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David Farland’s Writing Tips – Twelve Exercises for Developing Characters

There are a lot of exercises that can help you create characters. Most of them simply force you to focus
on your character and stretch your imagination in some way by answering questions about the
characters. These questions might touch upon the outer looks of the character, the character’s history,
the character family and contacts, or the character’s inner hopes and fears. But creating characters for
fantasy and science fiction worlds offers extra challenges. Here are a few exercises that I’ve found
helpful:

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Writing a Christmas Cozy Mystery

Writing a Christmas Cozy Mystery

For at least five or six years, I’ve been wanting to write a Christmas cozy mystery. I thought it would be fun to explore my recurring characters’ Christmas traditions and how the town celebrated.

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Heart-Centered Book Marketing

Heart-Centered Book Marketing

Instead of thinking I had to contact hundreds of book bloggers to see if they’d like to review my book, I started with one blogger a week. By the end of 3 months, my book had appeared on about 20 blogs and received 10 reviews.

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Eliminating On The Nose Dialoge

Eliminating On The Nose Dialoge

Crafting Authentic Dialogue: A Guide to Eliminating On-The-Nose Conversations Today’s writing tip comes from Alex Bloom, the founder of Script Reader Pro, a screenplay consultancy and blog

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Burnout saved me from my writer self

How Burnout Made me a Better Author

Burnout. Few words spark such dread among writers. Avoiding it, surviving it, and recovering from it are each the focus of many articles, blogs, podcasts, books, and conference classes. Still, most of us have or will find ourselves grappling with it. This struggle resembles a hiker who has fallen off an unforeseen cliff and now clings to the sheer rockface with desperate, failing fingers, unable to pull themselves up.

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How To Build A Flesh And Blood Character

How To Build A Flesh And Blood Character

If you’re like me, when you have an idea for a character you go into serious planning mode. You might fill a notebook, use character questionnaires, worksheets, and other tools to uncover their inner layers. Or if you’re a pantser, you may decide to start writing a discovery draft to find out who they are and what the story is about as you go. Plan or pants, we all must end up with the same thing: a character who is rounded, credible, and unique.

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Speech Bubbles And 3d Characters Shows Discussion And Gossip

How To Fix Flat, Two-Dimensional Characters

When people say that a character is “flat” or “two-dimensional,” they’re typically just saying that the character isn’t interesting. And uninteresting characters are a plague on a story. Let’s look at a few techniques to make characters interesting, round, and three-dimensional.

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How to write a bestselling novel

How to Write a Bestselling Novel in Three Easy Steps

As an author, you may not want to admit, but you really care about selling books. If you’re writing to get rich, you’ve got to sell millions of copies. If you’re more of a revolutionary and want to change the world, it would sure be a lot easier of a billion people adopted your ideas. Or if you want to be admired by others, you do want millions of fans.

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why conflict drives story by jerry jenkins

Why Conflict Drives Story

Some writers are so averse to personal conflict that they avoid writing about it too. Trust me, that may well serve as the death knell to your publishing prospects.

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Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Way of Kings and Mistborn
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"I still use the writing techniques he discussed, and constantly reference him and his instruction when I teach creative writing myself. . . His explanations led me directly to getting an agent, and subsequently, my first book deal."