Daily Archives: July 13, 2015

Love Your Character

hulk computerI guess it should probably go without saying that if you want to write fiction well you have to be in love with your characters. I don’t mean the creepy, smoochy Pygmalion kind of love. I’m talking about finding them fascinating, interesting, compelling and simply fun to work with.

If you’re familiar with my writing mistakes list then you know my caveat that if you have to invent scenes to give a character something to do that character may not belong in the narrative anymore. All fiction writing is inventing scenes for characters to act in, of course, so what I mean by that is that if the character doesn’t fit into the narrative well, or you’re repeatedly stumped finding things for that character to do in the story, maybe the character doesn’t belong.