characters / 2 posts found
Writing Real Relationships: 4 Strategies Starting With What You Know
Sure, your characters exist next to each other on the page, but crafting relationships that feel real can be a different story. But the goal is to focus on your story, so what’s a writer to do? (Bring Your Secret Skillsets to the Page) As with so much in storytelling, you already have the depths inside you to write relationships well. Have you had a family? Friends? Neighbors? Those you didn’t understand or didn’t get along with? Those who you admired? Excellent. You’re officially ready to capture authenticity, no matter whether you’re writing fact or fiction. The bonds that tie […]
For Better or Worse: Writing About Influence in Fiction
Some of my favorite stories are stories about influence: the way people can change one another. Lord Henry Wotton—a decadent aesthete—corrupting the innocent titular character of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The sophisticated and thoroughly European Madame Merle taking naive American Isabel Archer under her wing in Henry James’ 1881 Portrait of a Lady. In each case, the story of a relationship between two people—one charismatic, one vulnerable—makes it possible to simultaneously explore personal dynamics and wider questions of morality and ideology, how “dangerous” human beings and “dangerous” ideas alike can transform us, or destroy us. […]