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feelings. Inject them into the face, neck, guts, brain and heart of the character.
     
20. Fugged Up
    Everybody's a little fucked up inside. Some folks more than that. No character is a saint. Find the darkness inside. Draw their imperfections to the surface like a bead of blood. You don't have to give a rat's ass about Joseph Campbell, but he was right when he said we love people for their imperfections. Same holds true for characters. We love them for their problems.
     
21. A Tornado Beneath A Cool Breeze
    A good character is both simple and complex: simplicity on the surface eradicates any barrier to entry, and complexity beneath rewards the reader and gives the character both depth and something to do. Complexity on the surface rings hollow and threatens to be confusing: ease the audience into the character the way you'd get into a clawfoot tub full of steaming hot water -- one toe at a time, baby.
     
22. On The Subject Of Archetypes
    You can begin with an archetype -- or even a stereotype -- because people find comfort there. It creates a sense of intimacy even when none exists. But the archetype should be like the leg braces worn by Forrest Gump as a kid -- when that kid takes off running, he blasts through the braces and leaves them behind. So too with the "type." They'll help the character stand on his own until it's time to shatter 'em when running. Oh, and for the record, Forrest Gump was a fucking awful movie. In short: worst character ever.
     
23. Dialogue Over Description, Action Over Rumination
    Don't bludgeon us over the head with description. A line or three about the character is good enough -- and it doesn't need to be purely about their physical looks. It can be about movement and body language. It can be about what people think, about what goes on in her head. But throw out a couple-few lines and get out. Dialogue is where a character is revealed. And action. What a character says and does is the sum of her being. It doesn't need to be more than that: a character says shit, then does shit, then says shit about the shit she just did. In there lurks infinite possibilities -- a confluence of atoms that reveals who she is.
     
24. Take The Test Drive
    Write the character before you write the character. Take her on adventures that don't count. Canon can go suck itself. Fuck canon. Who cares about canon? Here I say, "to Hell with the audience." This isn't for them. This is for you. Joyride the character around some flash fiction, a short script, a blog post, a page of dialogue, a poem, whatever. Test her, try her out. That sounds porny, but what I mean to say is:
cut off her skin, wear it, and dance around the goddamn room
. Which leads me to...
     
25. Get All Up In Them Guts
    Know your character. Every square inch. Empathize, don't sympathize. Understand the character but don't stand with the character. Get in their skin. The closer you get, the better off you are when a story goes sideways. Any rewriting or additional work comes easy when you know which way the character's gonna jump. Know them like you know yourself; when the character does something under your watch, you know it comes justified, with purpose, with meaning, with intimate knowledge that the thing she did is the thing she was always supposed to motherfucking do. Unrelated: I really like the word "motherfucker."
     

25 Things You Should Know About… Plot
1. What The Fiddly Fuck Is "Plot," Anyway?
    A plot is the sequence of narrative events as witnessed by the audience.
     
2. The Wrong Question
    Some folks will ask, incorrectly, "What's the plot?" which, were you to answer them strictly, you would begin to recite for them a litany of events, each separated by a deep breath and the words, "
And then
..." They probably don't want that. What they mean to ask is, "What's the story?" or, "What's this about?" Otherwise you're just telling them what happened, start to finish. In other words:
snore
.
     
3. A Good Plot Is Like A Skeleton: Critical,