Guest Post at Visual Arts Junction

In my recent interview with Aggie Villanueva, Aggie shared a little about her experiences in self-publishing. Now she’s writing a series on self-publishing at Visual Arts Junction.

I’m honored that Aggie asked me to write a guest post on finding the right editor. Even though the article is geared for self-publishing authors, writers who are seeking an editor to polish their manuscript before submitting to traditional publishers will also find helpful tips. I hope you’ll stop by and say hell0.

Read How to Find a Good Self-Publishing Editor at Visual Arts Junction.

photo credit: puregin

Freelance Editing Rates: Most Popular Search Terms

What are people looking for when they find this blog through search engines?

Although I’ve been signed up to Google Analytics for ages, I don’t pay as much attention as I should to the statistics. However, with the latest upgrade, WordPress now shows statistics from Google Analytics on the dashboard.

Since I’ve been seeing the statistics every day, I’ve noticed something surprising. There is one post that has significantly more traffic than any other, and it’s a post from nearly two years ago:  How Much Will It Cost? Average Freelance Editing Rates. That post has had more than 2500 visits in the last year, more than 300 in the last month. It regularly gets more traffic than any other post except the latest one.

The searchers may be freelancers trying to set their own prices or they may be prospective clients wanting to get an idea of how much it will cost them to have something edited—most likely, a combination of both.

Three of the top five search terms that bring search engine traffic here are related to this topic: freelance editing rates, freelance editor rates, and freelance editing fees. Out of curiosity, I searched those three terms on Google. My post is #1 for freelance editing rates and #2 for the other two terms. Strangely, my post is basically a summary of the information and a link to an excellent chart from the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA). That organization’s site doesn’t appear on the first page of Google for any of the search terms, but the site that is #2 where my post is #1 and #1 where my post is #2 also links to the EFA site. Guess I’ll never understand search engine ranking.

I’m thinking about writing a series about the topic of freelance rates, but I need your help. Please give me your input in comments. Answer one or more of the following questions and share any other ideas you have.

• Would you be interested in such a series? If so, would you like to see it focused on editing rates or would you like to see writing rates included as well?
• Should it be from the perspective of a freelancer determining her rates or a client trying to understand and compare rates?
• What resources (blogs/Web sites, books, etc.) should I include?
• If you are a freelancer, would you be willing to take part in an anonymous survey to report your rates?

Thank you for your feedback. People seem to want to know about freelance editing rates, and I’d like to provide the information they seek.

Added: I have compiled a short survey to gather information about what freelance writers and editors charge. If you freelance as a writer or editor, full-time or part-time, please take the survey described and linked in this post on September 26.

Ten Tips to Impress an Editor after Acceptance

The last post covered ten tips to impress an acquisitions editor. Now, you have the assignment for a magazine article or your book has been accepted for publication. The following ten tips will help you impress the editor for the project.

1. Meet deadlines—submitting work early is even better.
2. Self-edit—give the editor the cleanest manuscript you can so she can focus on making a great work even better instead of correcting errors.
3. Follow house style—your style preferences aren’t important; a consistent style is important to the publication.
4. Share a common goal—you both want to produce an article or book that readers love.
5. Accept critiques and advice gracefully—the editor sees your work from a different perspective; even if you don’t agree with everything she says, respect her position and opinion.
6. Make revisions pleasantly—no writer likes to make changes, but all have to do it; being unpleasant only makes revisions more difficult.
7. Stand up for your work when important—if you truly believe the change the editor asks for will make your story or article worse, politely and firmly explain your position and ask the editor to reconsider.
8. Collaborate—work together with your editor to leverage your individual talents and skills to produce the best work possible.
9. Say thanks—everyone likes to be appreciated.
10. Remember, editors are people too!

Ten Tips to Impress an Acquisitions Editor

Writers who are submitting work to magazine or book publishers want to make a good impression from the first contact. These ten tips will help you do just that.

1. Target the market—make sure your work is a good fit with the publisher.
2. Know the editor—verify her name and spell it correctly.
3. Follow submission guidelines—your work may not even be reviewed if you don’t.
4. When in doubt, find out—ask questions rather than do it wrong.
5. Take your cue from the editor on formality and style—be businesslike and formal until the editor responds less formally.
6. Tailor your pitch to the publication—let the editor know you are familiar with the magazine or book imprint.
7. Respect the editor’s time—don’t expect them to chit-chat on the phone.
8. Follow-up only after the response time has passed—response times are published to let you know how long to expect to wait to hear from the editor.
9. Say thanks—everyone likes to be appreciated.
10. Remember, editors are people too!

