Trying something new here today. It used to be, back when I was transferring over posts from my old blog to this site, that Thursday or Friday would be home to a Blast from the Past post—essentially an excuse to go back to one of the old Being a Better Writer posts that wasn’t on Unusual Things yet and transfer it over (albeit with a little editing). Those posts ran for a little over year, if memory serves, but inevitably had to stop, as I caught up with the present day.

But … that left a large gap in my posting schedule. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not a frequent blogger like a lot of other authors, mostly because—no offense—I spend that time writing on the books rather than writing on the blog. Monday’s BaBW is the only regular exception. Otherwise I don’t have much to say unless something catches my attention. But that leaves dead-time on the blog, and on the internet, dead-time is kind of a literal term.

So, the solution? Classic posts!

Okay, it’s not a perfect solution. And I don’t think I’l throw these up every week, but here’s the idea: BaBW has a pretty big backlog by now. At least 200 articles on all sorts of writing topics. So, from time to time, I’m going to pick a topic, then gather three BaBW posts on that topic and post about them in one of these “Classic BaBW” posts. That way newcomers can easily find older articles that they may not have clicked through the archives for, and recurring readers can get a nice moment of “Hey, I’d like to reread that!”

So, that’s the intro. Now onto the post! Today’s topic: Character Growth! Three articles about developing characters from the archives of Unusual Things!

Character Development and Character Growth—
Characters. There’s no force more central to any story you tell. Be it a run-and-gun thriller or a dramatic love dodecahedron, a tale focused around a lone wanderer exploring a crumbling city or a baker expanding her rivalry with a butcher (that last one sounds like a potential rom-com, doesn’t it?), your stories are going to have characters. Characters that laugh, characters that scream, characters that live … Well, you get the picture.

Exploring Character Growth and Conflict—
So, to begin with, I view character growth as having two distinct types. The first is the growth of the character to the reader, and the second is the growth of the character to themselves.

Showing Character Through Dialog—
Now let’s put this in a scene. We have a grizzled FBI man, undercover on a train, sitting in his seat and pretending to be a newspaper. His passenger, a woman who has no idea who he is, turns towards him and asks “Would you like some gum?”

Now, let’s look at his response. The grammatically correct response is “No, thanks.” However, what differences does this imply about his character over “No thanks,” without any pause? One is timely, implies a pause and perhaps some thought. The other is brusque, pre-determined, almost dismissive, and can be more so based on what action he couples with his statement.

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