Belief 02

Character

Readers don't need to like your character — they need to believe them, care about them, and invest in what they want.

Novelist · members' unit

Character is behind a locked door

The Novelist page and Study are open to everyone. The other 9 units are enrollment-only.

What's in this unit · 6 min read

  1. Interest meets obstacle
  2. Believe, care, invest
  3. Save the cat — but know why it works
  4. Problem versus conflict
  5. Assembling an arc
  6. Weiland’s six archetypal arcs

2 quick checksstepper

1 Sign in

With your school Google account. This is how your work reaches the gradebook — it doesn't open the unit by itself.

2 Get in

Open the class link your teacher posted — that's the usual way, and it enrolls you on the spot. Or paste an access key if you were handed one.

A key unlocks this browser and keeps your progress here; signing in keeps it with you across devices. Either way the key itself is only ever checked as a hash. Manage all of this on your account, read what signing in stores, or go back to Novelist.

Sources

  • Matt Bird — The Secrets of Story
  • Aaron Sorkin — MasterClass
  • Blake Snyder — Save the Cat!
  • Edgar Allan Poe — on the single effect
  • Brandon Sanderson — BYU creative writing lectures
  • K.M. Weiland — Writing Archetypal Character Arcs
  • Writing Excuses — on moral ambiguity