Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for February is romance, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Ryan Dalton and I discuss:

• Why he wrote This Last Adventure as a middle grade story, as opposed to YA.
• How he created a sense of hope when his amorphous antagonist was undefeatable. 
• Writing group scenes and what to include and what to leave out to make each character distinct.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Ryan Dalton

Ryan Dalton spends his time thinking up stories when he’s not wearing a cape and fighting crime. He’s a singer, a voiceover artist, a pretty decent amateur chef, and a lover of all things geek. Ryan lives in an invisible spaceship that’s currently hovering over St. Louis, Missouri. Please don’t tell anyone he’s Batman–it’s a secret.

You can find him on his website or follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads.

This Last Adventure 

Archie’s grandpa has always been his hero. But after Grandpa is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the confident and adventurous man Archie’s known all his life starts disappearing. He’s not just losing his memory. He’s losing pieces of himself.

Archie desperately wants to slow the progression of Grandpa’s memory loss. Using Grandpa’s old journal entries as inspiration, he creates shared role-playing fantasies with epic quests for them to tackle together–helping Grandpa to live in the present while staying in touch with his fading memories.

But there’s a limit to the power of the fantasies. And not all the memories recorded in the journal entries are happy. When Archie learns a painful secret about Grandpa’s past, he questions everything he thought he knew about his hero.

As Grandpa’s condition worsens, Archie has to come to terms with the reality of what he’s losing and decide what it truly means to live a life worth remembering.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 396

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 396: When Fantasy and Reality Intersect: Writing Contemporary Middle Grade Fiction – Interview with Ryan Dalton appeared first on DIY MFA.

Sacha is an author, rebel podcaster, and professional speaker. She has five obsessions; words, expensive shoes, conspiracy theories, self-improvement, and breaking the rules.

Sacha writes books about people with magical powers and other books about the art of writing.

When she’s not writing, she can be found laughing inappropriately loud, sniffing musty old books, fangirling about film and TV soundtracks, or thinking up new ways to break the rules.

She lives in Cambridgeshire, England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son.

In this episode Sacha Black and I discuss:

• The main types of supporting characters and what you should do with each type.
• Why you need to create contrast between your supporting characters and your protagonist.
• How to balance giving supporting characters depth without letting them take over the story.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Sacha Black

Sacha Black is an author, rebel podcaster, and professional speaker. She has five obsessions; words, expensive shoes, conspiracy theories, self-improvement, and breaking the rules.

Sacha writes books about people with magical powers and other books about the art of writing.

When she’s not writing, she can be found laughing inappropriately loud, sniffing musty old books, fangirling film and TV soundtracks, or thinking up new ways to break the rules.

She lives in Cambridgeshire, England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son.

You can find Sacha on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Patreon. You can also join her Facebook group.

8 Steps to Side Characters

Do your characters fail to bring your story to life? Are they flat, boring or have no depth? Is your story lacking a little cohesion or sparkle?

In 8 Steps to Side Characters, you’ll discover: 

• A step-by-step guide for creating side characters that bring your story alive
• The main types of side characters and what you should do with them
• The key to crafting character depth that hooks readers
• How to harness your character’s voice to deepen your reader’s experience
• Tips and tricks for using details to enhance characterization 
• Methods for killing characters that will help deepen plot, theme and story
• Dozens of ideas for creating conflict with your side characters 
• Tactics for differentiating characters and making them feel real to your reader 
• Character archetypes and functions
• The most common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid 

8 Steps to Side Characters is a comprehensive writing guide that will help you create the side characters your story needs. This book is packed with tips and tricks for polishing characters for writers at any level.   If you want to power up your characters, eliminate dull and lifeless archetypes, and perfect your characterization, this is the book for you. By the end of this book, you’ll know how to strengthen your characters to give your story, prose and plot the extra something special it needs to capture readers and fans for life.

If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create better side characters, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting supporting roles with intention, purpose, and power. Read 8 Steps to Side Characters today and start creating kick-ass stories.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 388

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 388: How to Craft Your Supporting Characters – Interview with Sacha Black appeared first on DIY MFA.

