Inviting the Readers into Your Characters' Journey
Regardless of what genre or POV you’re writing in, allowing readers to understand what’s going on inside your character is what makes a story immediate, direct, and vivid. If readers don’t know how characters react to what happens in the story and how they process those events and interactions, your characters might as well be game pieces we simply watch progress along the board. Readers want to feel we’re part of the game.
That doesn’t mean swaths of navel-gazing self-reflection or inner dialogue that risk stalling out forward momentum and stealing focus from the story’s action. It simply means giving readers not just a front-row seat to the character’s journey, but a backstage pass.
To do that readers must understand the character’s perspective: how events strike her and what she makes of them, and how they motivate her thoughts, actions, and behavior. That’s the heart of a satisfying character journey and the propulsive engine of its momentum—how the author shows characters moving along their arc, conveys stakes, and moves the story forward.
In this workshop, using plenty of published and real-world examples, we’ll explore guidelines and principles for letting readers be privy to the inner workings of your characters’ lives without bogging your story down in interiority, and bringing readers more deeply into their direct experience no matter what point of view the story is told in.
Poorly developed or conveyed inner life is a common root problem of characters who don’t feel real or fully come to life on the page, and of stories that may leave readers disengaged. Tiffany Yates Martin has spent decades as an editor in the publishing industry, working on literally thousands of manuscripts, and has developed practical, concrete ways to open the window to your characters’ inner landscape to create deep, rich characters that draw readers intimately into your story.
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Authors will learn:
What is “inner life” and why does it matter? (It’s much more than just your characters’ thoughts) - How inner life is essential to showing character arc
- How to offer readers insight into what’s going on inside your characters without swaths of internal dialogue or thought that risk overloading the reader, bogging down the story, or navel-gazing
- How to balance interiority with action so you don’t impede story momentum
- Weaving inner life naturally and seamlessly into the story
- Tools for understanding and effectively conveying your characters’ inner landscape
- Determining when/where/how much to open the window to the characters’ inner life
- How POV affects interiority
- Direct thought vs. indirect thought
- Avoiding tics and physiology reports
- Avoiding labeling reactions or emotions and instead drawing readers directly and intimately into your characters’ inner lives
Who should take this course?
Fiction authors who:
- Writers who want to enhance their understanding of what inner life actually is and how to effectively use it in story
- Writers who struggle with effectively conveying character interiority
- Authors who want to learn to balance effective interiority with action—moving the story forward
- Writers who want to learn to deepen characterization and bring their characters more fully and vividly to life
- Writers who want to draw readers more deeply into their stories and characters
- Writers who may feel limited in their tools and techniques for conveying inner life (reduced to a litany of physiological reactions, clunky direct thought, or clichéd descriptions like clenched fists, tight throats, a single tears trailing down cheeks)
Hi, I'm Tiffany Yates Martin, founder of FoxPrint Editorial
In my publishing career working as a book editor on hundreds of manuscripts—for major publishers and New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as newer writers—I have decades of experience in pinpointing what can keep an author's story from being as effective as it can be, and how to help authors make it marketable and competitive.
As an editor as well as a teacher leading workshops and seminars in writing and editing, I've developed clear, useful, hands-on tools for helping authors learn to spot these areas, along with practical techniques for addressing them, and I'm the author of a book based on those techniques, Intuitive Editing: A Creative & Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing, as well as my follow-up book on creating a more rewarding writing career: The Intuitive Author: How to Grow and Sustain a Happier Writing Career
"Deeper than I expected."
"I've known that my revisions need more inner life. But this presentation took me deeper than I expected into the nuances of creating an inner life and in the fine balance necessary. I'm SO grateful!"
"Incredible insights."
"Besides her incredible insights, Tiffany's presence and enthusiasm are severely contagious. This was the first webinar where my mind didn't try to wander off, not for a second. Thank you!"
"Tour de force of a craft class."
"Tiffany delivers another über-helpful, well-explained, multi-genre, example-rich tour de force of a craft class. As usual, I plan to marinate in her words of wisdom for years to come."
Example Curriculum
FAQs:
When does the course start and finish?
The course starts now and never ends! It is a completely self-paced online course--you decide when you start and when you finish.
How long do I have access to the course?
How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as you like--across any and all devices you own.
What if I am unhappy with the course?
We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we will give you a full refund.
