consistently in certain genres. Billionaire playboys in romances are often charmers with money-making abilities, and tech-thrillers will have someone skilled in computer hacking. Write fantasy? Chances are your band of adventurers will have wilderness navigation, archery, lying, and leadership skills covered.

It’s okay to choose talents and skills common to your genre if you challenge yourself to twist them into something fresh. Maybe your billionaire doesn’t use his charm to bed anyone…instead he smiles his way into securing fat donations for his charitable foundation. Your computer hacker could be a Robin Hood in disguise by taking the paydays of online scammers and returning money to bank accounts of those scammed. Your adventurers can have the perfect skills for a hallmark quest but when they are transported to a foreign landscape full of unknowns, they must adapt their talents to suit.

With a bit of extra thought, there’s always a way to turn a common trope or premise into something fresh.

An Unwanted Talent or Skill

Sometimes a character has an ability they wish they didn’t have. Maybe being a natural peacekeeper means constantly being embroiled in family drama, or good intuition means less mistakes, sparking jealousy among peers. An ability to build explosives could land your character into trouble when a cruel king forces him to make bombs that kill those who stand against the crown.

An unwanted skill can also open the box to internal reflections part of character arc. The unhappiness tied to their ability causes them to think about who they are, who they want to be, and how much this skill controls how they see themselves. This can lead to finding a positive way to use their skill so they gain greater fulfillment.

A Seemingly Useless Talent or Skill

Finally, a great way to subvert expectations is to give your character a talent that seems deceptively useless. Maybe they can solve a Rubik Cube puzzle one-handed, or their steady hands come in handy as a house painter who has to tackle the window trim. Exciting stuff, right?

But what if their dexterity saves them in an emergency? Maybe to help a friend escape wrongful imprisonment they have to they have to pickpocket a key card. Or to undo a curse they must collect magical berries nestled within a thicket of poisonous thorns. Useless talents can transform your story if used the right way!

TIP: Choose a talent or skill that makes your character memorable and helps them achieve their goals.

If this is something you’d like to learn more about, you might find these resources helpful. You can also see the full collection of talent and skill entries in their entirety at One Stop For Writers, where all our thesauruses are cross-referenced and linked for easy navigation. If you’re interested in seeing a free sampling of the Talent and Skill Thesaurus and our other descriptive collections, head on over and register at One Stop!

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Differentiate Your Character with a Talent or Skill appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

There’s so much emphasis on making sure that we give our character a goal that’s clear starting from their very first scene. Win the game. Find someone to marry. Land the job. Solve the crime.

We tend to think about goal in terms of the character obtaining the thing they don’t have when the story begins. It’s out there. They can grab it, touch it, and get it if they just do the right things and keep going.

But what if you’re like me and so many of my clients, completely unsure of what your character wants, much less why? What if they’re not an athlete, or in a personal crisis, or craving revenge right out of the gate? What if there isn’t a big mystery to solve starting in your first scene?

Cue creative crisis!

If our character isn’t trying to land a record deal or catch a killer or get some other obvious, tangible thing they don’t currently have, does this mean our story is a total bust?

No.

We’ve just been looking at this elusive concept of goal and motivation all wrong. In fact, I’m here to argue the opposite. That starting from a point of fear—losing something the character already has—can be every bit as motivational and arguably more compelling than starting out with a precise goal of obtaining something they don’t have.

How Can You Mine Your Character’s Preexisting Fear in Order To Give Rise to a Goal In 3 Simple Steps?

Consider What Your Character Currently Has in The Novel’s Opening That They Value.

What does your character cling to, possibly (and likely!) to their own detriment? Is it the approval of someone else, the need to control some uncontrollable aspect of their life? An unhealthy role they play largely to the benefit of another character? What do they care for and how can we see it through what they say and do? What do they believe they must continue doing behavior-wise, or what can’t they imagine living without? Again, focus on what they already have in their lives, well before page one.

For example, in Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, we meet Katniss as being attached to her younger sister Prim. Katniss is committed to this role of providing for and protecting Prim, and it’s clear that while she loves her, it’s almost to Katniss’ own detriment. Her life seems to revolve around caring for Prim and trying to keep her safe in all forms. Is Katniss even remotely thinking of having something for herself, much less winning the Hunger Games as a goal? No. Her goal is to keep the status quo. This might be the same for your character, whatever their status quo is.

Plan An Event—An Inciting Incident—That Threatens That Valuable Person or Thing.

