Hello All!

I hope you summer is going splendidly.

If you did not see, my course on Creating Great Character Names is live! This class gives you numerous ideas for discovering the best names for your characters and looks at characters names we love and what makes them so good.

I am almost to where I will have a complete series of character-development videos that, when watched in succession, will give you what you need to plan a fleshed-out, relatable, deep character!

The next course is all about character values and beliefs -- these are FOUNDATIONAL so keep your eyes out. Until then, I definitely recommend getting caught up on all of the character-development courses in the series:

Creating a Character Profile

This is my foundations course. start here. If you do the exercise, you will be AMAZED what you learn about your character.

Character Flaws

I would move here next because flaws drive the drama. This really gets into *strategic* flaws that give your character internal and external conflict. You also want to make sure to choose flaws that play off of other characters well.

Character Strengths

Strengths are a unique challenge because we usually want to give our protagonists so many good qualities. The trick is being choosy and picking the right ones.

Character Names

The aforementioned character names course is next. I encourage students to not feel pressure to choose names right away, but watching this will definitely get the gears turning.

I also have two courses on actually writing your characters once you have planned them out. As you probably know, we learn even more about our characters when we start writing--the discovery process never stops!

Dramatizing Conflicting Values and Emotion

This course ties in A LOT with the one I am working on right now. Don't miss this. Drama is when we want more than one thing and cannot have both--this course looks at that.

Bring Characters to Life in Your Writing

This is so critical. Often I see students put a lot of time into planning their characters but not enough into how to actual write them on the page.

Thank you, as always, for your kind words, reviews, and encouragement.

Wishing you a happy rest of your week!

:-)

Barbara

Barbara V

Author, Illustrator

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