Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

by Charlie Jane Anders

Your characters shouldn’t just have hopes and wishes—they should also have strong feelings about their situation. So here are four questions I keep asking about my characters: How do they feel about their situation? What do they do about that feeling? What result does their action have? How do they feel about this new situation? I try to play as many rounds of this game as I can, with a character, to get in an action-oriented mindset. When I have a story that feels dead on the page, I’ve found this diagnostic surprisingly effective—because often the problem is that I haven’t nailed down how a character really feels about their situation, and what that feeling might spur them to do. Your characters’ attempts to change their circumstances might fail, or backfire—and it’s often more interesting if that’s the case—but we still need to understand their viewpoint, and witness the actions it spurs them to.