What might happen to this person or thing your character clings to? Does the person they seek approval from reject them somehow? Does someone new come along and shift the existing dynamic? Is that person or thing your character clings to threatened in some way by an outside force? Does your character lose control of something they thought they had control over? Is their ability to continue to fulfill their unhealthy role compromised?

Returning to Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, this would be where Prim’s name gets drawn to be a tribute in the Hunger Games—a government-run, fight-to-the-death event where it’s very unlikely Prim will survive. The author directly threatens that unhealthy role Katniss has that’s fueled by the fear of losing her sister, or perhaps being a failure in protecting her. This event directly hits what matters to Katniss. It’s something she already has, and Collins mines Katniss’ fear to force the birth of a new external goal.

Focus On the Logical Outward Act/Choice Your Character Would Then Take, Fueled By Their Original Fear In Point 1 Above.

Even though the event you plan should give birth to a clearer external goal—yay!—it’s important to note that their original fear is in play in whatever choice they make as a result. In other words, whatever the goal may now be, it’s wrongly motivated.

So while it seems bold and pivotal that Katniss volunteers herself in her sister’s place in THE HUNGER GAMES, in all actuality, she is still acting out of her original fear. The same fear as the one we observed on page one. She only forms the goal of winning the games in order to protect her sister (the original fear). To try and control Prim’s safety. But even though her motivation is still driven by a detrimental, unrealistic role (a misbelief), it’s enough to get Katniss out the door with an external goal—one we didn’t have in the very beginning. She is now set up for the external objective of winning the Hunger Games so she can come back home and (so she thinks) keep protecting Prim.

If you’re in the first quarter of your draft, all the guidance I’ve offered might help you to generate a clearer goal for your character by dealing a blow to something they already value. But it’s important to remember that the character’s motivation needs to reflect their initial fear, or misbelief, until the 25% mark (Point of No Return). At that point, the motivation will then shift away from their old fear, letting it go, and replacing it with a different fear—not attaining what they actually need—even if the external goal stays the same.

In other words, at that first-quarter mark, your character’s external goal may or may not change after the Point of No Return. Katniss continues to want to win the Hunger Games for the length of the story. But the fear fueling the why changes.

The motivation of what your character is scared to lose evolves so that around 25%, they must choose to let go of what they initially feared losing, and instead, go after something representative of a bigger loss should they not attain it. A fear that outweighs the fear they had in the beginning. And oftentimes, that fear can be facing, wrestling, and coming to terms with a hard truth related to that initial fear.

In Katniss’ case, she starts to see there isn’t any safety for her sister within their wider dystopian world, regardless of what Katniss tries to do. She has to let go of that protective role and risk dying in order to face a bigger fear—a world like the one they live in. Her motivation pivots toward impacting the larger world conflict in hopes that she can make it better for many more people.

What does your character fear losing when we meet them? If they don’t yet have a clear external goal, what could happen that might threaten their ability to avoid that fear? Does the decision they make then give rise to a concrete goal, still driven by their attempt to avoid their fear? At the Point of No Return, are you able to stick with the same external goal but fuel it by another healthier fear? Or, does your character’s goal change to reflect the fear of losing what they truly needed all along?

Happy writing!

MARISSA GRAFF - Resident Writing Coach

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over seven years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Marissa below.

The post Three Easy Steps to Generate a Goal Using Fear as Motivation appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

When we create a story world for readers, we are implanting images and sensory details. From which, the reader fills in the gaps. If we skew that world in any way, we pull the reader out of their base model. And ultimately, out of the story itself.

Examples of Oopsies:

• blue eyes turn brown
• a limp or lisp mysteriously vanishes
• the sun rises outside the west-facing window
• an ocean appears in the middle of the desert
• the MC’s house has hardwood floors, yet in the previous book they had wall-to-wall carpeting

Creating a fictional world requires creativity, consistency, and attention to detail.

10 Tips to Ensure a Smooth Transition from One Book to Another

Create an overarching series bible and a story bible for individual book(s). The story bible contains things like:

• Description of main characters, including the correct spelling of their names
• Description and names of secondary characters
• Description of villains, including epithets (if applicable)
• Victim profiles (if important)
• Characters’ professions
• Killer(s) MO and/or signature (if applicable)
• Pets, including deceased pets (if applicable)
• Tattoos or piercings
• Scars—emotional and physical
• Favorite jewelry
• Marital status/relationships
• Important dates (birthdays/anniversaries)
• Family ties
• Themes
• Setting
• Backstory
• Housing
• Favorite scent (cologne/perfume/shampoo/body spray/lotion)
• Accent (if any)
• Home décor and architecture
• Cherished treasures/family heirlooms
• Timelines
• Main plots
• Subplots
• Future scene ideas

In the story bible for each book, focus on minute details. Did you describe the MC’s home? Include the passage. Does the MC read a lot? Include book titles, if mentioned in the novel. Did you describe the town or the MC’s favorite breakfast joint? Include the passage.