Tasha is an award-winning author, occasional librarian and cat owner. Her books include the Books of Ambha duology and The Jasmine Throne, (which is out now).

When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

In this episode Tasha and I discuss:

• Why she wanted to depict different kinds of strength and how she pulled it off.
• Her advice for tying together multiple points of view. (Her novel has ten POVs!)
• How to write a book proposal for a novel and other advice for getting published.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Tasha Suri

Tasha Suri is an award-winning author, occasional librarian and cat owner. Her books include the Books of Ambha duology and The Jasmine Throne, out in June. When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

You can find Tasha on her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The Jasmine Throne

Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne begins the powerful Burning Kingdoms trilogy, in which two women—a long-imprisoned princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic—come together to rewrite the fate of an empire.

Exiled by her despotic brother when he claimed their father’s kingdom, Malini spends her days trapped in the Hirana: an ancient, cliffside temple that was once the source of the magical deathless waters, but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

A servant in the regent’s household, Priya makes the treacherous climb to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to play the role of a drudge so long as it keeps anyone from discovering her ties to the temple and the dark secret of her past.

One is a vengeful princess seeking to steal a throne. The other is a powerful priestess seeking to save her family. Their destinies will become irrevocably tangled.

And together, they will set an empire ablaze.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 361

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 361: Villains and Villainy, Antagonists and Obstacles: Crafting Conflict in Epic Fantasy – Interview with Tasha Suri appeared first on DIY MFA.

The villain is often viewed as a necessary evil in our stories. They’re created for the sole purpose of messing up our hero’s life and don’t have much of a role beyond that. Sometimes we even create a villain without any redeeming qualities so our readers are naturally attracted to our heroes. Writing our villains this way can feel forced or boring as we ignore their character development and shape them to fit our plot. 

But what if I told you that villains were more than just antagonists and had deeper, more complex roles? In fact, the villain is one of the most important characters you’ll write because they drive the tension, plot, and growth of our heroes. Without the villain, your hero isn’t a hero.

So how do you write a villain you love? A villain that’s interesting, engaging, and maybe even likable. They exist to inspire your plot instead of filling the holes, and sometimes they’re more fun to write than your hero. Here are some ways to write a villain that you and your readers love. 

Give your villain someone to love (who loves them back) 

Nothing humanizes a character more than showing love for someone. Just knowing that a character cares for someone else demonstrates their vulnerability and humanity. It also provides that character with depth so they’re not one-dimensional or a cliché. 

Giving your villain someone to love can also provide context for their goals, motivations, or actions. It can help readers sympathize or relate with the villain if they understand they’re driven by love for another person. Or it can provide a source of conflict or tension if the villain and hero love the same person. 

Once you give your villain someone to love, consider setting that character up to love your villain back. If someone else loves your villain, they become a more sympathetic and intriguing character. It’s similar to the concept of social proof—the psychological and social experience where people mimic the actions of other people in order to exhibit the “correct” behavior in a given situation. If readers witness another character showing affection towards your villain, they might be more inclined to appreciate your villain. 

If you decide to go this route, I recommend giving your villain someone or something animated to love. A villain who loves their family or a pet is more interesting than a villain who loves money or a philosophical idea. The person or pet doesn’t need to make an appearance in the story; they can be an offscreen character that your villain reflects on or thinks about. They can even be a major component of the villain’s backstory. 

Include their backstory

Villains are individuals and while they drive tension and conflict, it doesn’t define them. They have their own thoughts, habits, memories, weaknesses, pet peeves, etc. They’re also influenced by events in their past that inform their emotional, physical, and psychological responses. 

To help reveal these past events and give context to the events in your story, it’s important to develop your villain’s backstory. This can include defining moments from their childhood, an encounter with the protagonist, or their life before the main action of your story. These moments can help you develop their thoughts, feelings, actions, motivations—pretty much everything! Their backstory is also the key for why they’re antagonizing your hero. 