Show and Tell Exercises

In a recent post, I said writers should both show and tell in fiction.

I gave an example of re-writing narrative summary (telling) into an action scene (showing).

Now, it’s your turn. Select one or more of the narrative summaries below and re-write as an action scene. If you’d like feedback from me (and anyone who’d like to join in), post your scene in a comment.

1.  Thelma was very angry.  She told John she never wanted to see him again.  He had betrayed her once and she wouldn’t give him the chance to hurt her again.  She told him to pack his bags and be out of the house before she got home from work.

2.  Michael was determined to make the basketball team.  He practiced long hours every day, neglecting his homework and ignoring his friends.

3.  Melissa was frightened when she heard footsteps behind her.  She thought about the article she’d read in the morning paper about a serial rapist who had eluded police for weeks.

4.  Sue was an excellent cook and liked to create her own recipes.  She decided to come up with something special for her holiday party, and she experimented with a number of ideas before she found the perfect menu.

5.  Judy was a compulsive gossip.  Whenever she heard anything about any the neighbors, she considered it her duty to tell everyone else in the neighborhood. 

Join in by posting your action scene in a comment or giving feedback on scenes others post—or both.

Show and Tell

Fiction writers often hear show, don’t tell.

But I advise my clients to show and tell.

What does it mean to show or tell? When should you show and when should you tell?

You show in an action scene, like in a movie:

• An action scene takes place in real time.
• It takes place in a specific setting with specific characters.
• There is action—characters are talking or moving; something happens.
• Major action scenes involves conflict between two opposing forces; minor action scenes show character or give information important to the story.
• Action scenes involve the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.

You tell in narrative summary:

• Narrative telescopes time and events when nothing interesting or important happens.
• It can summarize repetitive action to give impact to one event (such as series of races).
• Narrative may include interior monologue.

Should you show or tell?

• You need to use both narrative summary and action scenes to vary the rhythm of the story. Too much action maintains such a high pace it exhausts the readers and doesn’t give them time to reflect. Too much narrative bores the reader and doesn’t give them the sense of what is important and what isn’t.
• Use narrative summary for events that are less important or interesting and for transitions.
• Use action scenes for major events.
• Like a child making a scene with a temper tantrum, make a scene (action) when you want to get your readers’ attention.

When I tell clients they are doing too much telling and not enough showing, they ask me how to change from telling to showing.

Let me give you an example. Before is all narrative summary.

Eleanor got into the car and put her packages onto the front seat.  She was glad to be finished at the mall.  She didn’t like crowds, but she had to buy Christmas presents for her family.  She drove out of the parking lot and onto the street.  When she was stopped at the traffic light, she heard a man’s voice from behind her seat.  He told he had a gun and if she did what he said, she wouldn’t be hurt.  He told her to turn right at the next intersection. 

After is an action scene.

Eleanor  juggled an armload of packages as she opened the car door. She tossed the bags to the far side of the car, breathing a sigh of relief that she’d passed up the glass figurine she’d considered for Sue. The blouse she’d ended up choosing was as unbreakable as the stuffed toys for her nieces and nephews.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Man, I hate crowds. When will I learn to get my Christmas shopping done early? If I could stand the disappointed looks on the kids’ faces, I wouldn’t even bother.

Vowing to take something for her headache and go straight to bed the minute she got door, Eleanor started the car and drove out of the parking lot. At the intersection of Bayles and Crockett, she stopped for a red light, massaging her temples as she waited for the light to change.

“Just do what I say. I’ve got a gun.”

 Eleanor jerked her head up at the sound of a man’s voice coming from the back seat. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel as she told herself she’d fallen asleep and was in the middle of the nightmare. She started to look behind her.

“Don’t look at me! If you just do as you’re told, I won’t hurt you. But if you don’t …”

What he didn’t say frightened her more than what he did say. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do whatever you say.” Her voice quavered and tears threatened.

“The light’s green. Drive to the next intersection and turn right. And no funny business. Understand?”

Creating Fictional Characters—Part 8: Developing Characters throughout Your Story

We’ve covered a lot about creating characters. In this last installment in the series, we’ll cover developing your characters throughout your story.

If you thought you were finished with character development when you created that character chart or bio, you were wrong.

