The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters

by Marc McCutcheon

Contains a discussion on approaches to characterization, a character questionnaire to list traits, and a thesaurus of physical and psychological human characteristics enhance character descriptions

Genres: Writing, Reference, Nonfiction

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a ton of apps and list generators out there that can do what this book does and probably better. However, it is a book that is in easy reach for when working with RPG characters and looking for some detail or some feature that will make a character more unique. I think it was worth the effort to get a copy.

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my go-to book for NaNoWriMo. It is great to set up characters for your book. I don't know how others do it. I have a program called WriteItNow that is good for generating names. Other people use that program for everything. But I write in yWriter. After I have my names, I go to this book. I have tabs set up for different characteristics and I use a number generator on my phone to give me the characteristic according to the list of each page. I try not to cheat. If the character is very flawed it is easier to write them. Between the name and the characteristics, a story seems to emerge.

The beginning of this book has a character development questionnaire. I have found this handy, also. This is the best book to get me started writing and helps me keep writing unless my characters are stuck behind boulders and not moving. Then I need bigger help. Probably a sprint/prompt=sprompt will get my characters out. Or I'll pull a George R.R. Martin on them.

If you get the chance to buy this book, you will be buying a treasure!

[Z.A. Mackic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful. I’m buying my copy of this.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful.

[Nyghtengale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent character book, I read through this book and I have order my very own copy as I have to return the one I read to the library. If you are writing stories and find you are using the same character descriptions over and over this book is like the holy grail. it can turn the statement " There was a bump on his nose was gross." to " The bulbous growth on his beak left her lunch fighting her stomach for freedom." I would recommend this book as a mainstay for anyone writing character descriptions.

[L.A. Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a book of lists.