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M.A. Lee

Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.

No, I’m serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives. 

As writers, we want to capture individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into their interior rooms for glimpses of weighty baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.

Discovering Characters helps writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We’ll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We’ll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. We’ll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.

Five areas comprise this guidebook.

1. Starting Points ~ templates and character interviews

2. Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways to discover characters

3. Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc.

4. Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs

5. Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more

Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.

Writer M.A. Lee has been indie-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 50 books published under her pseudonyms. Visit www.writersinkbooks.com to discover more information.

Writers Ink Books

Think like a Pro Writer

Discovering Characters: Think like a Pro Writer 5

What do writers want from plot?

What do writers need from plot?

Are those questions the same? Not really. As wordsmiths, we writers know that want and need are two different words.

· The want is a circumstance that we writers can control. We want plot specifics to help us craft story and exceed reader expectations.

· The need is a circumstance of obligations from reader expectations of story. While readers may want the comfort of the genre elements (the tropes), they also wish to have their interest and curiosity piqued.

Can we writers deliver on the expectations and the surprises in order to please our readers? That’s the question that Discovering Your Plot answers.

This guidebook covers plot structure and the necessities of genre expectations so we writers can anticipate what readers want. It explores the six most common plot structures and has a detailed examination of 12 major sections in all novels, no matter the genre.

By the end of Discovering Your Plot¸ writers will have the tools to construct a story as well as diagnose problems with pacing, tension and suspense, and sequencing events.

Discovering Your Plot is Book 6 in the Think like a Pro Writer series and the second of the Discovering set of how-to guidebooks for writers at all skill levels. While the approach is for newbies, every writer can benefit from this fresh look at any novel’s framework.

With her two other pen names, author M.A. Lee has published over 50 titles of fiction and nonfiction.

Discovering Your Plot: Think like a Pro Writer 6