Just as people grow and change in real life, so must your characters. Not only do they grow physically, they grow emotionally and in many other ways.

Added 7/28/09: I just read a great post on character growth at Spunk on a Stick.

• Develop characters through stress and emotion.
  • Stress is mental tension springing from emotion—something we’re probably all familiar with in our own lives.
  • Emotion is liking or disliking, feeling good or feeling bad about something—another common experience for all of us.
  • Emotion gives the character direction, and direction is what makes us know the character is alive.
• Gain your reader’s empathy for your characters.
  • Characters showing emotion rouses our emotions—we feel with the characters. 
  • Consider your audience—what arouses emotion in one group (senior citizens) may not in another group (teens).
• Hook the reader immediately.
  • A hook is a scene early in the story that plunges the main character into danger and captures your reader’s attention and interest.
  • Create and raise the fear that something will or won’t happen (the bomb will explode or the girl won’t have a date for the prom).
• Change is danger.
  • Every story is the record of how characters deal with danger, but every change constitutes a danger
  • Every change, no matter how minor, requires people or characters to adjust, to adapt, and there’s always the threat that the adjustment won’t be successful
  • The initial change may seem trivial, but it leads to more change and more danger.
  • You, the writer, have to see the potential for impending doom in everything that happens
• Emotion doesn’t have to be described intensely for the reader to feel it intensely.
  • The events themselves can create emotion because we are programmed to react to certain things with certain emotions. If the character hears strange noises in the house in the middle of the night, we fear an intruder and react emotinally as if the intruder were in our own living room.
  • Actions speak louder than words—instead of describing the emotion, show how the character manifests it in action. Rather than write “She was terrified,” write “She broke into a cold sweat and pulled the covers more tightly around her; her own heartbeat sounded louder than the crashing noises coming from the living room.”
• Remember, your main characters must have purpose and direction.
  • The character doesn’t have to recognize they have a goal. She may think it’s just common sense to keep a financial safety net in savings, not realizing that her goal is to never again live as her family had in her childhood, always one jump ahead of the bill collectors.
  • More emotion is generated when goal-oriented action is frustrated. Being faced with spending all of her nest egg to save her family’s home creates strong stress and emotion. 
• Characters must feel emotion to want change; the more emotion the character feels, the more emotion the reader feels.
  • First, feel emotion yourself—recall times when you felt intense emotion.
  • Relive the experience in your mind in detail.
  • Assign the feelings and reactions you experienced to your character. The feelings are the same even if the incidents are very different.
• Create and develop characters that readers like.
  • Readers identify with others like them— your characters must have traits and beliefs in common with the audience you’re writing for.
  • Your main character must be like your reader and more—someone who is larger than life who takes on a challenge over and beyond us.
  • Your character should be a person the reader would like to be.
  • The character must have that quality we all want: courage—the strength to fight on, win or lose.
  • Courage doesn’t have to spelled out in words; it’s revealed in action. It takes courage for a character to sacrifice her financial security to help a loved one or to stand up to evil. 
  • Build your characters through adversity.
• Make you main characters dynamic, just like people are in real life.
  • Reveal background and character throughout the story. Beginning writers often make the mistake of thinking they have to tell everything about the character as soon as he is introduced, boring the reader and not advancing the story.
  • Actions must be consistent—in character—as the story moves, but the character should change in some way.
  • Change will be gradual. Your main character doesn’t go from being claustrophobic to having no fear instantly, but she can get a little better with each incident until the fear is gone.
  • Change will be subtle in a short story. more dramatic in a novel, but characters must change.

I hope this series on creating fictional characters has given you food for thought and some practical advice to help you in writing fiction. I’ll close with a few more resources on character creation and development.

• Character Creation Articles at Fiction Factor
• General Fiction Articles at Writing-World (scroll down to the section on Characters)
• One Character’s Character at Enriched by Words
• Plotting and Developing the Novel: A Character-Based Approach

Care about your characters and give them something to care about. Make your readers love them or hate them, but never let the readers be bored by the characters.

photo credit: r.s.m.b. Sees

Creating Fictional Characters—Part 7: Giving Characters Goals and Motivation

Characters in your story must have reasons for their actions. In real life, we don’t know what people are thinking or why they do what they do, but in fiction, readers will accept the characters’ actions only if they believe the reasons for them. They ask “Why did he do that?,” and they expect an answer—from words and actions of the character at some point in the story.

Your main character(s) must have the desire for change. Characters who never change are boring. Fiction is all about change.

