Kamal Chandrakumara
Kamal Chandrakumara asked Nelou Keramati:

What advice would you give for new writers?

Nelou Keramati The most important thing is to create empathy for your characters. If the readers don't care about the characters, it won't matter how incredible the plot or premise of the story is.

To create empathy give each character a 'core wound' that they keep 'bleeding' from. Something that humanizes them and makes it easy for readers to connect with. Characters with core wounds are the ones we root for the most, even when they make seemingly unforgivable mistakes.

For example, in Breaking Bad, Walter White's core wound would be that he's a middle-aged nobody who missed his shot at being a success. And this core wound keeps bleeding, feeding his greed, eventually resulting in his tragic demise.

In A Game of Thrones, Jon Snow's core wound is that he is a 'bastard'. He keeps bleeding from this core wound, compensating for his shortcoming by trying at all costs to be a good man.

In fact, personalities most often arise from a someone compensating for their core wound, and so this is a great place to start when formulating your story. Always start with empathy, and let the character's true motivations drive the story. Never try to 'fit' characters into a plot, or you'll risk their actions seeming contrived.

I hope this helped!

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