Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

A jargon-free manual on the basics of developing interesting fictional characters

Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along.

“The core of character,” he says in chapter 1, “lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.” Building on that foundation—the capacity to care—Swain takes the would-be writer step-by-step through the fundamentals of finding and developing “characters who turn you on.” This basic but thought-provoking how-to is a valuable tool for both the novice and the seasoned writer.

• Techniques of the Selling Writer
• Scene & Structure (Elements of Fiction Writing)
• The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print
• Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure (Helping Writers Become Authors) (Volume 7)
• The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma
• Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction
• Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need
• How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method (Advanced Fiction Writing) (Volume 2)
• How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method (Advanced Fiction Writing) (Volume 1)