How do you know if you have created a distinct character? How important is role? And what is a supporting character anyway? How do motivation and subplot work toward giving your characters individuality? And what sort of tools can you use to help create these individuals? In the end Alida wraps it all up together, and even gives some great exercises to help you create distinct characters.
How is setting different from world building? What do you put on the page and what should you leave out? How much detail is too much detail? And how do you keep your setting active in your story? Robert gives great practical ways to evaluate your style of writing setting, and how to make it better!
What is trouble? How does it contribute to both character and plot arcs? How do you have to pay off trouble? And do you have to get it into every scene? We enjoy making a character struggle with a speeding ticket, and talk about how it can contribute to hooks both between chapters and books.
At what point does a character or place earn a name? How do naming and significance relate? And how do you keep nameless characters descriptors from becoming boring or repetitive? And what about real world places? Is there such thing as a short cut? And finally we commiserate about the difficulty of naming characters. We all just want them to sound awesome!
How do you define literary fiction? And is there a value judgment between literary and genre? Is literary just a feeling or can we measure it? And how can you make your own novel literary? Want to pick up a literary book – we’ve got plenty of examples for you to choose from!
I'm Alida
I help people express their gifts to the world.
I do not believe in formulas. I believe that the stories we are compelled to tell the world make demands on us, and it is our privilege to meet those demands in order to reach the most people in the most authentic and compelling way possible.