• Everybody wants to be happy.
  • Characters want happiness, a sense of self-worth or self-importance.
  • They want to avoid unhappiness and loss of self-esteem.
  • The specific situations and possessions that constitute happiness or unhappiness may be very different for different characters, but they—like real people—want what makes them happy.
• Everyone is afraid of something. 
  • What is your character scared of? 
  • What will he or she do to overcome the fear?

• Characters tend to lead the kind of life they enjoy. 
• They’re on a search for some combination of five things most people want:
  • Adventure – new experiences, excitement, thrills
  • Security – financial, physical, and emotional
  • Recognition – fame, honor, being known
  • Love – all kinds: romance, love of family, friendship
  • Power – authority, control

Your characters must have goals. They must want some specific thing to be different in their lives. Goals are essential to test your character to demonstrate he’s worthy of the readers’ attention.

• There are two kinds of goals.
  • The general goal is the character’s main overriding goal for the entire story: win the presidency, marry a rich man, solve the mystery.
  • The immediate goal is a smaller goal that must be met on the way to the general goal: various steps in the campaign for president, meet and attract a rich suitor, gather evidence and consider suspects.

Your characters must have drive, the “give a hoot” factor, an inner pressure, the  intensity of character’s desire to change.

• Characters have to care, to feel that their goal is important. If it’s not important to the character, it certainly won’t be important to the reader.
• Drive is the key ingredient of commitment, and the more committed your character is, the more readers’ care about him. 
• In real life, people “drift,” but drifting is boring; driving is exciting. Characters may drift at first but as the story progresses, they must have something they care strongly about, whether they realize it or not.
• Give your character something to care about, consciously or unconsciously. Fit him with a goal suitable to the direction you’ve given him
• Threaten that goal, that something he cares about. There’s no story if the protagonist reaches his goal easily. Characters must face conflict, obstacles to reaching their goal, throughout the story.
• Establish reasons for him not to quit, not to give up—reasons for him to keep fighting and ultimately attain his goal.

Your charactes’ attitudes are important in their drive.

• Attitudes are consistent dispositions that your character is reluctant to relinquish, whether rational or not. Attitudes are products of conditioning.
• Each character has many attitudes about different aspects of life and the world. Together they form the dominant attitude.
• Attitudes change in different circumstances.

Characters need both goals and motivation.

• Goals are what characters want to do or achieve or acquire: get rich, become a doctor, have a large family.
• Motivation is WHY they want to do, achieve, or acquire it: he grew up poor and other kids made fun of his clothes, she saw her mother die at a young age, he was a lonely and unhappy only child.
• The character may not know why he does something. Rationalization is coming up with an excuse, a reason that is believable, whether or not it’s true. We do this in real life—we buy a car because it’s luxurious, but we rationalize that we bought it because it’s got a good safety record and is a good investment.
• Readers must be convinced that the character’s motivation would lead to his or her actions. If readers don’t believe the character’s actions fit with his motivation, they won’t care about what happens to the character. And when readers don’t care about the characters, they don’t care about the story.

How do you give your characters goals and motivation?

photo credit: openpad

Creating Fictional Characters—Part 6: Putting The Right Words In Their Mouths

I’ve learned about dialogue since the first draft of my first novel. When I’d finished about half the book, a writer friend read it. When she returned the manuscript to me, she said, “Do you realize you don’t have one word of dialogue in this entire story?”

My characters talked—there was just no dialogue. I wrote things like Debbie asked Jake to fix her breakfast. He told her he’d be glad to.

I started writing dialogue but decided not to edit the first part of the manuscript until I finished the first draft. My mother, who was a reader but not a writer, said, “I don’t know what it was, but the second half of the book was a whole lot better than the first.”

In Make Your Words Work: Proven Techniques for Effective Writing-For Fiction and Nonfiction, Gary Provost says “Dialogue is real speech’s greatest hits.”

Listen to a normal conversation. You’ll hear a lot of nothing.

“How are you doing?”

“OK. How about you?”

“Can’t complain.”

This kind of conversation won’t move your story forward or reveal character. It will simply bore your reader.

