The Best Advice I’ve Received as a Writer

The best advice I’ve been given as a writer always comes from my agent. She reads my first drafts in their truly terrible initial form. Every time she identifies a key weakness in my writing, whether that’s making sure each scene serves a purpose, varying my sentence structure more imaginatively, or avoiding describing all of the physical movements my characters make. These pieces of advice become keystones as I edit and draft new stories.

The advice that’s stuck with me the most is to ensure that readers feel empathy for my characters. If they aren’t invested in the protagonist, then even the most exciting action scenes with dangerous high-risk stakes are going to feel meaningless.

Characters need to be three-dimensional, engaging and human. By the end of the first chapter, we should understand what kind of person they are, what they want, and what they need.

Draw from real life. Not by stealing someone’s personality wholesale, but by taking pieces here and there – your mother’s worst fear, your best friend’s guilty secret, or your co-worker’s annoying habit.

You are searching for the emotional truth behind these quirks – what does this reveal about this person? The fact that your mother is afraid of scam calls isn’t because she’s scared of the ringing landline. It could be because she has been tricked and taken in by fraud in the past, and is terrified of letting that happen again. She is aware of her own gullibility.

By seeding in this one small detail, you lay the groundwork for a whole novel’s worth of character development. You are showing that the character has a complex inner life beyond what is necessary for the action. This builds out from the core storyline to create a world that feels fully inhabited by real people, not just paper cut-outs being moving around where the author guides them.

Remember, the details of specific incidents are less important than finding out what that means for the character. We don’t need to know the specifics of the scam that the side character fell for, but knowing that they did fall for it tells us a lot about them as a person.

The quickest way to alienate a reader is to have a character who makes poor decisions without explaining why they do those things. Even a reckless character needs to react in ways which feel plausible.

We want to see them work hard, and fail. If success comes too easily for them, then we won’t feel satisfaction. Events should have consequences, so that we feel emotionally invested. You could have a very complicated fantasy world, with an intricate magic system, but it won’t mean anything unless we understand the cost of using magic, emotionally or physically.

Think about what your characters fear, love and keep secret. Are they a hero or a villain? Who do they trust? What makes them laugh? What makes them wince? If they have a love interest, is their mutual attraction based in real, long-term factors of connection and compatibility?

Write a person, and the rest becomes easy. Once we’re invested in their personal journey, the plot can take us anywhere and we’ll happily tag along for the ride.