I recommend sketching out your villain’s backstory as if they’re the protagonist of their own story. Creating them as an individual character, not just a foil for your hero, can help unlock their inner workings and avoid clichés. Develop your villain without thinking about what you need from them in order to make your plot work. Let their personalities reveal where potential conflicts may arise. 

It’s the writer’s choice on how and when you want to include a villain’s backstory in the larger work. Be careful not to include their full backstory as this could slow down your pacing or detract from your hero’s story. Instead, gradually reveal their backstory throughout and use it to give context to certain events. Try to show, rather than tell, the villain’s backstory through dialogue, memories, or keeping the action in the current timeline. 

Mirror your hero

One technique to help create a compelling and well-developed villain is to have their journey parallel the hero’s journey. Some of the most interesting villains in literature have the same goals as the hero, however they’ve chosen a different way to achieve them. A classic example is Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Both are powerful characters that can wield the force, but have chosen different ways to use their gift. 

That’s the key though—they choose to achieve their goals and use their gifts in a certain way. Darth Vader’s journey is a reflection or prediction of Luke’s fate if he chose to use the force differently. 

Here’s where you get to have some fun when writing your villain. All of the things that you love about your hero you can exaggerate or intensify in your villain. For example, maybe your hero loves to read, however would stop short at stealing an ancient tome from a library. Your villain could also love to read but chooses to steal the book instead. While your hero may need to practice restraint for the good of the story, you can let your villain run wild and see where it takes them. 

An unrestrained villain holds up a mirror to your hero and shows them the consequences of their choices. Your hero may see themselves in your villain and worry they could end up the same way. This could give your hero motivation to make certain decisions or avoid certain actions. Meanwhile, giving you room to explore what it looks like on the other side with your villain.

Ginnye Lynn Cubel is a writer, podcast host, and coffee enthusiast. She is working on her first novel Ophelium, a dark and magical take on the story of Ophelia and the repercussions of insanity. You can follow along on her website or on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Writing a Villian You Love appeared first on DIY MFA.

Alexandra Monir is an Iranian-American author and recording artist who has published six popular young adult novels. Her internationally-bestselling debut, Timeless was a Barnes & Noble Bestseller and Amazon.com “Best Books of the Month.” In 2018 she published the hit sci-fi novel The Final Six and Sony Pictures optioned the film rights in a major pre-empt deal. More recently, she has followed up with a sequel—The Life Below—which was published earlier this year.

Alexandra was chosen as part of a group of global bestselling authors to write for the New York Times-bestselling DC ICONS series. Her book is Black Canary: Breaking Silence, the first-ever YA novel about that DC Comics superhero. Next up, Alexandra is writing a historical fantasy YA for Disney based on Princess Jasmine.

In this episode Alexandra and I discuss:

• How she honors her grandmother in her career, especially in her latest book.
• Her method for creating a complex cast of villains for Black Canary.
• Why she incorporated original music into the release of her book.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About the Alexandra Monir

Iranian-American author and recording artist Alexandra Monir has published six popular young adult novels to date, beginning with her internationally-bestselling debut, Timeless (a Barnes & Noble Bestseller and Amazon.com “Best Books of the Month”). More recently, she published the hit sci-fi novel The Final Six with HarperCollins in 2018, with Sony Pictures optioning the film rights in a major pre-empt deal. A sequel, The Life Below, followed in February 2020.

Alexandra was chosen to follow global bestselling authors Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, Sarah J. Maas, and Matt de la Pena as the fifth author to write for the New York Times-bestselling DC ICONS series. Her book is Black Canary: Breaking Silence, the first-ever YA novel about the titular DC Comics superhero, publishing on December 29, 2020. Next up, Alexandra is writing a historical fantasy YA for Disney based on Princess Jasmine.

You can find Alexandra on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Black Canary

In this thrilling origin story of Black Canary, Dinah Lance’s voice is her weapon. And in a near-future world where women have no rights, she won’t hesitate to use everything she has–including her song–to fight back.

