Category: Getting Started

Blog 12 “Courting Characters” and Blog 13 “Creating Characters” were all about characterization. Well, not quite all. Although they dwelt on determining which characters you wanted to populate your fiction and how to reveal them, they didn’t go far enough. They didn’t address the sine qua non of characterization: dialogue. The phrase sine qua non is a perfect, if somewhat snooty, way to describe the effects of dialogue. It is essential for “nailing a character,” as author Rita Mae Brown puts it. It is as necessary as chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies.

Now that you have courted characters (Blog #12) for your story, novel, screenplay, or other fiction and can identify a possible protagonist, an antagonist, a co-protagonist or – antagonist, a love interest, a foil, or even some tertiary characters, you’re ready to create them. I know! That sounds backwards. But once you have in mind some characters (and the conflict and possible plot that links them) you’re ready to go deeper, particularly to create characters as fully as you can before beginning to write. After that, they’ll take over. . .but that’s another blog.