Writers Helping Writers^®

Character Arc

Identifying your Character’s Fatal Flaw

October 29, 2019

Identifying your Character’s Fatal Flaw

October 29, 2019

Good characters are often broken characters. They’ve been wounded, and the last thing they want is to be hurt in that particular way again, so they adopt new behaviors—emotional shielding—that are…

Introducing the Character Trait Boxed Set

October 22, 2019

Introducing the Character Trait Boxed Set

October 22, 2019

Full disclosure: Becca and I have been a bit sneaky this year. First, we decided that rather than tell everyone which thesaurus we would publish next we would surprise everyone,…

How Do You Know If Your Protagonist Is Strong Enough?

October 3, 2019

How Do You Know If Your Protagonist Is Strong Enough?

October 3, 2019

You can have an incredibly detailed world, adrenaline-spiking action and jaw-dropping plot twists, but unless the character in the driver’s seat is interesting, layered, and memorable, the story will pancake.…

Writing Feedback: Should We Seek It Out?

September 26, 2019

Writing Feedback: Should We Seek It Out?

September 26, 2019

As most of you know, Becca and I have been writing and publishing for some time now. Many thing have changed in the industry, including how a book reaches the…

Goal-Oriented Storytelling: Satisfaction

September 17, 2019

Goal-Oriented Storytelling: Satisfaction

September 17, 2019

Welcome to the final post in this four-part series on ANTS. As I mentioned in my first post, ANTS is a goal-oriented framework for storytelling. It’s what you’re trying to…

Avoiding Change: What’s Stopping Our Characters?

September 10, 2019

Avoiding Change: What’s Stopping Our Characters?

September 10, 2019

Stories are about change. Our characters’ world is changing around them, or they’re changing internally—or both. Yet at the same time, we know change is hard. In our own lives,…

Using Backward Design to Plan Your Story

September 5, 2019

Using Backward Design to Plan Your Story

September 5, 2019

Angelica Hartgers is here to show how planning your story backward may be a great technique if plotting is something you struggle with. “Begin with the end in mind.” -Stephen…

4 Keys to a Powerful Denouement

August 22, 2019

4 Keys to a Powerful Denouement

August 22, 2019

Often as writers, we put a lot of our focus on the starting, climax, and middle of a story, and the denouement or falling action may be somewhat of an…

Motivation for Character Arc: A Different Approach

August 20, 2019

Motivation for Character Arc: A Different Approach

August 20, 2019

When it comes to discovering and writing about your character’s motivation, there are a dozen different methods. We can get there by any number of roads—most of which originate in…

The Easiest Way to Plan Characters in a Series: Cloning (Yes, Really!)

June 27, 2019

The Easiest Way to Plan Characters in a Series: Cloning (Yes, Really!)

June 27, 2019

This spring, Becca and I released two very important tools for writers… The Emotion Thesaurus 2nd edition (expanded by 55 entries) and a Character Builder Tool at One Stop for…