The following is an excerpt from The Children’s Writer’s Guide 2.
In terms of characters, you need to make sure that they don’t spend too much time alone throughout the story.
They can certainly spend time in their own thoughts or even talk to themselves aloud.
Yet if they’re doing this too often, they need another character to talk to, a partner that shares in their adventure so that this kind of internal dialogue doesn’t bore the reader.
And of course, characters always need to be interesting, if not always utterly compelling to the reader.
Everyone can’t be fascinating of course, but if you read your story and find that you’re bored with the character or don’t find him or her at all interesting, your reader will perceive them in the same way.
Characters can certainly be annoying or even intensely disliked, but this can still make the reader want to read more about them.
The best fictional villains ever created are usually ones that we love to hate.
Think of stories you’ve read or even movies you’ve seen over the years, in which you’ve almost been rooting for the bad guy or at least consider them to be your favourite character in the story.
There are also books or movies where you really don’t care if some of the characters live or die, usually due to poor writing, characterization, or an overall dull story.
If you think this way about your own story, don’t imagine that the reader will ignore all the novel’s flaws and simply consider you to be a genius that has created a literary masterpiece.
Try and view your story in the same way as the reader would.
If you don’t like what you’ve written, the chances are that other people won’t enjoy it either.
Learn more about The Children’s Writer’s Guide 2 and all Simon’s other books on his website at https://simon-rose.com/. Simon also offers a variety of coaching services for writers and his Writing for Children and Young Adults online course.
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