Writing About Relationships (Afternoon)

with Jeanine Cummins

Developing strong, flawed, complicated characters is crucial to creating believable stories, and the traditional tools for character development can be very helpful, but once you have a character profile in place, what comes next? How do you grow a character from a robust but two-dimensional profile into a living, breathing, memorable, tactile human being? Take them off the page and into a relationship. This is the soil where character blooms.

In this class, we will explore the ways a character changes as soon as they are in relationship with others. Regardless of personality, position, circumstances, it is through the lens of interaction with other people (both physical and psychological) that we truly get to know our characters. The gulf between internal and external relationship is where the most nuanced and important characteristics can come to life.