Writing Letters: a Marvellous Way to Understand Characters

As a child of the '90s, I'm no stranger to epistolary stories. They were everywhere when I was growing up: Jaclyn Moriarty's Feeling Sorry for Celia, Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries, the enthrallingly haunting Griffin & Sabine; and many, many more.

Stories written in diary and letter form, and all their modern equivalents, consistently come back into style (a trend that goes back centuries), and it's not hard to see why.

These aren't the words of a distant narrator, high in the sky. These are the words of the characters themselves, right in front of us on the page, in all their intimacy.

Naturally, this still leaves plenty of room for drama and suspense. In an epistolary story, we're completely dependent on what the characters choose to share with others and how honest they're prepared to be, even for an audience of one in the pages of a journal.

There are few better ways to hear a character's voice than to observe the letters they write. If you're struggling to truly know them, or how they interact with others, have them write a letter.

5 Ways to Improve a High Stakes Character Arc

Writing a character arc with a high stakes goal is not for the faint of heart. Pushing characters to act in ways that are hopefully never a part of our own lives or nature takes a steadfast soul, an appetite for excitement and drama, or both.

This is especially the case in genre fiction, where we have characters facing extraterrestrial threats, cutthroat fights for a throne, and lives hanging in the balance as timers count down.

Be they protagonist or antagonist, hero or antihero, giving a character a high stakes goal and throwing a few obstacles in their way isn't enough for a memorable story. Instead, be strategic, intensify the character arc, and a good story will be elevated to greater heights.

Let's explore these strategies as illustrated by the actions of Margaret Beaufort, grandmother to Henry VIII and great-grandmother to Elizabeth I, as fictionalized in The White Queen TV series (based on several of Philippa Gregory's novels).

Before we continue, be warned this post contains significant spoilers for The White Queen and the Season 1 finale of The Spanish Princess, as well as a mild spoiler from Episode 5 of The White Princess.

How to Unlock the Potential of Transportation in Fiction

It’s funny to think that something as pedestrian as a character’s preferred mode of transportation could offer any inspiration or insight. Does it really matter if they ride their bike everywhere or drive a gigantic pick-up truck or refuse to go anywhere they can’t walk to?

It may seem insignificant, but the kind of transportation your character uses affects their independence (how much autonomy do they have to do what they need or want to do, when they need or want to do it?), and if all of your characters move about in the same way all the time, it’ll start feeling samey. That’s not even taking into account places in the world and eras in history when things like gender, race, and class dictate the modes of transportation used.

Knowing the modes of transportation used by your characters (the main ones, at the very least) helps bring order to the story world while also providing ample opportunity for writerly mischief, and goodness knows that's where half the fun is. ^_~

The Art of Transmogrifying Character Notes

It’s no secret that character development is one of my all-time favourite parts of writing a novel. I’m also all too aware of the creative paralysis that takes over when you look at all your notes and think, “What the heck do I do with this? Does this character even make sense?”

The process can be a little slippery, it’s true, but you can make sense of all those notes with a bit of time and focussed thinking. Let’s find out how to weave all the wayward pieces into a cohesive whole!

The Writing Secrets Hidden Within Mass Effect

One of my favourite science fiction stories of all time is not a book or a movie or a TV show. It’s a video game trilogy by the name of Mass Effect. This is a series that’s incredibly fun to play not just because of the game mechanics, but because the characters feel like real people and the universe feels rich and dynamic. As a writer, playing (and replaying) this game holds even more appeal: as I navigated the Normandy amongst the stars, I was unlocking valuable lessons about fiction writing.

How to Add Characters to Your Writing Bullet Journal

Bullet journalling can be both a tantalizing and an overwhelming prospect. You might love the idea of using it to store notes on your characters but have nary a clue where to begin. Today we're going to break down collections I've used in my own bullet journal (and a few other ideas, too) to keep track of all the information you gather during character creation.

Discover Your Character's VIPs

This is the final post in a three-part series on creating a character from scratch. In this series, I cover one step per post, to give you a sense of why I think it’s important, how I figure it out for my own characters, and various tips and tricks to help you on your own way.

We’ve talked already about naming a character and honing in on their physicality. Now it’s time to talk about who is most important to them.

Let’s call these people your character’s VIPs.

How to See and Hear a Character

This is the second of three posts in a series on creating a character from scratch. In this series, I cover one step per post, to give you a sense of why I think it’s important, how I figure it out for my own characters, and various tips and tricks to help you on your own way.

Last we met, I talked about how I go about naming characters and pointed you in the direction of some fun ways to find the right name for your character. This time around, I'll cover the process I embark on to figure out a character's physicality, and how that plays into the fabric of the story.

How to Name a Character

When creating a character from scratch, I often figure out three things right off the bat:

1. Their name
2. Their physicality, including what they sound like
3. Who is most important to them

In this series, I’ll be covering one step per post, sharing why each one is important, how I figure it out for my own characters, and tips and tricks to help you on your way.

Location, Location, Location! ... and Why It Matters to Your Character

[This post is excerpted from my free workbook on character development!]

Just as there are people our characters’ lives wouldn’t be the same without, there are places that become fixtures, even iconic, to them. Where do they spend their waking hours?