Friday, Sept. 20, 9-12 pm EST, remote, via Grub Street

In creating stories, many writers focus on what happens without enough consideration as to the why. And that why is all about character. What does your character want? Why do they want it? What are they willing to sacrifice to get it? Novel planning begins with answering these character-focused questions. Key to this is ensuring your character has clear goals, both tangibly and emotionally. This lecture-driven seminar focuses on techniques to create characters who feel real, with motivations, desires, wants, and needs. Students will explore how characters are actually a novel-writing secret weapon and how to wield them for the most effective results in their stories. Students will leave with a key understanding: characters drive the plot, not the other way around.

This course can be taken alone or in conjunction with the other seminars in this series, to come throughout the fall: The Nuts and Bolts of Novel Planning: Story Beats, The Nuts and Bolts of Novel Planning: POV, Side Characters, and Endings, The Nuts and Bolts of Novel Planning: Setup and Payoff.

Register here.