Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.

No, I’m serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.

As writers, we want to capture individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into their interior rooms for glimpses of weighty baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.

Discovering Characters helps writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We’ll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We’ll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. We’ll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.

Five areas comprise this guidebook.

1. Starting Points ~ templates and character interviews

2. Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways to discover characters

3. Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc.

4. Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs

5. Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more

Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.

Writer M.A. Lee has been indie-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 50 books published under her pseudonyms. Visit writersinkbooks.com to discover more information.