Have you ever struggled with your antagonist or supporting characters motivation? Or wonder what kind of work you need to put in before you start writing? We even get into what we do for character sketches and how our journals will lead to posthumous fame!

Are you supporting characters always supportive? How can you use character conflicts and relationships to up the stakes and tension in your work? Don’t forget: no one exists in a vacuum! And characters are defined by how they interact with others!

Kathryn explains an exercise in pre-writing she has been using to deepen her character arcs and relationships within her novel. We explore how it would affect sub-plots, character relationships, and arcs. What problems could this help you avoid? And how could you use it to develop your antagonist as well? We talk about how Kathryn got into this kind of development, and whether or not it would work for every kind of story!

What makes a female protagonist a strong female protagonist? And where does that strength come from? How aware of social and cultural norms should you be when developing a strong female protagonist? And is strength unique to genre?

On this week’s Story Works Round Table, we disscuss character traits that can make or break your character. Love them, hate them, need them?

Do we write ourselves into our novels? Is everything we write autobiographical? And what if you don’t have the experiences your characters do?

Why should you think about clothing and fashion in your story? Is it just part of your world building and setting? How can you use it to illustrate your characters arc? Or your characters flaws and insecurities? What about when everyone is dressed in a uniform? We dig deep into the choices you can make about fashion and how it can affect every aspect of your story!

Writers are naturally students of human nature. How can we develop our characters if we aren’t naturally curious about people? We three writers find ourselves putting our friends, family, neighbors, even strangers under our version of the microscope. What do we–and our stories–gain as observers of human nature? Where does our authenticity come from as writers? Is there a method to our madness? 

How do we address character motivation? Do we struggle with it? When do we work it into our stories? How can you get to know your character better in order to develop that motivation? What are the three layers of motivation? And how do you plan for your characters motivation over a series? What happens when your character has competing motivations?

To make your novel work, your protagonist and antagonist need to stick together. If they aren’t sticky, the conflict will fail. This week on the Story Works Round Table, we discuss what keeps the wheels under your plot turning.