Writer's Wednesday: What I'm learning while teaching
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For the last few weeks I've been teaching a class on novel writing at the local senior-education non-profit. I started with a lot of ideas about what I should cover and how I should teach it, almost all of which I had to chuck the first day. Instead, my four students and I are wandering through different aspects of creating a story, the decisions that must be made about character, setting, plot, voice, narrative point of view, etc. The result? A great excuse for me to delve more deeply into elements of my craft that I haven't thought about consciously, or haven't thought about enough. I get to talk about them with people who read a lot and write at least some. My neat and orderly progression through the stages of writing got dumped, but I, at least, am learning a lot! Here are some of the very relevant things I've been thinking about: Character . What does it take to make a character that readers will like, identify with, or at the least give a hoot about? How do you m