Faith and Philosophy: The Deep Beliefs of Your Characters
Characters who want something and who have something at stake in a story are more interesting characters — but what if you need to know what a character believes, at the deepest level, before you can know what they really want and what they truly have at risk? In this seminar we will look at how to deepen our characters by forcing ourselves to explicitly examine and describe our characters’ beliefs in terms of the timeless questions of faith and philosophy, and to work through how those beliefs provide a foundation for the wants and stakes that will propel a story. Come prepared for in-class discussion and short writing exercises.
Nick Arvin’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Ploughshares, Electric Literature, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. His writing has been honored with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Library Association, the Isherwood Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a two-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, and his novel Articles of War was selected for the One Book, One Denver program. More on Nick