Creating Fictional Characters, A Compendium and Round-up of Links and Books (Fall in Love with Writing Craft)
Undogmatic writing advice and encouragement from an unconventional romance author. If you’re in need of instruction and inspiration for your writing, read on. Upgrade to paid for classes and access to a friendly, vibrant writing community. And if you like what you read, drop a heart or share it with friends.
I wrote the original Wordstrumpet blog1 for many years, first on the late and lamented Typepad2 site, then on Wordpress.3 I also wrote The Abundant Writer newsletter. Having both was confusing. Which is why I leapt at the chance to switch everything over to Substack a couple of years ago. But I still pay to keep the old Wordstrumpet blog up because there are over a thousand articles posted on it. And because it’s my first online child. Every once in awhile I get inspired and copy and paste posts from here onto it, trying to justify its continuing existence. So I often get notifications of comments on it. They’re always spam but when I go check I think, huh, there’s some good stuff here. I should share it.
Recently one of those spam comments made me realize that, specifically, I have lots of good stuff on characters over there. And so I resolved to share some here, in the hopes it will be genuinely helpful to you.
I will warn you that a lot of the references I make in these posts are severely dated. Remember, these were written in the glory days of blogging, when the personal was the thing. Just for good measure, I’ve listed some of my favorite books on character as well.
Also—I’ve been paywalling my craft posts but I’m keeping this one free.
The Character Links
Creating Characters: Compassion and Conflict
Creating Characters: Mai, Oui, Marcel, I Could Use Some Help
On Motivation, (In Your Characters and Yourself)
9 Ways to Create Characters Readers Will Identify With
Writing Scenes to Unearth Character
Characters at Cross Purposes
Use Yourself as Inspiration for Your Characters
7 Ways to Get to Know Your Character
When a Character Morphs
Prepping for the Novel: Characters
Okay, there are more articles, many more, but I’ll stop at this for now. (If you wish, you can visit the old site. There’s a search box about halfway down the home page on the right that you can put writing terms into.)
The Character Books
Write Iconic Characters, by Claire Taylor. Amazon Bookshop I periodically make my love of the Enneagram known. This book feeds that, with its descriptions of how the various Enneagram types affect character. A very helpful compendium. And thanks to my friend Jacqueline who had it sent to me!
The Art of Character, by David Corbett. Amazon Bookshop My man. I love him. I love how he talks about character.
The Compass of Character, by David Corbett. Amazon. Bookshop The sequel. It’s great, too.
Creating Unforgettable Characters, by Linda Seger. Bookshop. Amazon. An oldie but goodie. I’ve had it on my bookshelf for year.
The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Bookshop. Amazon. A helpful guide to conveying character emotion. And there are nine more books in this series!
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass Amazon Bookshop. I like all of his books and this one focuses on the emotional aspect (duh) of novels.
Okay, that’s it. But I would love to hear about your favorite books on character, or your thoughts on creating them. Please do leave a comment and share.
A new subscriber asked me if the name means Word strumpet or Words trumpet. It’s the former, Word strumpet, as in, wanton for words.
I adored Typepad for so many reasons, not the least of which was prompt customer service reps who cheerfully answered your questions.
I hated Wordpress with the heat of a thousand suns. I was so happy to change over to Substack.
Oh, manna from heaven!
Great resources! I always love diving into craft articles. New ideas and reminders I need to hear repeatedly. 🙌🏼