Last week I wrote about 5 Ways to Punch Up Your Prose. Those are things to keep in mind to make your fiction more engaging, like varying sentence structure, using strong verbs, describing with vivid details, and so on. Today I want to focus on something that is a next-level area to keep in mind: showing emotion on the page.  

What is an archetype? An archetype is, simply, a pattern or model that exemplifies the main characteristics and functions of a particular thing - in our case, the supporting characters in a novel.

Archtypes in literature are patterns that have been built up over centuries - even millenia - of human storytelling. Readers respond to them because they instinctively understand them. They can be powerful patterns for any type of character, including the main hero/ine and villain/antagonist, but today I specifically want to talk about how using them as a model can help writers create stronger, more resonant secondary characters.

We tend to talk a lot about our main character – their goals, their flaws, their struggles, and above all, their arc of change – the way they grow and develop as a result of what happens in the plot.  

But unless they live alone on a desert island, they will be surrounded by other people.

Last week, I talked about the need for writers to be bold in their work. This week, I’m going to switch the focus to characters.

Readers love bold characters. These are characters who may be larger-than-life from the get-go, or who grow into their boldness gradually. Why do readers like them?

Because they do things.

Last week I talked about the novel Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. I liked the story, but found the rambling, digressing, and occasionally convoluted nature of the writing distracting to the point where I occasionally skipped passages – which I almost never do. Why? Aren’t we told, over and over again, that we must have “voice” in our writing? What is “voice” anyway, and can you have too much of it?

In my last blog post, I talked about doing writing (and other) Challenges and how they can be good for us, sparking motivation to achieve our goals. (I am, by the way, still going strong on my Challenges I described – yaay me!). In order to succeed at a daunting Challenge we have to have a powerful desire behind it. If the goal is to write for 100 days straight, or train for a marathon, there must be a why behind it. And the why has to be compelling enough for us to keep going, even when we’d rather sleep in, or binge-watch a series on Netflix.

But what about our fictional characters?