[These novels have some of my favourite characters in them, or characters that I think are really well developed]
There are lots of things I want to work and improve as a writer. I often think that my degrees and the experience I've had writing is a way for me to see what else I need to work on. Learning how to study the craft enables me to expand my skills and thinking on my own, hopefully anyway.
The main area I want to improve as a writer is character development.
I always thought I wrote quite strong and well developed characters, but over the past few years I've realised that some of them lack depth. I think I get too caught up with the plot and what is actually happening and forget that I need to focus on character too. I want to be able to write characters that people connect with and remember.
I've given some thought to how I'm going to work on developing characters on my own. Here's what I came up with.
When in doubt, I always turn to books – they really do help with everything. I've ordered Writing the Intimate Character: Create Unique, Compelling Characters Through Mastery of Point of View by Jordan Rosenfeld from Booktopia. For certain reasons the book may take up to three months to be delivered, which is quite disappointing. Once I do receive the book I'll read it religiously and hope that it gives me some useful tips and exercises I can use.
Every novel I read from now on I'll pay extra attention to how character is written and developed. I might even reread parts of books with my favourite characters. Ask myself why I really liked the character and how the author achieved that. There is so much we can learn about writing from reading.
I'll see what advice and exercises I can get online, too. There's bound to be endless resources. I want to spend several hours sifting through various websites and blogs and build a good recourse bank I can turn to when needed.
I think it'd also be smart to chat to my friends who are also writers and see what they do. Their approach might be completely different to mine, so it may be more effective.
This is just my starting point, a little brainstorm of what I need to do.
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