Writing the monster

There was a demon-baby in my dream the other night. 

Seeds

That moment when...

Writing the bad guy

If you’re creating stories, sooner or later you’ll need to write a bad guy.*

What lies beneath

In fiction, as in life, all is revealed through the actions of our characters.

Characters, like people, don’t always tell the truth. They often say what they think is true, or what they’d like to be true, without arriving at a clear expression of their most salient psychological reality.

Usually it’s because they hold multiple truths – layers of thoughts, feelings and motives - which are tangled together in complicated ways.  They may not always be aware of them. Or they may be hiding them, from other people or themselves.

Character

All good stories are character-driven. It’s a question of degree. Human beings are wired to care much more about who than about what. In fact, we won’t care at all about what, unless we first care about who.

Barry Eisler, when asked “How important is character in your writing?”