First Word

I’m going to take a full section for your character development. A key to a character-driven (not a plot-driven) book are the characters. First, I want to say something important. Even a great plot-driven book has well-developed characters. Plot-driven books that fail to develop characters and go on the simple merit of the action will fail to become classics. Let’s look to film to show the difference. Why does a mega blockbuster film like Avatar earn critical praise while a popcorn film like Transformers does not? It’s all about a well-developed story that contains characters we love to love. Avatar has a real story with well-developed characters so much so I remember the star character’s name, Jake Sully. Transformers has some gorgeous stars for sure, how many of you remember the hero’s name? I don’t remember a single character’s name. Think of classic literature and the characters you probably know their names. You may not even remember the name of the book, but you remember ...

As a writer and book coach, I pay attention close attention to character development in both books and film. A technique to develop and contrast characters is to write great foils. A character foil is a character who serves as a contrast to another perhaps more primary character, so as to point out specific traits of the primary character. Since I am an avid True Blood fan, I thought it would be useful to show you how Eric is Sookie's character foil. I will point out some of the most obvious and blatant ways that the writer contrast them. Once I point it out, you'll continually notice it. What is most obvious is that Eric is Sookie's opposite in many ways but also the writers show their similarities too (I'll get to that). When Eric and Sookie are in a scene together one of the most blatant ways they contrast them is to dress Eric in all black and dress Sookie in white. We all know black means darkness and evil (Eric is not necessarily evil but that is one way blac...