Dinah Lance was eight years old when she overheard the impossible: the sound of a girl singing. It was something she was never meant to hear–not in her lifetime and not in Gotham City, taken over by the vicious, patriarchal Court of Owls. The sinister organization rules Gotham City as a dictatorship and has stripped women of everything–their right to work, to make music, to learn, to be free.

Now seventeen, Dinah can’t forget that haunting sound, and she’s beginning to discover that her own voice is just as powerful. But singing is forbidden–a one-way route to a certain death sentence. Fighting to balance her father’s desire to keep her safe, a blossoming romance with mysterious new student Oliver Queen, and her own need to help other women and girls rise up, Dinah wonders if her song will finally be heard. And will her voice be powerful enough to destroy the Court of Owls once and for all?

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 338

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 338: The Dystopian Superhero Story – Interview with Alexandra Monir appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Ace Atkins.

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-six books, including ten Quinn Colson novels and eight New York Times–bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker’s iconic Spenser series.

HBO has optioned the Quinn Colson novels with a series currently in high development and Atkins’ second novel for Robert B. Parker estate, Wonderland, was just made into a film with Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke.

A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Ace Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several publications, including Garden & Gun, the Wall Street Journal and Outside. Today we’ll be talking about his latest Quinn Colson novel: The Revelators

In this episode Ace and I discuss:

• How his books stand for social justice but are not necessarily political in nature.
• Why writers should be willing to voice their opinions and take a stand.
• What makes a character a hero or a villain.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-six books, including ten Quinn Colson novels and eight New York Times–bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker’s iconic Spenser series. HBO has optioned the Quinn Colson novels with a series currently in high development and Atkins’ second novel for Robert B. Parker estate, Wonderland, was just made into the film Spenser Confidential with Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several publications, including Garden & Gun, the Wall Street Journal and Outside. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

You can learn more about Ace by visiting his website, following him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The Revelators 

In this gripping new crime novel from the New York Times-bestselling author, Quinn Colson returns to take down a criminal syndicate that has ravaged his community, threatened his family, and tried to have him killed.

Shot up and left for dead, Sheriff Quinn Colson has revenge on his mind. With the help of his new wife Maggie, rehabilitation, and sheer force of will, he’s walking again, eager to resume his work as a southern lawman and track down those responsible for his attempted murder. But someone is standing in his way: an interim sheriff, appointed by the newly elected Governor Vardaman, the man who Quinn knows ordered his murder. Vardaman sits at the top of the state’s power structure–both legal and criminal–and little does he know, Quinn is still working to take him down.

Quinn will enlist the help of his most trusted friends, including federal agent Jon Holliday, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, and Nat Wilikins, an undercover agent now working for crime queen Fannie Hathcock. Since Quinn’s been gone, the criminal element in north Mississippi has flourished, with Hathcock enjoying unbridled freedom. Now as a bustling factory shuts down, a labor leader ends up dead, and Quinn’s own nephew goes missing, everything looks to be unraveling. Even an old friend from Quinn’s past, Donnie Varner, is out of jail and up to his own ways.

Quinn Colson and company have been planning for years, and now they’re finally ready to bust apart a criminal empire running on a rigged system for far too long. This is the Battle of Jericho, the epic showdown that’s been years in the making. Eventually, the war will end–for better or worse.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 322

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 322: Heroes, Villains, and Writing a Story That Matters – Interview with Ace Atkins appeared first on DIY MFA.

Make The Level of Evil Fit Your Genre and Category

There is a sliding scale of evil, all the way from the relatively harmless banker Mr. Babcock in Auntie Mame, whose greatest sin is having no sense of humor and sending little Patrick off to boarding school away from his crazy aunt, to the grotesquely evil Misfit in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” He is an unrepentant murderer who remarks, “No pleasure but in meanness,” right before he shoots an old woman. Your badness quotient will have to be commensurate with the customs of the genre you’re working in.  

