Welcome to 80 percent of a Friday Five. Today’s featured listicle contains only four points, but they are loaded with great information for writers who want to up their game.
Today’s post attempts to expound on some pointers about character development from Sue Monk Kidd‘s 2025 craft book/memoir Writing Creativity and Soul.
If you aren’t familiar with Kidd, she’s the author of the novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings and a bunch of other works of fiction and nonfiction. In Writing Creativity and Soul, she draws from her own experience as well as from other writers–Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou among them–to provide some practical and inspiring guidance for writers.
One section of the book that stuck with me was the chapter “About Characters: Four Questions.” Kidd’s advice here is prompting me to think more deeply about the characters that populate my writing, especially the main characters and their nemeses. While Kidd’s focus is on novel writing, I find that the questions she raises can help short story writers flesh out their characters.
Continue reading “Friday Five (minus one): on creating well-rounded characters”