Tina, here's how I approach the process of "leaning into" a story's characters.

Tina, here's how I approach the process of "leaning into" a story's characters. It also how I teach it.

The first and most important stage is what I call Receptive Writing. This is where we immerse ourselves in the story universe and the lives of our characters through a series of direct engagement exercises: Interview, Monologue, Stream of Consciousness. We allow all of this content to come our way and aggregate it into a Master Brainstorming List. We don't pre-edit anything, just put it all down onto the list.

Then there are times when we step outside of the story universe and do what I call Reflective Writing. Here, instead of engaging the characters directly, we think about them, look at all that content we've amassed and sort through it with a series of indirect engagement exercises: Questionnaire, Biography, Free Scene.

The process of "leaning into" our characters involves bouncing back and forth between these two perspectives in relation to the characters and story universe: sometimes inside rubbing shoulders with the characters; sometimes outside thinking about what we've discovered.

This is where the Family of Characters is so valuable. Think about five character archetypes - Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster. Do any of our story's characters seem to slot into one of those narrative functions? Often, they do. And you can create a "map" of those relationships. It's a great way to understand each character, their base function in the story, and a lens through which to interpret their actions, even dialogue.

I get into this content in depth in my book The Protagonist's Journey, but what I've detailed here is a distillation of that content.

Hope you find this helpful, Tina!