What is a protagonist, and does your story need one? What are the stakes your protagonist needs? Who is the right person to tell your story? And how is a protagonist different from a point of view character? And ultimately, do you have to discover one thing before another in your pre-writing process?

What is agency? How does it work in your story? And what does it look like? When is your plot driving your character, rather than your character driving the plot? How can you diagnose agency issues? And how can you maintain that agency all the way through your climax, even with a cast of characters?

How do you know if you have created a distinct character? How important is role? And what is a supporting character anyway? How do motivation and subplot work toward giving your characters individuality? And what sort of tools can you use to help create these individuals? In the end Alida wraps it all up together, and even gives some great exercises to help you create distinct characters.

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!

How should you introduce your characters? We each bring an example showing how to use action or narrative exposition to introduce your character to your reader. Remember just like everything in writing your description should do more than just describe your character.

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?

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

What is a character arc? What are the three kinds of character arcs and four main components of a character arc? How can you use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to help with pre-writing? And how present does your characters wound need to be? Should you state it outright? Or should you weave it into the narrative? How many of your characters need wounds? And how can it affect your antagonist? Finally we discuss the details of finding your wound, and what it might do to your character.

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 is a scene stealing adorable character? And how do we create them? Are they deliberate or accidental? And what do you do with those who don’t speak English? Are these characters three dimensional? And when have they earned their own spin-off?