Category: Writing Tips

New Book With A Powerful Backstory

“I pressed the button on the phone and the first sound I heard in the headset was a child sobbing. She was barely able to speak, kept saying the same thing over and over…”I just want it to stop.” It was Monday morning 7.30 am. My very first call as a ChildLine volunteer counselor.

Values at Stake – Film

The obstacles in a film or television series should create the kind of risk, peril or danger that pushes the character to take actions that define what is most fundamentally important or true in a character’s life.

Values at Stake – Televison

A character should be forced to make a stark, definitive and active choice. As one value is ultimately chosen, the character finally negates or surrenders the other contrasting value. What price is paid for the character’s choice?

Emotional Status Quo

Too often characters seem to have emotional amnesia, especially when off stage for a couple of scenes. What’s a character’s emotional status quo? It’s the emotional temperature of the character when he or she enters a scene.

Loss and Grief

Whenever a character is disappointed, rejected, humiliated or spurned (or has a set-back of any kind), he or she experiences a loss. The question is, how does experiencing this loss reveal character? The loss and grief cycle includes these character revealing steps.

Relativity and Human Personality

“Einstein, in the special theory of relativity, proved that different observers, in different states of motion, see different realities.” That universal statement of the laws of physics and humanity is at the essence of the Nine Character Types.