Tag: writing advice

Posted in Blog, writing craft

Character Development: Tips and Tricks for Making Realistic Characters

Posted on by Avery Carter

Hello! Welcome to the next post in my writing craft series. For this one, we’re talking about character development! I know there are 1000000+ different recommendations on how to make a satisfying and realistic character. This post doesn’t aim to replace them, but to give you another way of looking at character development that you may not have thought of before, just like my worldbuilding tips.

With that, let’s begin!

1. Why Them?

Starting off strong with an important question you have to answer. Why this character? What makes them special, or not special? Why are they the one that you’re using to frame the story?

There are a number of tropes your character might fit that help answer this question. The Chosen One, the Antihero, the Anime Protagonist: Dead Mom edition… they are all tried and true tropes for a reason. Rather than use one of those, try taking a different path. Instead of the Chosen One, why not the aggressively average person in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or a character whose family is alive and well and they need to take care of a younger sibling? There are so many unique people in the world, with unique stories. Find the one that fits YOUR story the best.

2. Give Them Something Tangible, and Intangible

Okay. Hear me out on this one. With my characters, I always give them two things of mine. A tangible thing that they can hold, carry, or wear, and an intangible thing that helps drive their social interactions. You’ve heard the old adage of “write what you know.” Well, what do you know better than yourself?

The tangible item gives you an idea of what they value. I gave one of my main characters a worn pair of combat boots that I wore almost every day during university. Those boots went with her from Chicago, into Faerie, and back. Even when she was kitted out with armor, a sword, and a shotgun, she still had those boots. Given that this particular character came from a lower class background, it makes sense that she would hang on to a pair of boots that have definitely seen better days.

The intangible item helps drive social interactions. This can be a personality trait, a memory, a neurodivergency, a want, a fear, or more. If you have a history of being bullied, giving a character that history will make them suspicious and guarded. Have a lovely memory of the beach? Maybe your character misses the ocean and is always dreaming of it. There are lots of things in your life that you can draw on to add depth to a character and their interactions.

3. They Want to Say Something… and Absolutely Cannot Say It, No Matter What.

This is actually a piece of advice that I got a while back that I’m passing on. Your character wants to say something. They desperately want to say it.

They absolutely cannot say it. No matter what.

This advice has everything to do with character motivation. It’s about the yearning! Who or what are they yearning for? Why can’t they have it? What are they willing to do to get it? Give your character something they are willing to bleed for, and they will feel much more rounded.

To sum up…

Creating thoughtful, well-rounded characters can be a challenge. Making someone readers connect with is difficult, even for the most experienced writers. By breaking down the process into a few simple questions, your characters can feel more complete, and push your story from good to great.

Posted in Blog

How to Avoid the Dreaded “Sequel Slump”: Three Tips on Making Your Sequels Shine

Posted on by Avery Carter

One of the worst things about being a writer is writing the follow-up to a well-received book. You’ve sat with the good reviews for a while, let them build up your self-esteem, and then… you have to write the sequel. Everyone can name at least one sequel that fell short of the high standards set by its predecessor, and hopefully everyone can also name a sequel that went above and beyond the standards that its predecessor set. While writing my own sequel to Waxing Moon, the first book in the Moon Trilogy, I picked up a few tips that helped Waning Moon stand apart and above the standards of the first book.

1: Add a new point of view or main character

If you’re stuck on how to make your sequel feel fresh and interesting, adding a new point of view can help bring a new perspective (pun intended) to the events of the story you are telling. Authors like Brandon Sanderson, Maggie Stiefvater, and Emily St. John Mandel are great examples on how to handle point of view changes within a single book. While you can simply label each chapter with the point of view character’s name, look for other ways to make your characters stand out from each other.

One of the things I did to make sure that readers knew the difference between Ashlyn and Talia, even without the point of view labels, was giving them their own unique details to focus on. Talia is a werewolf, so she mainly pays attention to the smells and sounds in her scenes. Ashlyn, on the other hand, focuses on what she can see and feel. They both use music analogies to help make sense of their surroundings, which helps keep the points of view connected. It also helps them feel like part of the same story, rather than two separate stories sewn together.

2. Specifically define the stakes, world, and character’s abilities

The best part of writing a sequel is that you can really start to dig into the central conflicts of your story. The heavy lifting of the worldbuilding is done. You did that in the first book, painting the rules your characters and world have to follow in broad strokes. Now you can get down to the nitty gritty details. If your character fails the task set, what, exactly, happens? What do they risk losing? What do they gain if they succeed? Most importantly: does that character want to succeed? You don’t necessarily have to answer these questions in the final edit, but knowing the answers yourself will help you fill out your character’s motivations and the stakes in place.

You can also take the sequel to start exploring aspects of the world you’ve established in the first book. Are there new places that are important to your characters that you haven’t fully explored yet? Do you have a secondary world that needs to be filled out more? The sequel is a great place to do this! It adds more stakes and fills out the world you’ve created. It can give your readers a stronger connection to your world or characters as well, since there will be more places that they can connect with.

3. Get Weird!

The main thing to remember is that you’re not writing for anyone except yourself. It can be easy to get stuck in your own head and focus on making everything perfect. While it’s important to stay consistent and keep your writing high quality, it’s also important that you are still enjoying yourself. I usually take the time in my sequels to get weird. Inject some humor to lighten a situation, or add a fun way for your characters to describe something.

In the case of Waning Moon, I took a dangerous trip through the Wildlands and gave Ashlyn a chance to make a terrible pun about the situation. After flying through a cloud of butterfly-looking creatures with razor-sharp wings, she deadpan calls them “cutterflies”. It’s a light moment in an otherwise heavy situation, and is also undeniably weird.

Final Thoughts

Writing a sequel shouldn’t be daunting, but it can often be difficult to feel like you can meet the expectations of a great first novel. Hopefully, these tips give you a place to start, and help make your sequel the best it can be!