Helping Writers Become Authors Ep. 594: 8 Ways to Avoid Cardboard Characters (and Plot Contrivances While You're At It)
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Jun 27, 2022 AI Snips
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Cardboard Characters And Contrived Plots Are Linked
- Cardboard characters and plot contrivances feed each other so fixing one often fixes the other.
- K.M. Weiland noticed characters go flat when plots are forced to hit genre beats artificially, killing realism and resonance.
Two Western Romances Show The Difference
- Weiland compared two western romance novels she read: one handled beats well and one frequently resorted to cardboard characters.
- The worse book hit required emotional beats artificially, which made characters stop exhibiting dimensional choices.
Let Character Arc Drive The Plot
- Learn character arc structure and sink it with plot so the arc drives events instead of forcing scenes.
- Ask 'what would my character do here?' rather than 'what can happen here?'.