CREATING UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS

Steven Barnes
2 min readJul 29, 2024

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Tananarive just came back from teaching a workshop to help journalists become novelists. I think that is a VERY short step, and in fact when I’ve been asked what classes someone should take to become a writer, the answer is “journalism and acting.”

Why? Because journalism is a career millions have worked their way into to create financial flow. You learn to research, keep a schedule, learn skills of mental organization and essay structure, and more. You become a storyteller. All you have to do then is take one of those events and tell it from the inside out.

Acting. ACTING is learning to respond with emotional spontaneity, which means either assuming the personality or constructing a personae. Either works. In THIS sense, journalists study “What is true?” while actors study “who am I?” And what she taught them is how to create CHARACTERS. And she LOVED that, because CHARACTERS are probably her strongest suit, and in fact she accesses ALL her stories through CHARACTER.

And we decided to take the very principles she used to write her award-winning, bestselling novel THE REFORMATORY. Go to Amazon, look up her book and see the reviews for yourself: we aren’t joking.

ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 24TH AT 2PM PACIFIC (5pm Eastern). we are holding our summer workshop: CREATING UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS. Either live (in Upland California) or via Zoom (and replays will be available) you will experience three non-stop hours of solid meat. No fluff. The exclusive LIFEWRITING pattern for breaking into the industry (its never failed!), the overall structures of plot and character, then a DEEP DIVE into the art and science of CHARACTERIZATION.

This is going to be AMAZING, and we invite you to join us! Only 100 spaces are available, and we expect them to sell out. Don’t miss it! WWW.WRITERWEBINAR.COM

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Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.