Dear fellow writer,
Do you want to keep your readers captivated with more vivid and powerful scenes?
Do you want your stories to truly come alive, driven by believable and fully rounded characters?
This isn't some cheap trick or sleight of hand. It's all based on human nature, and backed up by irrefutable scientific evidence.
And yet it's as easy to put into action as reciting your ABCs.
Hi, Britt Malka here,
A character is what he does, yes — but even more, a character is what he means to do.
What makes a work of fiction memorable?
Think of your favorite books and short stories. Why do you like them so much?
The story itself has to be interesting, of course. The plot, the settings, how you engage the reader's senses through descriptions. All of that is important.
But characters are what we remember the most, right?
Those are all instantly recognizable names that have made the books they're in popular and enduring. Why? Because of their memorable personalities and actions.
As authors, we all strive to create those kinds of characters. Who doesn't want to become known as the next Jane Austen, J.D. Salinger, or J.K. Rowling?
Say those well known names and you instantly think of their most famous literary characters.
So how do we get there? How can we create those kinds of memorable, interesting, thought-provoking characters?
That's something I've always tried to accomplish as a fiction writer. And honestly, it was a struggle.
The more I wrote, the more I realized that the best writers - the ones we all instantly recognize by name - are the ones who bring to life vivid characters. Characters that we, as readers, come to see as real people.
It bothered me that my own characters usually didn't rise to that level. I wanted to figure out how to make them more interesting, more life-like, more memorable.
In my searching, I ran across a famous person in the world of psychology, and one of his theories in particular flipped a switch in my mind.
A light bulb went on!