![]() ![]() I also know I’ll have to return to earlier chapters and massage his character on my second draft. Armed with this information, I came up with all kinds of fun and dastardly plot turns and twists. I had to return to the Enneagram website and reevaluate. But as I wrote, I began to realize he was making decisions a Helper wouldn’t make. When I begin The Peril of Pride in January, I thought my villain was an Enneagram Helper gone bad. Step two: Don’t be afraid to change the personality types of your characters It took several drafts of that book to convince my editor that my character’s decision was logical-for her. When she sees a crime through her small window, she doesn’t talk to the police about what she saw. In The Sanctity of Sloth, my third Deadly Sin, my protagonist locks herself into a hidden room at the San Juan Capistrano Mission to write a book about Medieval anchorites. The murderer’s motivation must be logical based on his or her world view. Even if they wouldn’t react to the circumstances the way your character does, they must believe the character would.įor instance, although I wouldn’t murder anyone in real life, crime writers must make me believe their villain would. If you want readers to relate to your characters, they need to understand what drives them to do the things they do. And, good news, this is completely fixable. It simply means most of us tend to focus on the plot more than character development on the first go around. If you find the same problem in your work, it doesn’t mean you’re a rotten writer. They move from place to place and do the things they’re supposed to in order to keep the story moving forward, but they don’t feel real.Īfter seven fiction novels and three novellas, I’ve learned this isn’t abnormal. Often in first drafts I find they read like comic book characters, or avatars in a video game. I’ve mentally prepared myself for the discovery that my characters are flat. I’ve finished the first draft of The Peril of Pride, and this week I plan to sit down, read it, and figure out what needs fixing. This month, April, we’re focused on character development. If you’ve been following along on this year’s blog, you know Megan and I are blogging about our writing process from planning to plotting to productivity and on to revision this year. ![]()
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