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Q&A Lost my ‘magic’ concerning characters

For many of us, our first dive into writing consists of writing plot-driven stories peopled by one note characters, characters who are just types with a name assigned to them. That's fine. Writing ...

posted 4y ago by Mark Baker‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Mark Baker‭ · 2020-03-26T12:29:04Z (about 4 years ago)
For many of us, our first dive into writing consists of writing plot-driven stories peopled by one note characters, characters who are just types with a name assigned to them. That's fine. Writing is a complex skill and the way we learn complex skills is by practicing one aspect of them at a time. So the first skill we practice is plotting and the stereotypical characters we create to animate those plots seem perfectly fine because they do the job they are required to do in the plot. 

But at some point in our development as writers we realize, tacitly or not, that there is more to it than plot, that plots are pretty meaningless without characters that are genuine interesting and complex. So then we move on from plotting to the character development stage of learning. 

But, of course, since we are so new at this aspect, the characters we create at first, in search of depth and complexity, are somewhat awkward lumpen creatures. They may be a step up on the stereotypes we were creating before, but they are not good yet, and the bits of originality the do have don't add up to a whole, leading to something misshapen and odd. 

This can feel like a real setback. It can feel like your process used to work and now it is broken. That is not really the case. You are learning and integrating a new skill, and it is going to feel awkward for a while and you are going to have some false starts. But this is still progress and it will get better if you keep going.

That might be your issue. It might be something else. But if it is this, know that it will pass if you simply keep on writing, and if you do what you should always do as a student of the craft: read with attention writers better than yourself.