Columns: Tag – Character Course
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Writing Quips and Tips
Therapy for Characters
Sometimes it takes a shrink to work out what really makes a person tick – even if that person is a fictional character in the mind of a writer.
Psychologist Pierre Brouard thinks he is probably the first of his profession to be involved in running a writing course.
Writing Quips and Tips
We are the “characters” we know best
We recently ran a Character-building course in which a participant was disturbed by the idea of sharing details from her life with the group.
“But why do we need to look at ourselves?” she asked. “Why can’t we just make characters up?”
In case anyone gets the wrong idea, we don’t ask for people’s deepest, darkest. But what makes our Character course unique is, we believe, that we run it with a psychologist. We look at ourselves first in order to understand and build believable characters.
Our tame shrink, Pierre, is useful in helping us look at how people tick. He’s an excellent writer in his own right, so he’s able to make the transition from people-shrink to character-shrink – in other words, from what people may need for a successful life to the narrative necessities of successful writing.
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