COURSE DESCRIPTION

Characters are at the heart of all compelling fiction. The novels and stories we most love usually have at their center at least one character who touches us in unexpected ways. There are a number of approaches you can use to help you deepen and expand your leads, antagonists, and secondary characters. Through a series of writing exercises and discussion, we will explore how to reveal characters through observation, voice, dialogue, backstory, internal insight, and the decisions, actions, and reactions of the character. Bring along the story people you are currently working on - or come prepared to envision new ones, flesh them out, and make them irresistible.

A 4-hour workshop, generally from 1:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon.

"The most important thing you can invent is motives for all the major characters in your borrowed story. In real life, we sometimes don't know why other people behave as they do. In fiction, motives lay the foundation for reader acceptance of everything else. The characters may not understand themselves, but the reader should understand them, at least enough to sense that even the most demented has consistent demons driving him in consistent ways." ~Nancy Kress in Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities that Keep Readers Captivated