Publishable Characters: A Complete Guide With Tests & Comprehensive Developer

Publishable Characters gives authors the tools to craft effective fictional beings. This essential guide starts with this simple truth: readers judge your creations against people they know. Exceeding this standard produces novels that audiences can't help but recommend. The first step is to understand psychology, specifically how people relate to one another and how it should guide your writing. You'll uncover the force behind deep empathy and learn how to keep readers invested to reach this ultimate goal.

This exploration initially provides a clear, practical recipe for constructing your being's identity. The Bardsy Character Equation lays out three core ingredients, while the Comprehensive Developer expands upon this core with 73 potential add-ons (see the interactive version at bardsy.com/character). Crucially, it shows how to blend these elements into a fully integrated persona that captures and holds your reader's attention as it behaves organically.

Achieving deep empathy also depends on coherence, the synergy between your character and the story’s world, conflict, theme, and plot. So, this guide shows how to entice readers into knowing your creations through meaningful details and contextualized choices. Resonant arcs and compelling plots flow from connecting these situations, provoking intimacy and empathy as your words bring the character to life in the reader's mind.

Publishable Characters includes tools and tests, developed through hundreds of writing group sessions, to help you track your progress and achieve real results. You’ll be thrilled by the irresistible characters this approach creates, and you'll want to keep this guide at hand for quick reference whenever you write.

MIT drop-out, UCLA Ph.D. and former Yale visiting professor, Adam Simon is the author of The Winning Message (Cambridge University Press), Mass Informed Consent (Rowman and Littlefield) and over a dozen peer reviewed social science articles, Bardsy's Social Media Primer with Alex Thieme as well as our new guide: Publishable CharactersAmong his awards are a NSF Graduate Fellowship and a share of a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. He is known for commitment to his students' success and devotion to coherent storytelling, not to mention an all-consuming love of science fiction and empirical research.