You have Character A and Character B. You have them in Place at Time. What you don’t have is your plot. You turn to the tried-and-true method: giving your characters a goal. The idea behind pointing your characters towards a goal is to give them a motivation. Character motivation is the reason a character does… Continue reading Why Character Goals Aren’t Driving Your Plot
Tag: character arc
Emotional Arcs
In every scene of your story, your characters should want something. What they want can vary wildly and often contradicts what other characters want. This is a part of creating conflict and tension. Today however, we’re talking a little bit about actions and reactions. More specifically, we’re discussing how emotional arcs work in scenes. With… Continue reading Emotional Arcs
Exercise: Inserts
Characters are often the first thing a reader falls in love with. Building a detailed and dynamic character can be difficult. Thankfully, there’s plenty of ways to practice. As an exercise: Pick someone you know in real-life. Describe them as the main character in a story. Think about how they act, walk, talk and any… Continue reading Exercise: Inserts
Character vs. Plot Driven
When it comes to moving your story forward there are usually two driving forces: plot and character. Because each one drives the events in a story a little differently, this gives us plot-driven and character driven stories. With plot-driven stories, the events drive each other forward. High taxes from the king cause a famine in… Continue reading Character vs. Plot Driven
Building the Backstory
For most stories, we don’t get to see every moment of a character’s life. We certainly don’t get to see every moment of every single character. Often the parts of a character’s life we don’t see are referred to as backstory. That is where they came from, what their home life was like, their personal… Continue reading Building the Backstory
The Written Vixen 