Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up: A Thorough Primer for the Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction

As Martha Engber states in the introduction of Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up: A Thorough Primer for the Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction, character development is the most important facet of any character-based book, because “readers won’t follow for long if they find the people you're writing about dull, one-dimensional or unbelievable.”

Then Ms. Engber explains to aspiring writers of both fiction and nonfiction how the process of growing not just good, but great, characters can be — and should be —as natural and organic as growing a plant from seed to maturation.

After listing the three attributes of a great character, Ms. Engber goes on to teach writers the step-by-step process of how to develop characters from start to finish. The book lists 70 examples from past and present literature covering a wide variety of genres to illustrate key concepts. Each chapter ends with exercises, which if followed, are designed to help readers grow their own characters. The book ends with a glossary, sample query letter and list of questions that can be used during the editing process.

A journalist by training and freelance writer and editor by profession, Ms. Engber is the author of The Wind Thief, a novel. Besides hundreds of articles published by the Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Inside Karate Magazine and other national magazines, she's had a play produced in Hollywood as well as short stories, essays and poetry published in Watchword, Anthology, Bookpress, the Berkeley Fiction Review and other literary journals and anthologies.