Make Your Villain A Quick-Change Artist

Keep in mind that villains can say anything they want, they can violate social norms (and do all the time), they laugh at everybody who seems to think the world has meaning and a moral purpose. And they have no boundaries. They are real shapeshifters, shedding their skin as much as they like. Thackeray once described Becky Sharp’s career as “resembling the slitherings of a mermaid.” They can change, and they often are forced to. Your villain may start out as a truly awful person, like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, but later turn out to be heroic, to have learned something, and to do a 180-degree turn.

Pay Special Attention to Physical Appearance

Your villain should be physically memorable, unusual, and provocative. There is often something off or extraordinary in their eyes, in their looks, even in their souls. Beautiful or ugly, their presence operates strongly on other people to the point that we sometimes can’t tell which they actually are­­ –– hero or villain, possibly both. At the beginning of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff cuts a genuinely frightening figure, cruel and sadistic, and yet in his sadness and tormented love for Cathy, he grows into a richly dimensional man who is in no small part a victim. He is one of a long line of jolie laide figures, whose inside and outside provide a twisted mirror of each other. As one of the archetypes of the cosmic mysteries, your villain can and should be a mixed figure indeed.  

Make Your Villain A Special Kind Of Sexy

About sex––these characters can be quite alluring, and here you are free to indulge yourself in the extremes. While writing Jenna Takes The Fall, I realized that we were going to have to see the goings on between the heroine and her very complex, difficult lover, Vincent Macklin Hull, the true villain of the piece. Her later actions toward him make sense only when you know how intensely he has aroused her early on, despite his frequent criminal behavior.

Hull is a man of 59 to Jenna’s 24. He is an art collector, a father, the head of a thriving business empire, which he inherited from a bunch of “seriously competent bastards.” I wanted to have his first seduction of Jenna take place near the pool by his weekend house in Water Mill, Long Island, and it had to be sexy. How else account for their subsequent relationship? How to make him attractive, lovable, caring, even if it’s merely timebound, opportunistic, driven by lust and boredom?

This was a juicy problem, and if you read the book, you’ll have to decide how well I did. I once knew a genius advertising man, Lee Clow, who said, “If an idea doesn’t scare you, it’s probably not an idea at all.” This one scared me plenty. 

Have Fun With The Darkness

Above all, if we are being brutally honest, villains allow us to roam around in that shady side of ourselves––normally kept in check––that wants to rip things apart, tear down the walls, or just plain go nuts, like Amy Elliott Dunne in Gone Girl. Such a character is often quite witty, because laughing at society is her gig. She’s Hyde to the distinguished Dr. Jekyll. She’s what Edgar Allan Poe called “The Imp of the Perverse.” So this is the place to get down with your own bad self and have some good nasty fun.

In The End

You are never more naked on the page than in the worst moments of your villain. Some readers will love your character, a few will hate him/her, and several will say there’s clearly something wrong with the author. They will question your talent, your taste, and even ascribe to you vices you don’t actually have. They will be shocked, I tell you, absolutely shocked! Congratulations. You’ve succeeded.

A. R. Taylor is an award-winning playwright, essayist, and fiction writer. Her debut novel, Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion, won a Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction at the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2015, was a USA Best Book Awards finalist, and was named one of the 12 Most Cinematic Indie Books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews. She’s been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Southwest Review, Pedantic Monthly, The Cynic online magazine, the Berkeley Insider, So It Goes―the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Magazine on Humor, Red Rock Review, and Rosebud. In her past life, she was head writer on two Emmy-winning series for public television. She has performed at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York, Tongue & Groove in Hollywood, and Lit Crawl LA. You can find her video blog, “Trailing Edge: Ideas Whose Time Has Come and Gone” at her website, www.lonecamel.com. She lives in Los Angeles, CA. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.

The post #5onFri: Five Tips for Creating Your Villain appeared first on DIY MFA.

I had the opportunity to hear literary agent Donald Maass speak at a conference, and it was in listening to his talk on building strong characters that I discovered what I now refer to as the “opposite attracts” theory. According to Maass, there are 3 basic types of protagonists. While there are differences in labels, I call these protagonists types the Ordinary Joe (or Jane), the Larger than Life Heroine/Hero and the Misunderstood Character (or sometimes the Anti-Hero). And he talked about his approach to getting to know your protagonist by showing the opposite is possible.

