Sandra Gerth - author of the Writers' Guide Series
How to develop your characters' strengths and weaknesses

How to develop your characters’ strengths and weaknesses

In a previous blog post on how to create interesting characters, I emphasized how important is to give your characters not just strengths, but also weaknesses. Perfect characters are boring!

But you shouldn’t give your characters just any flaws. The flaws your characters have need to be a good fit for the character. 

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how to name your characters

12 tips on how to name your characters

Naming your characters can be difficult since there are so many things to be taken into consideration when choosing character names. Here are 12 tips to help you find the perfect names for your characters: 1. Keep the time period of your story and your character’s age in mind. Names …

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5 Writing Lessons from The Walking Dead

The eighth season of The Walking Dead, one of the most successful television series of all time, starts tonight. I haven’t started watching The Walking Dead when it first began airing. A TV show about zombies stumbling around, craving brains, didn’t seem that original or that entertaining to me. But …

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The golden rule of writing: Show, don’t tell

“Show, don’t tell” is probably the advice writers hear most often from editors and writing mentors. But many writers struggle to understand what it really means. “Telling” means you give readers your interpretations and conclusions, while “showing” means you provide readers with enough details and behaviors to let them draw …

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