A writer's journey...

A book would be nothing without characters, and with such an important role, it’s vital that we create ones that are strong and rememberable. These include our supporting characters. When creating your main characters no doubt you put much time and effort into crafting their personality, their history, their relationships with others, their personal tastes in all areas of life, their physical appearance, their desires and needs, their background, education, occupation, and the list goes on. To sum this up, you know your main characters intimately. The same should be said of your supporting characters. You might be wondering why as they don’t have the same on-the-page time as do main characters, but here’s the reason: characters can make or break your book just as a bad actor or actress can kill a movie. Consider for a minute how boring it would be if all your characters were black shadows walking through a cardboard city. That’s essentially how flat a story can be if...

Have you ever read a book and noticed that a certain character acted differently than you would have expected? Did it throw you out of the story? While most of us follow a somewhat predictable path in regards to our habits and response to repetitive situations, life events have the power to alter our reaction. When it comes to fictional characters, I always defer to real life. Have you, or anyone you know well reacted differently to a situation than you would have thought? I am certain you can think of many instances. Personally, two weeks ago, I took off last minute to see my sister who lives four and half hours away by car. I took the train adding about two hours to the journey with layovers, et cetera. But this isn’t something my husband or she ever saw coming. I’m usually a bit of a planner. I don’t typically travel alone. These are just two aspects of my personality that don’t “allow” for me to just drop everything and go. So, must characters in our books be any...