Basing Characters on Real People

Sooner of later, every TV series has a character write a bad novel with thinly veiled “fictional” characters based on the people he works with.  They usually end up feeling insulted because of the way they were portrayed, but no one ever sued the writer.
Not like in real life, according to the Gainseville Times:
Vickie Stewart [...]

“Everybody Says” Characters Need to Change

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of people passing around wisdom because “everybody says” the same thing, as if it were the only way to do whatever is being asked. ”Characters need to change” is one of those things that gets talked a lot about–seen threads in two different places on the subject.  The bad part about [...]

Describing Characters?

A hot topic among writers is whether to describe characters or not.  A lot of writers say not to describe the characters, to let the reader imagine them.
I’m always a little disappointed when a writer doesn’t bother to describe the characters.  Mind you, I’m not looking for a detailed vital statistic description of everything possible [...]

Changing the Names of Characters

Over on Wordplay, K.M. Weiland has a post on naming characters.  She covers a lot of the usual territory on naming characters, but has this point to make about changing the names:
Don’t be afraid of changing names when necessary. I very rarely nail my characters’ names on the first attempt. In optimal situations, I have [...]

Pictures of Characters

Jill Kemerer talks about searching the Internet to find the perfect picture of her characters:
Now, I fill out my character sheets for a new book, and when I form a mental picture of the hero and heroine, I spend a few hours on the internet, searching for models/actresses/musicians who come close to the ideal.
When I [...]

Juggling Multiple Characters in a Scene

When I wrote short stories, the most characters I might have in a story were three, and it was usually two.  Not a lot.  So when I wrote a  book and ended up needing 4-6  characters in scene, it was pretty scary.   I was trying to figure out what to do with them all.
And it’s [...]

Number of Characters

There’s this message board where they ask “Where are your characters?”  Everyone always lists two or three.  Maybe five.  I have 21 in MAGIC STUD.
I always end up with a large cast.  In my last project, I had over 30 in the first draft.  Many of those came out though in revision, and it dropped [...]

Fantasy Name Don’ts

I’ve always liked reading fantasy, especially after women characters really started to come into their own in the genre.  But one thing I’ve not liked about the genre is that sometimes the names are a little too unusual.  At one point, I was fed up with long, unpronouncable names that I had a hard time [...]

Not Using First and Last Name

The Guide to Literary Agents blog has an entry on Agents and the Slushpile: 10 Reasons They Stop Reading.  It comes from a writer’s conference where agents discussed these reasons.  Most of them are what I expect like:
 3. Not giving the reader a sense of place or where the story is going
No surprise there.  A [...]

Barry, Barry, and Jerry

The names of my characters are driving me crazy! 
I have 23 named characters (at least so far that I’ve found), and one of the hardest things has been in keeping track of them.  I originally did a list, but the book changed so much at one point that the list was difficult to keep up [...]