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Twin Bassinet Set

Talks over others/interrupts

Always has to one-up others

Can’t take criticism

Always plays the victim

Selfish

Pathological liar

Makes everything about them

Bad at sharing

Guilt trips others

Makes special events about themselves

Their way or no way at all

Makes up excuses for everything

Has a reason why nothing is ever their fault

Not a team player

Does jobs halfway

Makes everything a joke

Can’t take a joke

Can’t let others enjoy anything

                I always find myself freezing on a really good writing streak because I end off the chapter and have to face the question of what should come next... and I don't know. Even when I’m working on a story with an exhaustive outline, I still get stuck on the getting from A to B, how do we get to where we need to go, what comes next?

                Luckily, screenwriting taught me a very easy fix. When creating your characters, you want to create three main aspects: a private life, a professional life, and a personal life, which is to say, their relationships and family life; their job or school (or the stuff they have to do but maybe don’t necessarily want to); and their hobbies, what they do in their spare time, passions, etc.

                This is so when you face the question “what comes next” you can jump into any of these lives as a starting point.

                So say your main character and their best friend just fought and broke up. The scene ends. Your roadmap says there needs to be a bit of a pause in between now and them getting back together, but what do they do in between those points?

                Consider how their family life, professional life, or private life could be impacted by what’s occurred. Maybe you’ve mostly been focusing on private and family, so you choose professional, the next scene has them back at school. There’s no one to talk to since their only friend is mad at them—to raise the stakes, in this day at school the next big plot point happens (their uncle, thought dead, appears for a moment outside the classroom window!) of course all they want to do is tell their friend, and of course, that’s the one thing they can’t do yet.

This is just a general example, but it goes to show there’s a lot to explore within your character’s different ‘lives’, so next time you get stuck on the “what comes next?” try exploring one a bit deeper with them. There might be something super interesting there to find.

How? + What?

These are the questions to take with you when going through a draft to add characterization.

Your character will already be doing and saying things in a set situation. You got the most arduous part of writing down-- the story is there.

So now you're going to take that and ask WHAT? or HOW? with certain details. An interrogation of the story to dig more out when a scene might feel empty or the characterization feels off.

Let's say you want a scene where the character cries in a car.

Anyone can cry in a car.

But only YOUR character is going to cry in the parking lot of their old high school, so angry about their '96 Toyota's heater being broken that they slam their fist against the vents.

HOW? is about defining present behavior.

Take the situation your character is put in.

How do they react, how do they make decisions, how do they set and complete goals, how do they approach emerging emotions, how do they think about or observe the situation?

How do they deal with something like this based on personality, values, and their current life?

All of these things are informed by larger, earlier forces but "how?" is about the state of things that fluctuate.

With the car, present behavior is their anger at the broken heater and the decision to physically lash out. The fluctuation of personality, values, and current life converge in a way that is unique to this moment and this reaction.

WHAT? is about specificity with already-established reality.

Look at every variable in the scene, like the car or the location. They are established. The character had the car before the passage began. This was their old high school before the passage began. Making these variables specific tells us about the character's world outside this scene. What car? What significance of the location? Those are exclusive to the character and existed before the scene. At this point, they are out of the control of the character and therefore do not fluctuate.

An old Toyota with a broken heater and the parking lot of their former high school give us background information.

The main idea of this technique is to push yourself as a writer. Specificity, definition, and characterization enrich the narrative and add authentic complexity to your world.

As always, take what you found useful and forget the rest! Happy writing.