Building Characters from Real Life

All Levels | Characters are what sell a story, turning an abstract idea into a living, breathing representation of human experience. In nonfiction, writers build characters from the messy material of real life. In fiction, writers often draw on real people in order to develop convincing characters. In this generative class, you’ll explore techniques for rendering real people as characters through scenes, dialogue, and telling details. You’ll learn strategies from nonfiction and journalism for digging into the thoughts, habits, quirks, and substance of characters.