Friday, June 18, 2010

Extraordinary Characters by Danielle N.

I’m Danielle; an author of MG fantasy novels, Sarah invited me to share on a more monthly scale.


Extraordinary Characters

We all repeatedly hear the importance of our characters: Without good characters that readers can relate to and like to the point where they care about what happens to that character; we have no story. In this post I am just going to expound upon the affect the characters can have on our stories.

There’s this popular series that I’ve enjoyed reading recently. A few days ago I read a review on it that roughly stated; ‘I think this book is so good because of the depth of its characters.’ Reflecting on it, I realized that I agreed completely; the characters were really well done; they had definite personalities, great backgrounds, et cetera…

Considering the matter further I realized—no offense to the author, I am still a big fan of hers and of her series—the plot was awful. In fact there was practically no plot; it was about a girl who moved into a new neighborhood and kept meeting the different neighbors. There wasn’t anything ‘special’ about the neighbors or the neighborhood; they were all normal everyday people living in a normal everyday place. The book turned out so well because the characters the heroine was meeting and socializing with were so remarkable.

What if we strove to write stories with THAT level of character development AND a GREAT PLOT?

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