Tuesday Tip - Add complexity

Your story should be layered, just like life. There is no life-story that is not intersected by hundreds, if not thousands, of other life stories. All of these characters will have their own inter-relationships, but more importantly all will have their own imaginative life.
In writing fiction it is easy to forget that the character also has an imagination, perhaps a fictional life or an attachment to a certain story. To make a character complex and nuanced, we must tap into their imaginations as well as our own. I am just reading Essie Fox's The Somnambulist. She does this really well, the life that Phoebe's Aunt Cissy lives is more to do with what her imagination rests on, than it is to do with her mundane life.

Likewise, when I was writing "The Gilded Lily" the story of "Snow White and Rose Red" had profoundly affected the way the sisters felt they should behave towards each other, providing an ideal which both struggled to maintain.

So delve into your characters imaginations. What might they fantasize about, what key stories have they heard, which book has affected them so much it has changed their life?