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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38397
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are quite a few critically acclaimed novels that feature only a single character. For example, William Golding's _[Pincher Martin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincher_Martin)_ tells of how the protagonist reaches a rock in the sea after a ship wreck and later dies there. It is a brilliant novel, and you may learn a few things from it for your own work.

There are also quite a few bestsellers that feature chapters in which the protagonist is alone. For example, Jon Krakauer's _[Into the Wild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(book))_ tells the (true) story of an inexperienced hiker dying alone in the wilderness. In many chapters the protagonist is alone. It has an Amazon sales rank of #208 in Books and was made into a movie that was nominated for two Golden Globes and two Academy Awards.

Obviously, chapters with only a single character will neither prevent your novel from earning critical acclaim nor prevent it from becoming a bestseller. Therefore the answer to your first question is clearly:

_Are they more difficult for the reader?_

No. All bad writing is difficult for the reader and all good writing is easy on the reader. It does not matter _what_ you write, only how.

_Do you have any tips?_

Your preconception that a single-character scene needs to be written somehow differently from other kinds of scenes or is more difficult to write is wrong. All scenes are equally difficult to write well and require the same approach: Get yourself mentally into your character(s) and their situation and employ your mastery of language to describe what you see. If you are _really there_, and if you have mastered language, there is nothing difficult about any kind of scene. If you aren't, and haven't, all scenes are impossible to write.

Unblock your mind.

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