Tone can be one of the hardest things to master, especially in the first draft of a novel. There’s a fine line between oppressing your reader with needless darkness and adding so much humor that the story seems irreverent. But between those two extremes is the perfect tone, offering enough meaning and impact to create…
Literature is full of characters with traumatic pasts. Whether a family member is dead, they grew up in an abusive environment, or they’ve been exiled from their home, every character seems to have some variety of trauma. Avatar: The Last Airbender is no exception. Katara’s mom was murdered in front of her, Zuko’s father maimed…
There are two important dimensions to character relationships. We already looked at one in an article on Age of Ultron, and how you create a group of characters that feels like family by allowing the entire group to interact and play off each other. It’s important to have scenes with your group of characters when…
Back in April we released an article looking at how Avatar: The Last Airbender mastered their fillers. We dove into the classic episode The Tales of Ba Sing Se: positioned in the very center of the series and featuring a series of mini stories featuring each of the characters. The writers took the “extra” episodes…
So far we’ve set up a premise, a protagonist, a theme, and even loosely outlined a plot for a story. But one thing we haven’t talked about almost at all on the blog is how to write good side characters, so that’s what we’re going to be discussing today. Side-characters can do a lot for…
Some character arcs are more dramatic than others. They’re the redemption arcs that you’ll never forget. The ones with choices so difficult that you wonder if you’d ever be able to make a choice like that, too. The moments when the characters fail, and it almost crushes you, and then they finally turn and make…
At this point, you’ve probably heard the complaints around modern protagonists and characters in general. Most characters seem to be on a grayscale morally — they make decisions typically only reserved for villains. They have been described as morally broken. Many have complained that there are so few examples of good morality in modern storytelling….
We wrote a whole article last year about how writers can generate suspense even when their audience knows exactly what happens next. But while stories where life and death hang in the balance can generate suspense even when the readers know what happens next, many stories are scattered with far less important, much smaller twists…
In the last few workshops, we’ve looked at laying down the foundation for writing a story, from developing an engaging protagonist, forming an interesting premise, and coming up with a theme that will drive the plot, protagonist, and her arc forward. Which leaves us with coming up with a plot for our protagonist. Plotting is…
Early this year, I wrote an article talking about how crucial it is to write characters who balance two, seemingly opposite characteristics. We looked at how powerful those characters can be, and how easily they avoid becoming yet another overused cliche or falling into a tired troupe. But not all characters can balance two opposing…