The Character Driven Bundle

For decades, character-driven stories were reserved for literary fiction, while commercial fiction was typically occupied by stories written with more emphasis on plot. With the ever-changing nature of the literary market and audience demands, commercial fiction is experiencing a character writing renaissance. Themes focused on character development, such as found families and coming-of-age adventures, are beloved among sci-fi and fantasy readers. The squeaky-clean action hero has been eclipsed by the anti-hero, and one-dimensional villains are losing ground to antagonists the audience can’t help sympathizing with. The Character Driven Bundle includes character writing guidelines, tips, and inspiration from bestselling authors, for writers of all genres—from commercial fiction to upmarket to literary. Valued at $655.90, these eight OnDemand webinars and two Writer’s Digest digital editions are now available for 90% off their original price as part of this deal. Don’t keep your characters waiting! Save money and learn the ins and outs of writing the character-driven story with the Character-Driven Bundle.

Products included in the bundle:

What Do Your Characters Want? Using Highly Motivated Characters to Drive Stronger Stories

In this OnDemand webinar, you'll learn how to leverage your characters' goals and desires from Page 1 to get readers to quickly invest in their journeys, eager to come along for the ride. With plenty of examples from bestsellers across genres, you’ll see how focusing on character motivations as a guiding principle can not only bring your story’s central players to life, but add propulsion to your plot, raise and complicate the stakes, and elevate the themes of your story. ($79.99 value)

Writing Characters Outside of Your Personal Experience

This OnDemand webinar will explore research methods, ethical considerations, and narrative techniques to avoid harmful stereotypes while embracing complexity. We’ll discuss the balance between imagination and responsibility and how to write with empathy rather than appropriation. Whether you’re tackling race, gender, class, or ability, this presentation will equip you with tools to create characters that resonate and ring true.($79.99 value)

Using Characters to Create Momentum

Stories are born from characters facing obstacles to their goals. What makes stories interesting—what gives them momentum—is how those characters react. One might shrug off a metaphorical boulder in the path, simply going around. Another might climb up, and still another might ask for help. Understanding your novel’s major and minor players can help you know where to begin a story and how to keep it moving forward. This is an OnDemand webinar. ($79.99 value)

Exploring the Villain's Journey: Crafting Compelling Antagonists

So much time is spent on the hero's journey when writers are crafting their characters that it is not uncommon to overlook the importance of exploring the villain's journey for those pesky antagonists. In this OnDemand webinar, Vanessa Riley focuses on creating character arcs for villains and complex antagonists, exploring what makes the truly great baddies so memorable. ($79.99 value)

The Art of People Watching: Translating People into Words

Are you struggling to bring your fictional characters to life? Transform your writing by harnessing the art of people-watching, a skill every writer should master. In this engaging session by prolific author and people-watcher Michael La Ronn, you'll learn to infuse your characters with authenticity and depth. ($79.99 value)

Writing Neurodivergent Characters in Horror

In this OnDemand webinar the instructor discusses the stereotypes and tropes that have come before—everything from hyper-intelligent, emotion-free killing machines to the hyper-fixated, socially awkward investigators who pursue them—as well as the challenges in depicting invisible disorders that express themselves in a myriad of ways. Most importantly, we’ll talk about how to create authentic, neurodiverse characters that aren’t merely a grab bag of their expressed traits and exist on the page with full, lived-in personalities.($79.99 value)

How to Write Great Characters for Great Stories

In this OnDemand webinar, you’ll discover the art of creating engaging characters that will hold your readers spellbound. Learn secrets of psychology and human nature to make your characters more three-dimensional and relatable. You’ll also learn how to draw on insights from relationships in your own life to make your characters jump off the page. This webinar will help you create characters that readers will remember forever. ($79.99 value)

Writing Secondary Characters Who Steal the Show

In this one-hour OnDemand webinar, Kristina Pérez will guide you through the process of developing your own compelling secondary characters. She will address the backstory, characterisation, and worldview necessary to creating a sidekick or antagonist whom your reader may love even more than your heroine. Using examples from her own work as well as classic literature and popular culture, she will demonstrate effective techniques for getting readers to invest in your henchmen, squires, snarky engineers, confidants and mystical messengers. By the end of the webinar, participants will have an understanding of the requirements for a charismatic secondary character and tools to create their own. ($79.99 value)

Writer's Digest March/April 2024 Digital Edition

Whether fiction or narrative nonfiction, characters are a critical part of every story. But that doesn’t mean everyone agrees on how to create those characters or what a character needs to be in order to draw readers in. Do they need to be likable or is compelling enough? Should writers know their characters inside out, or just what’s going to be necessary for the story? In this issue of Writer’s Digest, writers will learn techniques for creating characters for novels, a series, memoir, and more. ($7.99 value)

Writer's Digest July/August 2024 Digital Edition

Nature has always been a source of inspiration for writers, and here we mean nature in the broadest sense. From what we typically think of as nature (e.g. flowers and trees, animals and weather systems, etc.) to the nature of human nature, the July/August 2024 issue of Writer’s Digest aims to explore how writers can use nature as an influence on their work. ($7.99 value)