So what does that mean? In getting to know a character, the first most obvious step would be to figure out who the character is, right? Wrong. Actually, Maass suggested the exact opposite. For each of the three types of protagonists, he said we should look at who the character could be, not necessarily who the character already is.

Ordinary Joe (or Jane) Character:

For the Ordinary Joe character, this means trying to figure out what makes this character inspiring, what pushes him to rise to the occasion. Instead of focusing on how “normal” or ordinary this character is, the writer needs to pinpoint this character’s ability to be extraordinary, even if it’s only in a small way. Sometimes all it takes is a little push, one button that you press to send your character out of inertia and make him or her respond. For example, remember the movie Back To The Future? The protagonist, Marty McFly, often resists getting into fights but all it takes is for somebody to call him “chicken” and he springs into action. With Ordinary Joe characters, you often have to find the equivalent of calling them “chicken,” that breaking point that makes your character go from ordinary to extraordinary.

Examples of Ordinary Joe (or Jane) Characters: Frodo, Dorothy from Wizard of OZ, Harry Potter

To make an Ordinary Joe character come to life, ask yourself the following questions:

• What would it take for this character to “rise to the occasion”?
• What kind of situation can I put this character in that would make him or her go above and beyond?
• What’s this character’s breaking point, that button you can press to make him or her take action?

Larger than Life Heroine/Hero:

With the Heroine/Hero, the goal is a bit different. Sure, this character is extraordinary–maybe even superhuman–but what makes him or her normal? How can the writer show us a hint of this character’s humanity? It’s up to the writer to give the Heroine/Hero character a soft spot, something that brings him or her down from the pedestal and lets the reader think: “I can relate to that.” Movie-makers call this the pet-the-dog moment. The pet-the-dog moment is where the tough guy protagonist pets a stray dog in the alley, smiles and says “Better get outta here, little Fella. There’s gonna be trouble.” That small action shows us the character’s human side and makes him sympathetic to the audience.

Examples of Larger than Life Heroine/Hero Characters: Superman, James Bond, Harry Potter

When dealing with a Heroine/Hero, ask yourself:

• What is this character’s soft spot or vulnerability?
• How can I create a pet-the-dog moment for this character to show this quality?

Misunderstood Character: (AKA Anti-Hero)

Finally, with the Misunderstood Character, you need to show a glimmer of light. This character is wounded, lost, or condemned to suffer (or maybe he’s just whiny, we’re never quite sure), but we have to see a moment where he or she can find hope. This is true for villains as well as Anti-Heroes; in fact, many Misunderstood characters are actually antagonists in the story. Remember, it’s important to give our villains depth by showing the opposite is possible, and not just do that for our protagonists. After all, if a villain is totally evil to the core, then that makes for a flat character, but if we see a hint of goodness in the character it makes the villain come to life. With misunderstood characters, it’s all about seeing that moment when the clouds part and we see a little bit of hope, even if things still end up going down the tubes in the end.

Examples of Misunderstood Characters: Darth Vader, Severus Snape, Holden Caulfield, Harry Potter
(Notice that some characters–ahem, Harry Potter–can fall into more than one category. Interesting…)

If you’ve got a Misunderstood Character on your hands, try these questions:

• What will it take to bring this character out of that dark, dark place?
• What’s this character’s source of hope?

Why does the Opposite is Possible Theory work?

Because it shows the reader the character’s potential for change. We’ve all heard writing teachers tell us that our protagonist needs to change, but rarely do they ever tell us how to do it. By using Maass’ character archetypes and showing hints that the opposite is possible, we show that the character may not be as simple as they seem and that gives them the chance to change. In other words, the ordinary character needs to have the potential to do something extraordinary, the superhuman character must become at least a little bit vulnerable, and the condemned character must discover a glimmer of hope.

