The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

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Morley, David - The Cambridge introduction to creative writing (2011) - libgen.li
Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li

Writing Game
C
H ARA CT ER DEVELOPMENT Most of us have some sort of bag where we keep daily belongings. Open it and make a list of every item. What do these items say about you Now, take a friend’s bag and do the same then write a character description of the person based on those items. Think of two characters you wish to create. Make a list of all the belongings in their bags before they go out together to a wild party. Make a list of their belongings the morning after. Without making any reference to the party, write a flash fiction based around the before and after of these lists.
A
IM
: As any forensic psychologist would say, information of this type shows you,
not tells you, and is as indicative of character as any long-winded description.
Main and viewpoint character
Your main character is the person who your story is about, and your narrative follows them around from place to place. They might be likable or awful yet we generally sympathise with them because they are likely to be the person most hurt in your story despite their power to act, and the writer creates situations that hurt them in order to make the reader care for them. The viewpoint character mayor may not be the main character nevertheless, we see and hear the story through them, and there maybe more than one such viewpoint character. They are the narrator. Generally, you rely on them to move the story along and tell the truth of it. However, you may invent what is called an unreliable narrator, usually a character who we monitor and soon learn to distrust, however much fun they are.

The practice of fiction
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Believability
Information and history allow you to know your characters better they provide you with elements of their backstory and let you know their motivations and needs. You will then have some realistic notion of how they will react to conflict and situations, and whether their motivations drive the story or, better still,
drive the story for you. A recurring question in fiction workshops concerns problems of believability in characterisation, as in I do not believe X would do/say this Character history does not provide with an alibi, but it will prevent you creating bogus moments of behaviour and speech, or help you correct aberrations in the next draft.

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