Novel Writing Lesson: My characters are not my friends.

From the first page of notes, I already knew what a couple of Holly's biggest challenges would be. Holly is the main character in my novel, and while a handful of those challenges quickly morphed into different ones, conflict was never far from my mind. It's been years since I accepted the fact that readers and viewers won't care about a story if it doesn't have conflict. Got it. Check. My character has to face some hardship. It's a given I was ready to deal with.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Dena Harris and I spent a day working together. Ahem, working and playing and talking. More than half of our conversations turned toward writing; it's

Click to read more ...