Sometimes it’s scary when our characters turn around and do the opposite of what we want them to do. I know when that happens to me, it seriously makes me question my sanity. But the truth is, when our characters misbehave or surprise us, that’s when we know that they’re becoming real.

The post The Opposite is Possible Theory of Character Development appeared first on DIY MFA.

Before we begin, here’s a quick note about supporting characters.

They are not secondary characters. They are not side characters. Supporting characters do just what it says in their name: they support the development of the protagonist and of the plot. Any character who is not the protagonist exists in this particular story to support the journey of the main character.

This is not to say that your supporting characters can’t be fleshed out and interesting. They all have backstories and motivations. And no character is ever purely good or evil; there are always shades of grey. Your supporting cast needs to be as developed and interesting as your protagonist.

After all, no character wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Gee, I think I’ll be a side character in someone else’s story today.” Every character is the protagonist of his own life. It just so happens that this particular story happens to belong to the protagonist so all other characters fall into a supporting role.

So, eradicate the terms “side character” and “secondary character” from your vocabulary and treat your supporting cast like literary gold.

Are we on the same page? Awesome.

Now, let’s get started.

And now let’s talk about the 5 supporting character archetypes. Not all of these characters will appear in every story you write, and there are many more than just these 5 archetypes I’ll mention here. I just happen to think these are the 5 most essential ones.

The Villain

Villains are awesome. Villains give us someone we love to hate and make us root for the protagonist to win even harder. It’s important to note that not every antagonist in a story is a villain. The antagonist can be a powerful storm, a network of computers, or dinosaurs going on a rampage. Not every story has, or needs, a villain. When you have an amorphous non-human antagonist, a day-to-day villain can give that antagonist a face.

The BFF/Sidekick

The BFF is the character who is always at the side of the protagonist, always egging him on, pushing him forward. She has qualities that the protagonist lacks, but that equally he needs to accomplish his goal.

The Love Interest

There are a so many different types of love interest you can include in your story! A few examples:

• The Boy Next Door (or Girl Next Door)
• Forbidden Love (Star-crossed Lovers)
• The Love-Hate Relationship

It’s important to note that, except in the Romance genre, the love story usually is secondary to the plot. It can help support the main plot, but in most cases it’s not central to the story.

The Mentor

The Mentor can be a very useful tool to convey information to the reader by teaching the protagonist somthing. However, a major pitfall of the mentor character is that she can info-dump, explaining everything that the protagonist (or the reader) is confused about in one fell swoop instead of revealing it in the course of the plot.

The Fool

The only purpose of the Fool (but what an important purpose) is to say the things that the protagonist doesn’t want to hear but really needs to know. The Fool dates back to the days of Shakespeare (though I would argue that you see elements of the Fool in the plays of Ancient Greece). This also happens to be my favorite supporting character archetype and can be a lot of fun to write.

Take-Home Message: All characters–including your supporting cast–need to have depth and dimension.

No character wakes up and says:
“Gee, I think I’ll be a side character in someone else’s story today.”
Tweet this.

For more information on character archetypes, you can check out DIY MFA Radio Episode 5 where I talk about the two main archetypes for protagonists. Thanks for listening! If you think of other essential supporting character archetypes, make sure to leave a comment and share it with the DIY MFA community.

Link to Episode 34

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 34: Archetypes for Supporting Characters appeared first on DIY MFA.

If you’re wondering about the distinction between villains and antagonists, check out this other post where I address this very question. Essentially, what you need to know is that antagonists are any obstacles that get in the way of the hero’s goal, while the villain is a specific character who personally interferes with that goal. All villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains.

During Thrillerfest, I attended an excellent talk by author Allison Brennan, who emphasized the importance of having a compelling villain as well as a sympathetic hero character. Brennan talked about how it’s important for the reader to understand the villain’s endgame and the motivation behind what he or she is doing. The reader needs to want that the villain almost gets away with it (but not quite). This means that the villain must believe his or her cause is justified.

