Understanding and clearly conveying what shaped your characters into who they are when we âmeetâ them is essential to investing readers in your characters and their journey. It lets us understand why they do what they do throughout the course of it, why they react and behave as they do. Itâs what creates cohesive, believable, relatable characters who spring off the page and into readersâ minds and hearts.
Your story focuses on your characters at a particular time in their lives, but what they do, their motivations and their goals, their behavior, demeanor, reactions, fears and insecurities, desires and dislikes, ideologies and biases, their relationships, what they say and how they say itâeverythingâstems in some way from their pastâin other words, their backstory.
But backstory is more than just your charactersâ history. It also encompasses their present lives: their relationships with family, friends, acquaintances, even enemies; their jobs, volunteer work, daily responsibilities and routines; the country, region, and neighborhood they live in; their socioeconomic situationâevery factor of a characterâs life that has created the person they are when your story begins and how they act, react, and interact over the course of it.
But how do you determine what elements of the characterâs past and present life are relevant to who they are now, in this story? How do you use it to show why they act, react, behave, and think the way they doâand to help you figure out organically and believably what they might do in every situation and circumstance you throw at them?
In this live webinar, youâll learn techniques and tools to create characters who feel fully fleshed and real; whose actions, behaviors, reactions, and words feel cohesive; and who exist believably in their worldâwithout getting buried in backstory, exposition, or description.
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Meet the instructor
Tiffany Yates Martin
Tiffany Yates Martin has spent her entire career as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial (named one of Writerâs Digestâs Best Websites for Authors) and author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and her latest, The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career. She is a regular contributor to writersâ outlets like Writerâs Digest, Jane Friedman, and Writer Unboxed, and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writersâ organizations around the world. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she is the author of six novels.
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