Hey writers. I come today bearing a gift: A collection of resources to help out with character development. I’ve sorted it into categories so that you can easily find what you’re looking for (or just easily sort out what’s what), and I’ve collected here many of the posts I’ve found over the years and saved to my Pinterest boards (you can find my account here if you’d like to see some of the other articles I’ve saved on other aspects of writing, or if you’d like to see my storyboards/character boards/etc., and here are my Writing Tips: Characters and Characters: Creation boards if you’d like even more tips on character development). Continue reading “Character Development Resource Round-Up”
Tag: Evergreen
Character Motivation – Connecting the Past to the Present
Character backstories can sometimes be glossed over when you’re designing a character, because you get so tied up in the now, but really, the past and present of your character are far more closely linked than you might realize. You can’t just skip backstory, because it’s an integral part of who your character is now and how their character motivation came to be.
Past and present are interlinked in a number of ways when it comes to character, but there are three sections that I think are the most closely tied together: nature, fears, and relationships. Continue reading “Character Motivation – Connecting the Past to the Present”
My Top 5 Tips for New Writers
When I think back to my early writing—the really early stuff, back when I thought that five pages was long enough to be a novel—I see a gigantic mess. Flat characters, rushed plots, things that little seven-year-old me didn’t think through that are now really creepy (like the fact that one of my characters accidentally had two wives), and fairytale romances. I have a document of those old stories that’s titled “The Cheese Factory.”
I can’t save you from cheesy stories or flat characters—and honestly you’ll run into those through your entire writing career Continue reading “My Top 5 Tips for New Writers”
The Power of Art
Art is a powerful thing. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes it feels like it’s simply words on a page or paint on a canvas or notes on the air. Other times, it’s impossible to miss how powerful it is. Other times it hits you like a train, bringing you to tears or making you grin uncontrollably. Art is much more than the sum of its parts. Art has the power to spawn emotion in a reader, viewer, listener. I know this first-hand, both from being so affected by art, and by seeing the reactions that my friends have when they read my writing.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” As artists, we have great power, but we have to be careful Continue reading “The Power of Art”
Music In Writing
Yep, we’re back to music. Because music is awesome, and it can actually be a really cool storytelling tool. Yes, this post is different than my “Music and Writing” post. That post was about listening to music while you write, while this one is about actually putting music in your writing and using it as a tool. It was also supposed to go up yesterday, but I got distracted by music while I was writing it and didn’t get it finished when I meant to and then forgot about it. Oops. But it’s here now, and only a day late, so I consider that something of a win, at least. Continue reading “Music In Writing”