Discovering Characters: Think like a Pro Writer 5

Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.

No, I'm serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.

As writers, we want to capture individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into their interior rooms for glimpses of weighty baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters...