Crafting Unforgettable Characters

by K.M. Weiland

Featuring some of K.M. Weiland’s most popular tips on character crafting, this pdf offers a good starting place for understanding the basics of character building, as well as some tips for troubleshooting. You’ll also discover inspiring quotes from successful authors, writing prompts, and creativity exercises. This information will give you the tools you need to tackle your latest batch of characters.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Ebooks, Crafts

Kindle Edition

About the author

K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally published author of acclaimed writing guides such as Structuring Your Novel, Creating Character Arcs, and Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. She writes historical and speculative fiction and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good tips here for creating characters. Some of the details of creating a character seemed a tad too much, but overall I found this helpful and inciting. A well planned character, one you know so many details about, will be convincing and realistic.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but great read. Lots of helpful tips for authors.

[Kellyn Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really benefit from this book in a huge way (I think I'm perfected my character development to a certain extent), though some of the advice about giving your characters goals and such was really useful. :)

[Lydia Willcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, with extremely useful advice and suggestions. I would highly recommend it.

[Charlene Carr]

A very quick read. Not a ton of substance, as I found it largely to be examples, quotes, and writing prompts, but still definitely a worth while read. It gave me a few good thoughts to improve a current character I'm struggling to make more memorable. Overall, I enjoyed it!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a short, helpful guide to crafting characters that truly come alive on the page. It's full of helpful incites and tips for helping you craft an unforgettable cast of characters.
I'm looking forward to applying some of the things I learned!

[Timewarp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found some interesting reading I would like to do to understand even more of K.M.'s views. There are a lot of good points in this publication and I will refer to this book again.

[Mikayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very helpful, short read on how to make more interesting characters. I look forward to using some of the information from this book in future.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and to the point but immensely helpful.

[Zach Liang- · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sculpting unforgettable characters
Just to ‘parody’ the title of Kate’s useful ebook on character development with the hope that she does not angered with it.
A 50 page pdf very good to be immediately printed for the sake of easier reading and unknown word translation.
It has been taken for free once I get into subscription in her email newsletter last year .though later I entered her site for RSS operation in my newsfeed reader .
This is a useful once again very handy back to basics guide and most important essences and traits of developing a character. Her layout shines with nearly the half as text , some nice art , short passages from established authors and writing tips and using a down to earth language so that it can be very easy to be read. I have read it quite later than I started my subscription due to personal reasons. This guide will be next to my android computer to design my next secondary characters of the Series² book
My verdict : Worth of reading with many clever ideas

[Olivia Cornwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very useful for me. It's a basic discussion on character creation, but it gives you a really good platform to create for the character. It's given me ideas for my own novel's opening an introducing my main characters. It discusses how to describe your characters, both their physical appearance and showing how they behave, or what drives them to do what they do. It even discusses how to name them (I learned that names can do a lot more than I first thought!). There's even a rather in-depth chart you can fill out to help explore and create your characters, everything from their name to the shape of their nose, their faith to what can cheer them up. It's a short read, but it gives writers a solid platform to build their characters and prepare them for the story.

[Krisz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book really covered all aspects of a character any writer can think of. I like the fact that KMW writes about seemingly little things and she can go on and on and what she says is still relevant. I completely agree with her on the importance of finding out who you write about, know her as you know yourself, name him/her properly and let things happen.
I liked the description of some classic characters at the end, however they were too short for me. A longer, more detailed explanation would have made the point better.
What I missed was a yummy collection of links of where one can find good ideas for naming characters, so maybe that could be added in the next edition.

[Jacqueline Mudge-Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read this book, I found there are some tools that I was already aware of, however its nice to have a guide on hand. For when you start to doubt your own characters if they are any good or find yourself stumped. Really good book to have before you start writing so you know who your characters are.

[Wiktoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

The short booklet contains a lot of useful information, and is an entertaining read at the same time. It seems more interesting than the publication on story structure, and it also includes writing exercises, hence more stars than for the other free e-book by the author, "5 Secrets of Story Structure."

[chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

this was a freebie book for me because I bought the author's software (if memory serves).
Do. Not like the layout. Quotes get an entire page dedicated to them? What.
I'm not sure there was anything beneficial to me in this book.
better books on writing: "save the cat! writes a book" by jessica brody, "structuring your novel" by the same author, "story engineering" by larry brooks.

[Kaycee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great short book that really got me thinking about my characters and how to craft them. I wish it was longer but the Author does have many longer works that I'll most likely delve into as well.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much. I found it to be very helpful in my writing.

[Jillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it was short I took my time reading this one. It was exactly the information and inspiration I was looking for to liven up my characters.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tasty satisfying read for the aspiring writer looking to deepen their characters. A definite reread.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Characters are (one) of my weak spots. This book has been pushing me in good ways to ask the hard questions, knuckle down, and get to work. :D

[Dave Fallon]

Great tips and I really enjoyed the tone. It wasn't over my head, it wasn't talking down to me, it was very clear and on a level I felt comfortable with.

[Aislinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Mostly cribbed content from her other books.

[Lola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book as a freebie when signing up for the author's newsletter. I bought another book by this author as well. As I am interested in what she had to say about characters. Sadly this book didn't work for me. Something about the tone and writing style didn't really resonate with me. And there are some sentences that rubbed me wrong. There are some good pieces of information, but there are a few small points with lots of text around it that doesn't clarify or add to the point. It just felt like a lot of words for very few pieces of info.

I thought some of the points she made were great, like getting to know your characters, or giving your characters flaws or that characters don't have to be nice, but something about how she explained those points or her reasoning behind it just didn't quite work for me. The examples were all from books I hadn't read and didn't clarify the points much for me. And I didn't really care about all the quotes from other authors about characters, a quote here and there is fine, but there were quite some quotes here and they didn't really add to the content for me. I found the exercises not as interesting either.

To summarize: something about this book just didn't quite work for me. It has some good advice and tips for creating characters, but the writing style and tone didn't quite work for me. I also found there were only small pieces of information in lots of text. All in all this wasn't for me, but I plan to give one of the author's full length books a try to see if I like that.

[Jerry Walch · Rating 5 out of 5]

The inimitable Stephen King once told a reporter, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Reading a lot includes reading books on the craft of writing. The best craft books aren’t enormous tomes that cover or try to cover writing from A to Z, but are shorter books that concentrate on one minor aspect of the craft. Crafting Unforgettable Characters: A Hands-On Approach to Bringing Characters to Life by K.M. Weiland is one of those books. At 50-plus pages it’s easy to read in one sitting and doesn’t take the writer away from his/her more important task, writing. Weiland’s book contains no fluff, just solid meat, the meat you need to build, the muscle you will need to build a solid foundation for understanding and mastering the art of characterization.
 I received Crafting Unforgettable Characters: A Hands-On Approach to Bringing Characters to Life by K.M. Weiland as an Advanced Review Copy but it now lives on my shelf of writing reference books and will be read often because, as with all good craft books, there’s something new to be gleaned with each reading.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The process of writing a story is so vastly different from one person to another that I don't often find an author who gives me information I can use to improve my craft. One I've found helpful is Christopher Vogler in his The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers. Another is K.M. Weiland. This is one of many of her books I have read and found helpful as I work on writing my own novels. I also find her blog very helpful (https://www.helpingwritersbecomeautho...).

How have I found her helpful? She is able to put things into lists and bullets (which is how I think). But she is also able to expound on her lists and bullets, giving excellent examples from her writing as well as from the works of other authors in books and movies.

This book gives writing exercises/challenges, quotes about writing by writers, and her thoughts and experiences with creating living and breathing characters.

[Liz Leighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most valuable part of this book is the description of character interviews. She also gives a detailed list of questions/items to include in defining or getting to know your characters. I've always done detailed character development in my writing but she goes far beyond what I've done in the past. Some authors argue that so much detail isn't needed and it might not be for their writing. I'm of the opinion that most of these details will never be included in the text of the novel but the more fleshed out they are more realistic and 3 dimensional they will be for the reader. Her book includes discussions on some of the memorable characters from literature along with wonderful quotes from other authors about "characters" and character development. It's a short read but I really enjoyed the book and have added it to list of "go to" books for character development.

[Words & Nocturnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a very basic idea of how to get started with character creation with a scattering of helpful prompts and exercises to aid in visualising your characters and getting to know them better. Character creation can be tricky and require a fair amount of research, but that’s just as it should be. What I gather from this book is that it’s not enough to know the basic facts about your character (their facial features, their favourite things and so on). To truly get to know your character, you’d have to actively engage with them, know their motivations, desires and needs. It’s important to note that the information found in this book can only guide you so far, the effectiveness of the exercises and prompts in this book is up to you, becoming more useful when you carry out your own research and work diligently.

[Michael Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid information, getting the characters right can be an ongoing process as you write. However figuring out as much as you can from the onset will help you write faster, so it's a good idea to put in your due diligence on the matter and try to figure things out. Sometimes that's difficult, sometimes it's not, the most challenging characters tend to be the ones we like the idea of but don't personally relate with, so it's hard to really get in their heads and more research is probably necessary to do it well.

[Robert Romberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, why did I give this book only four stars and not five stars as I had with the other K.M. Weiland book I just read. Well, it wasn't because the information here was flawed, or that the information wasn't well presented. No, it was more because I didn't have that "aha!" moment like I did in the other book. This was more of a slow creep that will take time to present itself, to try out some of the suggestions, and, hopefully have the point driven in. I do recommend this book for aspiring writers.

[Lora Shouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book a long time ago, I think specifically to write a review of it. I finally got around to reading it.

This is a collection of advice on why and how to write unforgettable characters, with examples, writing prompts, and useful tips. For a non-fiction book, it was really interesting.

As far as I can tell, this book is no longer available on Amazon, if it ever was. But it is possible that it has been included as part of one of the author’s other books on writing.