Character is the Key: Unlock Your Best Stories

If you want to tell vivid, fulfilling stories, start with character. As you conceive and develop authentic, dynamic characters, their choices become your story—so dive into character, and unlock everything else.

In this one-day workshop for fiction writers of all levels, we’ll dig deep into the practical mechanics of writing vivid characters. By taking seriously the factors large and small that motivate people, you’ll learn to build stronger characters, more engaging plots, and more powerful fiction.

You’ll learn to think about plot as character; how to use the concept of character sketching to help the reader imagine your characters’ lives beyond what’s on the page; and examine some passages from great published fiction to see how the writers we admire populate their worlds. Along the way, you’ll practice the techniques you’re learning by building a character study of your own for a current or future writing project.

This Workshop is For:

• Fiction writers of all backgrounds who want to learn to create complex and authentic characters, and use those characters as the foundation for writing great stories.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this workshop, you will learn:

• Sentence-level techniques for establishing character motivation and desires.
• A framework for constructing plot by analyzing your character choices and actions.
• To ‘Read like a writer’ by examining excerpts from great published stories and novels to analyze how their characters are built and borrow strategies to level up your own work.

Writing Goals

In this workshop, you will write:

• A targeted character sketch to guide you in deepening and complicating a complex character from your own current or future writing project. You can use this technique over and over again when creating future characters.

Zoom Schedule

We will meet from 7 PM to 9 PM Eastern time on Thursday, October 17th.

Workshop Schedule

Total length: 2 hours

10 minutes – Introductions, overview.

30 minutes – Lecture and demonstration of character techniques from published fiction.

10 minutes – Group discussion.

20 minutes – First half of writing exercise, sharing and discussion.

20 minutes – Second half of writing exercise, sharing and discussion.

30 minutes – Q&A and wrap-up.