12 Steps to Really Knowing Your Characters

In my previous post, I presented a series of questions to help think about your character-driven novel as a whole. The intent of this was to make you consider what you want your readers to feel and what you expect a novel to do. It also got you to think of your main character in terms that would help her to push the plot along, rather than depending on outside forces to move through the story.

Now I'm going to ask you to contemplate who your all characters are in greater depth. Even though we often spend a lot of time inside our protagonists and imagining them in great detail, sometimes we think about other characters within a limited context of the story. If you go to a critique group, you might be asked why character X lies to the protagonist. Your answer is probably about his motivation.

Well, if you're really writing a character based novel, simple motivations aren't enough.

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Add depth to your novel by shedding light on the complexities of your secondary characters.
(Images: http://kalaalog.com/)

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3 Steps Before Starting the Novel

Back in June, I began to talk about where the idea for a novel comes from and how understanding your main character helps develop plot. 

I stand by this. 

Your novel starts with a compelling protagonist. The character doesn't need to be entirely sympathetic, but somebody who we can see humanity in, someone we can feel. And they must have a goal and a desire. (Note that I used and there—not or—I'll get there, eventually.)

I am also a proponent for writing several scenes until you develop an understanding for your character. This makes writing sound magical, though.

Writing is not magic. 

"There is no literary community here."

I live in Phoenix--widely known as a cultural wasteland. But it's not. Or it doesn't have to be.

When I lived in Downtown Phoenix a few years ago, the arts community was organizing in a grass roots way. There was so much need for it that the First Fridays grew into First and Third Fridays. It grew from people setting up folding tables on the sides of the streets to having to rent space and white street fair tents. The single block that had art parties on Saturday night grew

If you're a novelist, you have to be a little self-centered for at least a brief time.

We spend so much time being other things for other people--at our jobs, our volunteer work, with our families. But sometimes we forget that, as writers, our "other" job (our real job) is to present to the world a work of fiction that is somehow relevant, that deals with a truth that doesn't get dealt with on the surface and out in the open in everyday life—or doesn't get the treatment it should there.

To do that, to really dig around in the grime of the truth, you (the writer) need to deeply question your own. Most people don't have time or the energy for such things. Life is easier without them. But, somehow, those same people read—and readers crave truth. They sense

The Blog Hop Begins

As previously posted here and on Writing without Workshops, I've enlisted a few people to start out a “blog hop”. I've never done this before, and I don't think any of the people starting it out have either, but that's not stopping us.

The idea of it is to encourage writers to discuss their own work in a way that will be relevant to themselves and to 

"What should I write about?"

9 METHODS TO ASSURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE SOMETHING TO WRITE 

When people ask this, I think, "Seriously???" (I have the extra question marks there in my mind.)

Really, though, people who tell me they are writers, or want to be writers, ask me this. It's difficult for me to imagine. Personally, I never have a shortage of things to write about—I don't have enough time.

But maybe it's coming to writing from a different place. Maybe it's a place where you know you want to write because you enjoy it but you don't know