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Posts tagged ‘creating characters’

Apr 17

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How to get readers to care about your characters

In the short video below by screenwriter and director, John Truby, he says one of the biggest mistakes writers make is how they create their characters.

Truby says most writers create characters by making them as detailed as possible. We’ve all heard this advice, right? Make your characters detailed, use all five senses, etc.

But Truby says having detailed characters does NOT make your audience care about your characters.

What makes them care is discovering two things:

1) what is the character’s fundamental weakness — their fundamental flaw?

2) what is the character’s story goal?

Truby says the best stories will show the character going after their goal, which will then make them deal with their greatest internal weakness.

To hear what else Truby has to say about creating great characters, watch his video below and check out some of his other videos:

Oct 16

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Give your characters a humanizing trait to make them relatable

Best-selling author Patricia Cornwell was recently featured on Sunday Morning where she talked about her heroine, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, in her main book series. In the interview, Cornwell says she gives her readers a “huge does of forensic science and medicine” but, at the same time, the story is really about her protagonist Scarpetta, what she’s going through, and where she needs to get to.

One way Cornwell makes Scarpetta human and more relatable is to give her a simple, down-to-earth trait. Read more