Bo-ring! Breathing life into your characters*: 7/21 Breakthroughwriting Tip

*To begin with, try thinking of the people in your writing not as “characters”. They are women and men and children; they are enraged mobs and friends around a dinner table; they are joyful and terrified and numb. A character is a puppet. A woman, a man, a child is a friend – or an enemy – or a stranger.
I ask you to do the work with this Breakthrough Tip:
1. Choose the gender of your person. Write one sentence, i.e. Jas pulled on his workboots.
2. Choose the age. Write the next sentence, i.e. He straightened and flinched, his old bones yowling.
3. Surprise us, i.e. He looked down at the silver and turquoise bracelets around his left wrist.
4. Bring in another person and listen to what they say to each other, i.e. Gina stood in the door. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
5. Choose gender of new person, i.e. She was a tall woman, her arms and legs skinny as a girl’s.
6. Take it from here. If you stay with details and conversation, you’ll find not only your people coming alive. Your story, their story will begin to flow from your fingertips.

 

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