How to Strengthen Our Characters with Strong Writing

Readers can interpret our characters as being weak for many reasons. They might come across as passive, not acting on the plot or exhibiting agency. They might take foolish actions, being “too stupid to live.” Or they might lack a strong arc, showing how they’ve grown and bettered themselves.

Another way a character might seem weak might be surprising: A character can seem weak when we use weak sentences in our writing. Let me explain…

The words and sentence structures we use can act in a su...