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Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction
There’s no one right way to develop characters for your fiction. Some methods are logical and linear, giving you a basic bio or trait list. Other methods are open-ended and playful. If the latter is your cup of tea, Marilyn Flower’s Developing Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction is right up your alley. In this short ebook, Marilyn shows you how to blog as your characters, create collages of them, and use the Enneagram’s nine personality types to not only depict them but hear their unique voices. Actually, she doesn’t just show you, she demonstrates using examples from her own novels. The only hard part is figuring out which technique to try first.
71 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 6, 2024
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February 28, 2024
Marilyn Flower’s Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction is a delightful guide for fiction writers seeking deeper insight into character creation. As an author myself of more than a dozen published novels, I found Flower’s three techniques (blogging from the characters’ perspectives, creating SoulCollage® cards, and exploring Enneagram personality types) engaging springboards for developing authentic characters that won’t feel flat or contrived.
Although letting characters take the reins risks distraction, Flower gives tips to keep writing priorities in check. I’ve known several authors who spend so much time getting to know their characters that they never actually write a single word of the story. To help avoid this problem, Flowers ends each chapter with accessible exercises to try these methods yourself. Developing Characters bubbles over with offbeat humor and a contagious passion for the fictional friends we conjure up out of thin air. This guide is a boon for writers seeking to people their stories with dimensional, delightful characters destined to linger in readers’ minds long after “The End.”
This review is based on my own analysis of the book, but I want to thank the author for allowing me to read a pre-publication version of the manuscript.
Although letting characters take the reins risks distraction, Flower gives tips to keep writing priorities in check. I’ve known several authors who spend so much time getting to know their characters that they never actually write a single word of the story. To help avoid this problem, Flowers ends each chapter with accessible exercises to try these methods yourself. Developing Characters bubbles over with offbeat humor and a contagious passion for the fictional friends we conjure up out of thin air. This guide is a boon for writers seeking to people their stories with dimensional, delightful characters destined to linger in readers’ minds long after “The End.”
This review is based on my own analysis of the book, but I want to thank the author for allowing me to read a pre-publication version of the manuscript.
Displaying 1 of 1 review