The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon
Using this reference, readers can create characters who think, hope, love, cry, cause or feel pain, save the day – and seize readers by emotion. Mark McCutcheon eases the process of building convincing characters for stories and novels. He starts by conducting an inspiring and informative roundtable where six novelists reveal their approaches to characterization. Next, he provides a character questionnaire more detailed than the nosiest survey. Readers will fill it out and they’ll know fictional people as though they’d grown up with them. Finally, there is a thesaurus of human characteristics – physical and psychological. Fit them together artfully and characters will climb right off the page.
This book was NOT what I was expecting, but in a great way.*
I picked up this book based on a recommendation from a writer on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). When asked about favorite books on writing, this was recommended. As I prefer to write characters first, then work on plot, I’m always looking for ways to write better characters, so I immediately bought this.
This is NOT a book of advice and tips; it’s more of a thesaurus of terms and descriptions to help you create unique and vivid characters.
Though this books opens with some of my favorite advice (from six different authors) on how to write characters, the majority of this book (90%?) is a collection of lists to help writers move past the same, boring descriptions (blue eyes, brown hair, happy personality) to include more specific and vivid descriptions (round, cerulean eyes; cropped, chestnut hair; effervescent personality).
I am SO excited to have this book and can’t wait to reference it often. I’m going to keep it close at hand for every manuscript.
*Because it was written in 1996, some of the terms and phrases are outdated and would likely be flagged by some today, but I still like it as a source for stimulating creativity and (hopefully) pulling a writer out of a descriptive funk.
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