Category Archives: Characters

“Snakes… Why did it have to be snakes….???” What a character likes and dislikes takes the curse of its larger than life stature. Whether you are writing a novel, play, screenplay, or teleplay, your characters loom in the hearts and … Continue reading →

Archetypal characters have a bad name.  Many writers think such characters are two-dimensional stick figures that come off more like plot robots than real people.  But the truth is that archetypes represent essential human qualities that need to be explored … Continue reading →

Coming up with characters can be as simple as looking to our subject matter and asking ourselves who might be expected to be involved.  But that only creates the expected characters – predictable and uninteresting. Building characters that are intriguing, … Continue reading →

In this article you’ll discover a technique for drawing characters out of a one-sentence description of your story called a log line. These steps are excerpted from the all-new version 4 of our world-famous StoryWeaver Software that carries you through … Continue reading →

In my previous article, A Brief Introduction to Archetypes – Part 1, I defined what an archetype is, and what it is not.  Here in Part 2, we’re going to expand on that understanding by revealing where archetypes come from … Continue reading →

This article was originally written as part of an early draft of our book on the Dramatica theory of narrative which but was never included.  It seeks to describe how characters come to misunderstand each other, and how this can lead to conflict. … Continue reading →