Creating Compelling and Diverse Characters

Registration closes on March 5th, 2021

What makes To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch or The Color Purple’s Celie so engaging? We’ll explore the fundamentals of crafting layered, multidimensional characters through worksheets, examples, and writing exercises. You’ll learn how to create characters from the inside out, enlivening them with distinct personalities and voices. And we’ll look at ways to respond to contemporary readers’ and publishers’ desires for characters that authentically show diversity. We’ll review successful examples and discuss how to integrate aspects of diversity–including ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, and culture with sensitivity and nuance. And we’ll experiment with how to reach outside our own identities and write characters beyond our own experience. You’ll take away strategies to create real, dynamic, and diverse characters!

Course Format: Six lessons, each divided into two parts. The first part of each lesson focuses on one aspect of how to craft a compelling character. The second part focuses on how to create diverse characters with respect, sensitivity, and nuance.

Each lesson consists of discussion, worksheets, examples, and exercises.

Is the course image heavy: No.

Alex Sanchez has published eight novels with Simon & Schuster, including the American Library Association “Best Book for Young Adults” Rainbow Boys and Lambda Award-winning So Hard to Say. His novel Bait won the Tomas Rivera Mexican-American Book Award and the Florida Book Award Gold Medal. His full-length graphic novel from DC Comics You Brought Me the Ocean came out in June 2020. He has a master’s in counseling, spent many years as a youth and family counselor, and now works as an author, teacher, and freelance developmental editor.