Stop Overprotecting Your Characters

You don’t want to overprotect your children.  Nor do you want to overprotect your characters—a common mistake made by authors of fiction (and memoir writers, too).  We overprotect our characters when we sugarcoat, tell partial truths, avoid difficult subjects, are far too quick to relieve our character’s anxieties, or take away their agency.

Overprotecting characters creates literature that feels inauthentic and lackluster. Tension seeps from the story as readers become increasingly convinced that they have nothing to worry about. (A worry-free reading experience is seldom what we’re looking for no matter what our age.)

In this four-hour workshop, we’ll examine the ways in which we go too easy on our characters and possible reasons why.  We’ll examine writing exemplars (successful and unsuccessful), learn techniques to ratchet the honesty, and explore the reasons why we might be avoiding the more difficult path.  Participants are invited to bring scenes from their current WIP to work on during the writing exercises, but this isn’t necessary.