The series bible should include details about the story world and generalized descriptions of the characters.

No need to repeat the descriptions of main and secondary characters unless they’ve changed in some way i.e., MC got a small ankle tattoo in the last book. Or she now has a scarred cheek from an automobile accident. Breast implants, liposuction, collagen lips, Botox, or other plastic surgery.

Do include theme, subplot, setting, ringtones, pets, updated backstory to include previous books, new characters, new fears, or old traumas resurfacing, new or perfected skills, favorite foods, favorite cocktail(s), food allergies, jobs, etc. etc. etc.

We forget. A lot. With multiple books in a series, our recall worsens. If we write in more than one series, it’s even easier to forget minute details.

Tips to Create Story Worlds

• Establish a Core Concept

What is the concept or theme? Is the book set in a post-apocalyptic world? Dystopian future? Historical time? When or where does the story take place? Even if you never include the month or year in the WIP, knowing the approximate date helps to establish weather patterns, sunrise/sunset times, etc.

• Geography

Develop physical landscapes, landmarks, cultures, and traditions. What are the residents like in this town? Stepford-esque? Back-country rural? A bustling city? Beach/island community?

• History

Even if you never use these details in the WIP, you should know the history of your world. Did a major event cause an upheaval? Are there lingering effects? What are the natural resources? What is the terrain and climate like? Any landmarks?

• Culture and Society

Who inhabits your world? What is the culture like? How is the diversity? Does the culture and/or society cause conflict? How so? What’s the transportation like—horses, vehicles, taxis, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, or do most people drive mopeds or golf carts on the streets?

• Languages

What is the predominate language of your world? Any secondary languages? Do language barriers cause conflict for the MC?

• Societal Norms and Taboos

What are societal norms for your world? Is there an Amish community? Is there a robust Indigenous community? Do their traditions and culture conflict or complement the MC’s background? Any taboos?

• Leave Room for Changes

Don’t describe your story world in so much detail that it doesn’t allow for deeper exploration in later books. You may love it today, but ten books later it could hamstring you.

We can either create a story bible during the writing process or after. I prefer to do it once the first draft is complete. If I stop to scrawl notes during the drafting stage, it slows me down. Do whatever works best for you. These are guidelines, not rules.

Did I miss anything? Please share.
Any other advice from your experience?

SUE COLETTA - Resident Writing Coach

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Feedspot and Expertido.org named her Murder Blog “Best 100 Crime Blogs on the Net.” She also blogs at the Kill Zone (Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers”). Her backlist includes psychological thrillers, the Mayhem Series (books 1-3), Grafton County Series, and true crime/narrative nonfiction. Now, she exclusively writes eco-thrillers, Mayhem Series (books 4-7 and continuing). Sue’s appeared on the Emmy award-winning true crime series, Storm of Suspicion, and three episodes of A Time to Kill on Investigation Discovery. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Sue below or at www.suecoletta.com.

The post Top Story World and Story Bible Tips appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

It’s glorious. So…how do we do it? Psychology.

People are hardwired for stories. For one, they contain experiences that the primal part of the brain likes to mine for information to help with survival. But there are other reasons, too, like the chance to experience certain emotions that act as a release, and the sense of connection a person gets from discovering common ground with others…in this case, the characters.

This is psychology at work.

Certain psychological processes steer us, even though we may not realize it. They shape how we respond to life’s ups and downs, our behavior toward others and ourselves, influence the goals we seek, and more.

Psychology is the study of mental processes and behavior to understand why people think and behave as they do.

Most of us aren’t experts in psychology. We may not even think much about the WHY behind our attitudes and behaviors. Nonetheless, psychological patterns and processes are whirring in the background, drawing from our personal beliefs, emotions, values, identity, and experiences to determine how we think, act, and behave.

Applying human psychology to characters makes them authentic and relatable to readers.

