by Nanci | Oct 28, 2024 | Character, Podcast
How do you write beyond the stock, archetypical villain? How do you make him or her more intriguing and believable? How do you write a fascinating villain? How do you surprise us? In this episode, I’m sharing 3 ways to make your villain complex and...
by Nanci | Oct 14, 2024 | Character, Podcast
First-person is one of the trickiest character perspectives to master. In many ways, it’s more challenging than third-person narration. Third-person has its challenges too, but writing in first- person comes with a unique set of challenges and limitations. In...
by Nanci | Oct 7, 2024 | Character, Podcast
When reading a story, the reader’s brain actively simulates the experience of the characters. The reader becomes so absorbed in the story, they experience it as though it’s true. They believe in it. But before a reader can have that experience, you have to...
by Nanci | Sep 30, 2024 | Character, Podcast
What is an anti-hero and why do they fascinate us? How do they keep us invested in their plight scene by scene? Even as they do immoral, criminal, or deplorable things? I’m a big fan of antiheroes because we can’t have a neutral reaction to them. So in...
by Nanci | Jul 29, 2024 | Character, Podcast
How do you flesh out your characters? How do you go deeper? Well, just as we don’t know people in one pass, we can’t know our characters in our stories fully in our early drafts, including when the main character is us, or anytime we’re basing...
by Nanci | Feb 26, 2024 | Character, Craft, Plot, Podcast
You want your dialogue to sound natural, like real people talking. But despite your effort, the dialogue still sounds stilted, awkward, and dull. Writing dialogue requires practice. And there are some ways to think about dialogue to help you write it better. In...
