Characters – The Heart of Any Story
Photo by Hryckowian
I’m in the midst of teaching an online workshop called Jump Start Your Novel, which focuses on the methods I use to organize a project so that I can write the most powerful novel possible in a reasonable time frame. In the workshop we’ve been talking a bit about characters, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on that subject today.
Characters are the heart of any story. A reader wants to be transported out of their daily existence to another place entirely, to be someone else, even if only for a little while. Think about the books you’ve enjoyed and ask yourself why you liked them. You’ll quickly see that it is the way that you identified with the main character and how you reacted to the ups and downs that character experienced that had an impact on you. As a writer, you need to be able to produce the same effect and give the reader the emotional experience they desire.
So how do we do that?