Rather than a mirror of real conversations, dialogue is:

• Two or more characters talking with purpose, not just chit-chatting but talking for a reason
• Something artificial that appears real—realistic, not real, without all the uhs and you knows and boring information

To create dialogue that works:

• Use real speech rhythms
• Include implication and evasiveness as real conversation
• Eliminate the trivial and banal
• Include the unspoken (body language) as well as the spoken

Dialogue has several purposes:

• Characterize – to prove what you said about the characters is true
• Give information – but only information that would naturally be exchanged in conversation
• Advance plot – move action forward
• Convey tension – shortcut to conflict

Conversations in fiction can be described in three ways:

• Summary – brief description of what was discussed: John told Susie about his argument with Joe.
• Indirect dialogue – description of what was said without quotation: John told Sue that he and Joe had an argument and almost got into a fight. She asked what caused the argument, and John said … This is how I wrote dialogue when I first started, and even my mother thought it was boring.
• Direct dialogue – verbatim quote:

“Joe and I got into an argument at the pool today. I thought he was going to hit me,” John said.

“Oh, dear, “Susie said. “What in the world brought that about?”

Use direct dialogue for important conversations:

• Don’t waste direct dialogue on inconsequential discussion or exposition. If the reader already knows the information and the only purpose of the dialogue is to provide the information to another character, summary or indirect dialogue is probably better than dialogue.
• Set off dialogue with quotation marks with a comma between the spoken words and the tag.
  • If the tag comes after the spoken words, the comma goes inside the quotation marks: “I went to town yesterday,” he said.
  • If the tag comes before the spoken words, the comma goes after the attribution: He said, “I went to town yesterday.”
• Put each speaker’s words in a separate paragraph. Although it’s best to break up the dialogue so one speaker doesn’t give a monologue, if one character talks for a long time, break up his or her words into short paragraphs. In that case, put quotation marks at the beginning of the paragraph only and do not close the quotation marks until the end of the speaker’s words.

Use dialogue tags for attribution of speakers:

• Avoid using a tag if it’s clear who’s speaking. If there are only two characters in the conversation, each of them can speak a few times without attribution. The reader can follow a few exchanges between two characters without losing track of who’s speaking.
• Said is transparent and should be the tag used most often. Writers often think said is boring, but readers hardly know it’s there.
• Use other tags—answered, explained, replied, stated, etc.—sparingly. Dialogue isn’t improved by using many different tags; in fact, readers find it distracting.
• Never use a verb that is a physical impossibility—smiled, chuckled, grimaced, grinned. A character can smile before or after he speaks, but he can’t smile a word or chuckle a sentence. The title of the book Shut Up! He Explained: A Writer’s Guide to the Uses and Misuses of Dialogue (now out-of-print but available from used booksellers) shows the wrong way to write dialogue.
• Don’t add explanation or adverbs
  • If the dialogue is strong, you don’t need them: He stormed out of the room and slammed the door angrily. If he stormed out of the room and slammed the door, the reader can figure out he’s angry.
  • If the dialogue is weak, strengthen the dialogue: He left the room angrily is not nearly as strong as He stormed out of the room and slammed the door.
• Use action tags – beats: “Hurry or we’ll be late.” Toni gulped down the last of her coffee and tossed the plastic cup in the sink. “Today’s going to be a busy day.”
  • To complement the dialogue—in the example above the actions reinforce the words that Toni is in a hurry.
  • For variation—people talking are not disembodied voices. They are doing things as they speak, and so should your characters.
  • For pauses— an action tag varies the pace.

Give your characters distinctive voices. In Creating Characters: How to Build Story People, Dwight Swain writes

The words you speak, what you say and how you say, it reveal you as a particular person. … These are things the writer must think about, be aware of. If the words he puts in his story people’s mouths are out of character, he’ll be hard put to rise above them.

• Gender—in general, women strive to make connections and men negotiate to see who’s on top of the ladder.
• Age—a teenager is likely to use a lot of slang; an elderly person is apt to speak more formally.
• Education/literacy level—a high school dropout usually doesn’t sound like a college graduate. 
• Background experiences—where someone lives, events they have experienced, people they associate with all have a bearing on how they talk.
• Attitude and self-image—a self-confident person will sound different than a timid person with low-esteem.
• Favorite topics—your characters’ conversations will reflect their interests and activities. A race car enthusiast will sound different than someone who loves to read classic literature.

Different characters have different speech patterns.

• Characters can use slang or proper English, short or long sentences, complete sentences or fragments.
• Use contractions to sound natural unless the speaker is pompous or not a native English speaker.
• Don’t use strange spellings to signify dialect; use rhythms, word choices, and word placement instead.
• Don’t worry about proper grammar—write as the character would speak.
• Don’t have characters repeat the other person’s name. Normally when you are talking to a person individually, you don’t call them by name. On the other hand, if several people are in a conversation, you might call a specific person by name if you wanted to talk to him or her.

