crafting-unforgettable-characters

No problem, you say. I’ve got great characters and akiller plot. All I have to do is start writing.Unfortunately, I’ve never met anyone whoactually could do just that, although I supposeit’s reasonable to suppose that the planet doespossess a few such blessed writers. All I knowis I’m not one of them. For me, as for themajority of novelists no matter their skilllevels, beginnings are a tightrope act. And it’sa long fall to the bottom if you miss yourstep.So how, pray tell, does one go about avoidingthat fatal misstep? Well, you write and yourewrite. And then you repeat.Not what you were hoping to hear?Me neither. So in the interest of keeping usboth happy, allow me to throw out the singlemost helpful suggestions for a successfulbeginning:Character.Beginnings are all about character. If thereader doesn’t find your character interesting,why should he stick around to follow thissame boring character through the next 300pages, no matter how brilliant your final plottwist may be? Readers aren’t going to wastetheir time on characters that aren’t brimmingwith life—and neither should we as writers.From the very first page, we have to give thereaders a character they can’t get out of their13