Write Your Novel Step by Step (23) "Characters' Personal Issues"

We all have personal issues – trouble with co-workers, family difficulties, unfulfilled hopes or dreams or a moral dilemma.
Though it is not necessary, every character can benefit from having a personal issue with which it must grapple or a belief system that comes under attack.
A moral dilemma, worldview or philosophy of life helps your characters come off as real people, rather than just functional players in the story. In addition, readers identify more easily with characters that have an internal struggle, and care about them more as well.
Consider each of your potential cast members, one by one. Read their entire dossier so far consisting of their list of attributes, self-description and perspective on your story.
If a belief system, personal code of behavior, philosophy, worldview, moral outlook or internal conflict is indicated, note it and write a few words about it in their dossier.  If a character has emotional issues regarding themselves, their world or the people in it, note that as well.
If you don’t see such an issue already present, read between the lies to see if one is inferred. If so, write a few words about that.
Now don’t beat your head against the wall looking for something that may not be there. If a personal issue isn’t indicated, it makes no sense to try to impose one. Some characters are better off without them.
For this step, just look over what you already know about each character and then single out and describe any personal issues it might have.

This article is one of the 200 interactive steps in

wp040b08b3_06Step by Step Story Development Software

wpc9342079_06Build your Story's World, who's in it, what happens to them and what it all means with StoryWeaver!  With over 200 interactive Story Cards, StoryWeaver takes you step by step through the entire process - from concept to completion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tannin Sensitivity (Sensitivity to Tannins)

Here's the ungarnished truth about tannins and tannin sensitivity. As you probably know, tannins are astringent polymers that naturally occur in coffee, tea, red wine and chocolate (among the most popular dietary sources). Effects of Tannins: Tannins may cause migraines, joint pain that mimics artheritis, tiredness, depression, bowel problems, problems with vision when focussing, digestion problems, thin brittle skin, perhaps hair loss and slow hair growth, and myriad other symptoms, both subtle and severe. For years I suffered a series of symptoms that I had pinned on coffee, uncertain about tea, and pretty sure were tied to red wine - no problem with chocolate. These symptoms were such diverse elements as - lethargy, tiredness, depression, joint pain in hips, shoulders and fingers, thin brittle skin, hair loss, slowed hair growth, slowed metabolism and even acid reflux and heartburn and diminished ability to focus closely, requiring reading glasses. I tried experim...
Read more

What is Mental Relativity?

Mental Relativity is a new model of psychology that grew out of the development of the Dramatica Theory of Story. Dramatica's central concept is called the Story Mind. According to the theory, every story has a mind of its own - the structure represents the mind's psychology and the storytelling develops its personality. The Dramatica theory was used to create a computer model of the Story Mind, which was patented and became the core "Story Engine" of a software product, also called Dramatica, which is the best selling story development tool in the world. The Story Engine is actually able to predict a psychological structure for a story based on an author's answers to questions about his or her dramatic intent. It wasn't long before it was discovered that this same Story Mind model was also able to predict the psychologies of real people in addition to characters. In further exploring this unexpected outgrowth of the theory, we discovered that the model was...
Read more

Origins of Mental Relativity

Many people have asked how we came up with the Mental Relativity Theory. Well, it didn't happen all at once. In fact, it all began with our attempt to understand the structure of fictional stories. That was a three year full-time effort, 8 hours a day. And the theory we now grew out of quite different concepts those we have now refined. In going through my archives, I just discovered four hours of recordings we made in 1991 to document our very first attempt at a "complete" theory - kind of a unified field theory of story. Here are all four hours of audio in mp3 formt, divided into 8 parts. Enjoy! Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 1 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 2 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 3 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 4 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 5 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 6 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 7 of 8 Origins of the Dramatica Theory - Part 8 of 8
Read more