Characters talk to themselves:

• Interior monologue is what goes on in the character’s head: unspoken thoughts.
• Direct thoughts are shown in italics: The world has gone crazy.
• Use the Q trick—state the thought in the form of a question to avoid attribution: Had the whole world gone crazy?

Here’s an example of how not to write dialogue:

“Jane, do remember that your father died last year and left his entire estate to your brother Carl?” Kay asked.

“Yes, Kay, I do.” Jane answered. “We suspected that Carl knew something about the mysterious secret in my father’s past and that he bribed our father to leave him the estate.”

“Your cousin Marvin agreed with us,” Kay responded. “Now it looks like we may be finding out what really happened, Jane.”

“Marvin’s mother was my father’s sister. They had a falling out years ago, and no one knows why. Have you found out something, Kay?” Jane demanded.

Leave a comment and tell me everything you find wrong with this poor example.

photo credit: Amy Jeffries

Creating Fictional Characters—Part 5: Developing Background And Traits Using A Character Chart, Bio, Diary, or Interview

In previous installments in this series, we’ve talked about what the author needs to know about her characters. You should know things about your characters that you don’t necessarily reveal directly to readers—things that cause the character to behave the way he does. In some cases, you will show, not tell, your readers. In some cases, you will use the information to know what the character will do and to understand why.

Some important elements the writer needs to know about main characters that won’t always be told to readers (in no particular order):

• Appearance
• Lifestyle/Possessions
• Self-concept
• Relationships
• Habits
• Beliefs
• Traits
• Memories and feelings
• Motivation and goals

Writers use a variety of methods to define characters.  Some of the most popular include:

• Character chart: a chart that lists important information about the character, ranging from physical appearance to defining moments in the character’s life. Examples of character charts can be found at
  • Inspiration for Writers
  • Fiction Writer’s Character Chart  
  • Charlotte Dillon 
  • The Epiguide.com Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
  •  Read Write Think Character Perspective Chart
  • Writing Genre Fiction Character Chart
  • My character chart (in Word format that you may freely use and distribute) and a character chart-in-progress for Act of Faith, my work-in-progress
• Bio: a narrative of past including every important year and event or a variation, a slice of life, as a typical day. For examples, see
  • Poewar—10 Days of Character Building: Biography
  • Building a Character Biography
  • Poewar—10 Days of Character Building: A Day in the Life
• Diary: the character’s own thoughts. For ideas on using diary/journal entries to create characters, see
  • Paperback Writer: Eight Characters
  • Keeping Character Journals
• Interview: ask questions of your character and/or the people around them.
  • For ideas, read
    • Poewar—10 Days of Character Building: Interview
    • Poewar—10 Days of Character Building: Building a Character Using Multiple Perspectives
  • Sample questions to ask your character
    • What one thing in your childhood made the biggest impression on your or influenced you the most?
    • Who was the most important person in your life in your childhood? Who is the most important person in your life now?
    • What is your favorite color, TV show, book, leisure-time activity, possession, music, food…?
    • What is your job and how did you come to do that?
    • What is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? The best?
    • Do you have a religious faith? If so, how important is it to you? What is your attitude toward religion?
    • What do you do best? What would like to do well that you can’t?
    • What is your earliest memory from your childhood?
    • How would you describe your family and childhood? Your present relationships? Previous relationships?
    • If you could do anything you wanted for the next month, what would you do? Who would you do it with?
    • Where did you go to school? How far did you go in school? How did you feel about school?
    • What are your hobbies? How did these come about?
    • If you could change 3 things in your life or about yourself, what would they be?
  • Sample questions to ask other characters about your character
    • How would you describe Character in one sentence?
    • What do you like best about this person? Least? Admire most? Least?
    • What is his strongest character trait? Weakest?
• Act the part: This idea came from a comment on an earlier post in this series. David at Birmingham Accountant wrote:

I’m a bit of a ‘method actor’ when I’m creating characters. I’ll step into their world for a day or so and try to behave, react and speak just like my character. Really helps me get under their skin to see how they’d behave in a variety of situations. 

How do you get to know your characters? Do you use a character chart, bio, interview, or diary? Do you put yourself in the role of character?

photo credit: TheeErin

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