Mastering Character Development: How to Get Your Characters to Spill Their Secrets
We all know that one-dimensional characters won’t cut it, and we strive to create dynamic and emotionally resonant fictional characters.
We also understand that to do that, we have to figure out what drives our characters to take action and engage in our plots. We have to figure out what they want, what they need to learn, what they fear, and the internal struggles that stunt them.
The million-dollar question is, “How?”
How To Craft a Compelling Backstory for Your Novel and Keep Track of It!
If you consider a story to be one large event that creates an irreversible change, then it must have a beginning to have an end. It must start from somewhere and be in a particular state to experience said change, and there must be a reason for that initial state of being.
That reason, my friend, is the backstory.
Crafting a compelling backstory is essential to creating realistic characters with motivations and complex problems the reader will relate to.
How to Challenge Your Character and Deepen the Plot in Act II
What happens in Act II:
Our protagonist struggles to come to grips with new information, possibly new relationships, or relationships that have taken on a new meaning. They are swimming upstream, and the water is choppy. There may or may not be sharks. There are probably sharks. Even though things are tough and a lot of internal processing is going on, they are still actively pursuing their goal, which is not pretty. They fail—a lot.
They continue acting from their false beliefs, flaws, and fears and don’t have the emotional or physical skills to conquer the main story problem yet. They may not even be completely aware of the main story problem, but they are learning, which is the point.
How To Write Meaningful Conflict In Your Novel
Let’s talk about conflict! Are you the sweat on the dynamite, or are you the explosion?
"You need to add conflict."
We writers hear this a lot, but it doesn’t mean we always blow stuff up. Instead, we need to learn how to craft meaningful conflict!
A story is about how going from Point A to Point B changes the character.
Conflict is the force that makes the character change for better or worse.