How does this play out in story-telling? The writer’s job is to make the villain not be 100% evil and this means the villain must have a reason for doing what he or she does. Here are a couple of ways to enhance the traditional good vs. evil model of heroes and villains.

Make the hero and the villain want the same thing.

Sometimes the hero and the villains actually want the same thing. Vigilante villains are fascinating and it’s easy for readers to relate to a villain whose motivation is to kill the “real” bad guys.  If the hero wants the criminals brought to justice and the villain is out to kill these criminals, then really, the hero and villain are on the same side, they just have different approaches. This hero-villain dynamic also forces the hero to question his or her own motivations and beliefs, which makes for a more interesting story.

Make your hero a less-than-super hero.

Everyone has a fatal flaw. Even superheroes have a fatal flaw: they always have to do the right thing. Traditional heroes on the other hand don’t always have to do the right thing, but they are constrained by rules of law or moral boundaries. The key here is to push your hero to see how far he or she will go to stand for a cause. Villains, on the other hand, do not need to abide by rules of law or moral boundaries, they can stop at nothing until they reach their goals. To heat up your story, use your villain to push your hero almost to that point of no return.

Give the villain a pet-the-dog moment.

The pet-the-dog moment is a term used in film making where the hero is about to fight the bad guys in a dark alley. He hears a rustle and turns to find a stray dog. The hero pets the dog and says: “Better get outta here, little fella. There’s gonna be trouble.” The dog scampers off. That’s the classic pet-the-dog moment and it’s usually used to give tough-guy heroes a little bit of a soft spot. Note: Pet-the-dog moment don’t always have to involve dogs. They can involve any number of cute fluffy animals or adorable small children. (For instance, that movie Kindergarten Cop is basically one long film-length pet-the-dog moment. There’s a classroom full of cute kids, plus a ferret. Need I say more?)

How do the pet-the-dog moment this relate to your villain? Ever notice how the evil bad guy is often found petting a cat, usually with a saccharine name like “fluffy”? That’s a pet-the-dog moment and the point is to give the villain a soft spot. Brennan gave a fabulous example of how this works. In Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill has a pet toy poodle named Precious. It’s an annoying little yappy dog, but he constantly coos over it. That dog is ultimately his undoing because while he’s able to do horrific things to his victims, when one of his victims lures the dog and threatens to kill it, Buffalo Bill can’t bear to lose his Precious. That’s the pet-the-dog moment at work right there.

Give your villain an “all is lost” moment in the story.

For the hero, the “all is lost” moment is when it appears everything is over and the good guys have lost. This moment in the plot is often dubbed the hero’s “dark night of the soul” because it’s when the hero has to do some serious soul-searching and figure out whether or not to go on. But the villain also needs an “all is lost” moment, though in the villain’s case it’s more like a “ray of hope for the soul” where we feel like maybe the villain might actually do the right thing. This goes hand in hand with the pet-the-dog element because the point of the “all is lost” moment is to show that the villain is not all bad, that there is a glimmer of humanity buried inside that monster.

While your villain might not change completely in the story, giving him or her that “ray of hope” moment adds depth to the character. Perhaps the villain has doubts about what he or she is doing. Perhaps he or she regrets what has been done. The difference between the villain’s doubts and regrets and those of the hero is that hero must change throughout the story, but the villain can always go back to his or her evil ways.

Make your hero and your villain into rivals.

This is the flip side of the villain and the hero wanting the same thing. In this case, your villain wants the exact opposite of what your hero wants. Remember how your villain will stop at nothing, but your hero must be bound by rules of law or morality? That definitely comes into play when the hero and villain are direct rivals because the villain is automatically at an advantage. The villain is usually a little bit smarter and a lot more ruthless than the hero. Since your villain does not play by the rules but your hero must do so, this means your hero needs to work twice as hard in order to win the day.

Ultimately, these techniques are just variations on a theme. You need to figure out what works best for your story. So sit down, write, and make those characters so real they jump off the page. In the words of Allison Brennan:

The post The Villain’s Journey – from ThrillerFest appeared first on DIY MFA.