Let the reader know more than the protagonist does. However, don’t let the reader know every single thing about the characters. Don’t be afraid to let your protagonist fail. Make sure that each character (and name) stands out from the others. No Marcia and Maria in the same book, unless this move is on purpose.
writer’s block
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Is Your Protagonist Changing?
“Create an arc for your protagonist that changes him/ her in some way
by the end of the story.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Create tension & Leave Your Readers Breathless
Tension. It can spellbind your readers and leave them breathless, on the edge of their seats and biting their nails in anticipation for what will happen next. And, without it, your story will feel as lifeless and limp as a pricked balloon. The most effective way to elicit an emotional response in your reader is through tension.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Are You Using Motifs in Your Stories?
What is a Motif?
Motifs are recurring elements in a novel. Motifs can be physical objects, images, actions, sounds, symbols, or abstract ideas. The most important thing to note about motifs is that they repeat themselves throughout the story. The elements may not appear in the same form, but they will share the same message.
For example, an author may wish to use ticking clocks, wristwatches, and hourglasses as a series of symbols to represent one motif (i.e. the passage of time). That motif will then tie into the story’s main theme (i.e. the transience of life).
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Creating Fully Alive Characters
If you want to tell the best story possible, you can only do so with characters who are fully alive and made for the world that you’ve created— Not characters who are borrowed from a world that someone else created a long time ago. . . . Characters are storytelling devices that help the reader experience and process the story. If your character is one-note, your story will likewise fall flat. It won’t be as rich and nuanced as it could have been because your stereotypical characters aren’t able to carry the weight.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Play No Favorites
It’s Tough Not to Play Favorites With Your Characters
It’s a point echoed by everyone from William Faulkner to Agatha Christie to Ernest Hemingway all the way to Stephen King: you’ve got to write without playing favorites, even if that means killing those that you’re fond of. I get it. After you’ve spent weeks, months, or even years plotting out characters, ideas, scenes, or backstories, the last thing you’ll want to do is delete them like they never even happened. It becomes even more complicated if you get emotionally invested in these characters and root for them.
This is why it takes guts to be an author. It takes an incredible amount of self-control to write a story that you don’t control. It takes bravery to allow the characters to play out exactly as they need to.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Let Readers Use Their Imagination
Give vague descriptions of your characters to allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. It’s okay to share hair color, body build, and general features, but if you’re getting into tooth color, you may be going too far.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Does Your Villain Have any Likable Traits?
“Give your antagonist a virtue. A fully evil villain is boring and two-dimensional. Everyone has at least one admirable trait, such as loyalty, honesty, or bravery. In fact, make your villain likable in some way.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Does Your Protagonist Have Flaws?
“Give your protagonist a flaw. Your readers cannot relate to a perfect, goody-two-shoes main character.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Have You Thought About Creating a Backstory?
Backstory. It’s the best tool you have to develop relatable, realistic, three-dimensional characters for your novel. Sketching out a backstory is not the sexiest part of writing a novel. Investigating motivations, creating genealogies, understanding the socio-political landscape of the world you’re creating— that’s pretty heavy stuff, especially since most of it won’t even make it into your novel.
A backstory is the history of the character. It addresses the following:
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- Who the character is
- Why the character is the way he or she is