Psychology is part of what it is to be human. Whether it’s a character’s struggles, choices, values, needs, or mistakes, readers can’t help but see a piece of themselves reflected in the character. A bond forms, and if we wish it, we can make that character important to them, someone whose hopes, desires, and goals are meaningful and worth cheering for.

We don’t need to be experts to use psychology, either. We may not always know the terminology or reasoning behind certain processes, but we know what they are like to experience. We can show a character struggling to mentally or emotionally process something and readers will relate—they’ve had to process challenging things, too. This familiarity creates connection and empathy, which is exactly what we want to happen.

Let’s look at a common psychological process: cognitive dissonance.

The best way to explain what this is will be to ask you a question: Have you ever experienced internal tension from an unsettling situation, like seeing a neighbor chain his dog up day after day?

Or maybe this tension crops up when you’re doing something you don’t feel 100% good about, like pulling into the McDonald’s drive-thru when you committed to making better choices and eating healthier.

If so, this tension is called cognitive dissonance, the psychological discomfort caused by contradicting thoughts, perceptions, values, or beliefs. It’s quite common – we all experience it. A few examples:

• We discover information that challenges our current beliefs and sense of right and wrong
• We must choose between competing values/beliefs because, in our current situation, we can’t live by both
• We are behaving in a way that doesn’t match with what we believe in

Cognitive dissonance causes uncomfortable emotions like confusion, worry, guilt, regret, or shame.

To illustrate, let’s go back to the McDonald’s example. Despite your plan to stick to healthy options, it’s been a hellish week, and you pull into the drive-thru. You feel guilty as you order, but when the food arrives, you park the car and indulge—it’s so good! Unfortunately, your Big Mac euphoria lasts only as long as the burger does, and now you’re regretting the decision to cave to your craving. Worse, you’re mentally beating yourself up for not having the willpower to resist.

Cognitive dissonance is powering this discord because you (a) like eating Big Macs but (b) want to lose weight and be healthy. You resolved inner tension briefly by choosing Team Big Mac, but because this behavior didn’t line up with that internal commitment you made to yourself, guilt and regret followed.

This is a psychological process so common readers will pick up on it in the story. The best part? Even if a character experiences dissonance and makes a choice that the reader would not, they still empathize with the character’s experience of internal strain.

Another form of internal contradiction is emotional dissonance. This happens when a person fakes an emotion that they don’t feel.

Can I use you as an example again? Let’s imagine at work you find yourself faking enthusiasm about your boss’s terrible marketing strategy. After all, you know from experience that he won’t listen to contrary opinions, and because you’re a team player, you put on your rah-rah face like everyone else in the meeting.

In this case, your dissonance is mild. You’ve weathered his bad ideas before and aren’t invested enough to state how you really feel.

But emotional dissonance isn’t always minor. Sometimes the emotion you’d have to fake is so far from what you feel that it clashes with your values or personal identity. Acting in alignment with an untrue emotion can mean sacrificing your belief system and going against who you are.

Let’s up the ante. You discover this marketing strategy is driven by a closely guarded secret: the company needs to dump a supply of expired baby formula that they’ve repackaged with fresh dates. When you confront your sales manager she explains that the product is fine, this happens all the time, so keep quiet and get out there and sell, sell, sell.

Can you, knowing the formula could be contaminated? Will you be able to fake confidence as you hit up those neonatal units and pharmacies to convince people to buy your product? Or is this something you can’t do because it crosses a line and violates your core values, regardless of how badly you need the bonus for meeting your sales quota?

Here, the divide between your true feelings (contempt and shock) and the emotion you’d need to fake (confidence) is much wider. Whichever you express reveals your identity: Are you the sort of person who does what’s right or what makes money?

Everyone protects their self-perceptions—things they believe to be true about themselves. Emotional dissonance in a story raises the stakes by challenging the character’s view of themselves, creating confusion, uncertainty, or regret. These difficult emotions are another point of common ground with readers because at one time or another, everyone has reflected on their own identity and whether they are being true to themselves.

Internal dissonance is the heart of inner conflict.

Showing a character wrestle with clashing beliefs, values, or other inconsistencies, no matter what they are, will resonate with readers. The character’s situation may be new to the reader, but the internal tug of war is something they have experience with.

In short, psychology is awesome. Use it!

If you’d like to know more (and discover the best way to encourage internal tension), dive into The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Stress and Volatility. This companion book to The Emotion Thesaurus will show you how to remind readers of the real world and their own human experiences so they bond better with your characters!

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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