If there’s one thing that Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Never Here, The Spare Room, and other thrillers, loves as much as we do, it’s helping writers fulfill their dream of finishing and selling a book. We’re big fans of her Substack, Get It Write, where she shares tons of publishing intel and writing tips—so we teamed up with her to bring you a regular dose of expert advice. 

Every month, we’ll choose a topic and share some of Andi’s top tips for honing your craft or making it in the publishing world—half here and half on her Substack. Read on, then head to Get It Write for the rest of the post!

(Pssst: Check out the first installment, on crafting prose that sings, on SheWrites and her Substack, too!)

Articulate their values

Characters aren’t just there to fill in a world, like the weirdly shimmery computer-generated crowd in a pandemic-era movie. No, your main character is there to walk us through a journey, and the other characters all serve to help you, the author, make that protagonist rich and believable—and the journey clear and compelling.

We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Emily is on a dream trip to Chile with her best friend Kristen, until she finds a bloodied hotel room and learns Kristen killed a backpacker in self-defense, eerily mirroring a similar incident from their last trip. Back home, Emily tries to move on, but Kristen’s surprise visit forces her to confront their dark past and her growing suspicions. As Emily’s fear intensifies, she must find out the truth about Kristen and decide if she can escape the secrets that threaten to unravel her life.

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Here’s the key question: What’s the central question your book explores (i.e., your theme), and how can your cast of characters explore different approaches to it? Bam—now you’ve got their philosophies and values. Follow-up question: How can those attitudes inform what the characters say and do (creating conflict when they inevitably clash)? This technique (which I first learned from The Anatomy of Story) guarantees that every character is setting up a contrast that helps the reader understand the protagonist better.

An example will help, yes? In We Were Never Here, a central question is: How can women keep themselves safe? Emily’s answer (at least initially) is: By being a little paranoid and taking every precaution. Kristen’s is: By flouting the rules and putting themselves first. But we don’t stop there…Aaron’s is: By denying that the world is all that scary for women, hey, what are you talking about? Priya’s is: By being warm and open and finding strength in numbers (notice how Emily subtly references Priya’s large friend group and welcoming attitude toward Kristen). Once you’ve articulated these differences, you can use them as touchstones every time the characters interact.

See them through a frosted mirror.

How well should we be able to picture your characters? This is up for debate; I write almost exclusively in first person, and while I give my narrators basic physical traits (hair color, tall or short, maybe a key feature like glasses or a distinct haircut), I tend to leave my physical descriptions a little fuzzy. (I think it’s because I don’t spend all that much time thinking about how I look in the average day, so why should my protagonist—whose every thought we’re privy to—dwell on it?) That said, giving any character a key physical trait or two makes it easier for readers to keep a cast distinct in their head and, well, to picture everyone as they read. 

Here’s my tip: Instead of laboring over long descriptions, which I always find kinda boring as a reader, find subtle ways to tell us how someone looks. A character in my WIP strokes the shorn hair near her ear from a fresh fade, for example. She jokes that she hasn’t been mistaken for a straight woman in decades. She reaches into the pockets of her shorts or joggers, never a dress. How can you bring a character to life without stopping the action to spit out, like one of those loud receipt-printers, a rambling paragraph of physical description?

Have fun with it.

Take personality quizzes as different characters! Write scripts for how they’d introduce themselves in their first five minutes on The Bachelor! Think back to the last movie you watched and jot down how your main characters would feel about it and why! Who did they root for in the Olympics? What would they do if they stumbled on a wild car crash? 

Whenever you’re stuck, pretending these lovable weirdos you’ve created are real people interacting with the World As We Know It (batty as this timeline is) will help you articulate their differences and get a better grasp on who they are. Remember, distinctions are the key…if you find two characters would score super similarly on that Buzzfeed questionnaire about what your McDonald’s order says about your love life (true story), something’s up.

Head to Andrea Bartz’s Substack, Get It Write, for the last 3 tips!