Tag: #characterwounds

Take Your Characters From Flat to Fabulous: Creating Characters Your Readers Will Love – Cynthia Owens

We will cover:

The basics—vital statistics, names, age, voice, and the character interview.
The Place They Call Home—the space and how to define what it means to the character,
This is the Moment – Backstory—Using the 5 Ws—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of an incident or incidents that most significantly affected the character.
Who’s Talking Now? Dialogue—how dialogue and dialect can define a character.
Body Language—how your character’s body can show what he’s feeling, and what he might want to hide.
But Why Do They Do It?—how idiosyncrasies and odd habits shape your characters.
Clothes Make the Man—or Woman!—How a person’s dress reveals who they are.
Action and Reaction—How a character’s actions and others’ reactions to them reveal character.
What Matters Most?—How the things your characters care about the most can shape them.
The Supporting Cast – Secondary Characters

Those Who Forget History: Using Backstory to Enhance Your Novel – Cynthia Owens

We will cover:

What is Backstory?
Flashbacks and How to Use Them,
The Five Ws of Backstory—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of a character’s past.
Prologues—how to use a prologue to provide backstory.
Dialogue—how to manipulate your readers by using a character’s dialogue to hint at backstory.
Weaving—how to weave backstory into your story.
Inner Thought—revealing your character’s backstory through inner thought.
What Do They Want?—how your character’s backstory can affect his goals.
The New Way to Plot: Using backstory to plot your novel