Creating people for your fiction can be a breeze if you follow the author's advice. For example: use labels, add tags and traits, give them goals and motives. Fill in the background that got your people where they are. Imbue them with varying degrees of eccentricity. Fun, fun, fun. It's like dappling with paint and canvas!

I especially liked the chapter titled Bent Twigs. It was about how much background writers should give a character. . .we need to give them just enough to make them believable.

It was a great book.

This book made me feel enlightened as to how to go about creating believable characters who live and breathe and walk the pages of a novel.

The deceased author Dwight V. Swain focused his life on writing. This took him into newspaper work magazine staff jobs, pulp fiction, informational film--even chasing guerrillas through Central America as a foreign correspondent. He taught in the University of Okalhomas Professional Writing Program for more than twenty years and was honored with the Governor's Arts in Education Award. His books include Techniques of the Selling Writer, (which I have and has helped me out immensely), Film Scriptwriting: A Practical Manual, and Scripting for Video and Audiovisual Media.

It helps the author make lifelike characters.

Dwight V. Swain is my favorite author on the topic of writing.

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Created Jul 30, 2003 at 8:36am • Submit your own review...