In honor of
Valentine’s Day, Creative Director Gary Fearon is honored to relinquish Tune-In
Tuesday to a mystery writer whose books you’ll love, Elizabeth S. Craig.
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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
We all love our characters. What’s not to love? They start
out as our own creations, then suddenly come to life on the page. They’re our very own Pinocchios.
But loving our characters means hurting our characters.
Otherwise, there just wouldn’t be a story for them. Who’d read a book where the characters
happily go from beginning to end with no problems to overcome or challenges to
face?
Let’s take it from our characters’ point of view. What makes our characters happiest? My guess
is having more adventures. And the best way to ensure they have more
adventures is by writing books that readers love and want more of—books that
aren’t boring. Our characters need
setbacks.
Great ways to mess
up our characters’ lives (at least temporarily):
Big problems: Depending
on your genre, this could mean a murder, a crippling addiction, the end of the
world, or the death of a loved one.
Medium-sized problems: What other trouble can we toss in our
characters’ way? How about a job loss,
an aging parent moving in with them, or an unexpected medical issue?
Smaller problems: To
create tension in every scene, we can also build in smaller
conflicts—characters who rub our protagonist the wrong way, flat tires, and
arguments with friends or spouses.
Remember, we’re doing these things for our characters’ own
good. We’re ensuring they live to fight
another day…loving them enough to make them suffer. Because, for writers, love means never having
to say you’re sorry.
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Follower her on Twitter.
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