First of all, in order to understand your characters, you need to know/decide upon your hero//heroine and villain’s goal, motivation and conflict.  I recommend and use, Debra Dixon’s book:  Goal, Motivation & Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction.   Using this book as a basis along with the previously mentioned The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler I was fortunate to come across in the fall of 2015, an author by the name of Laurie Schnebly.  She teaches a variety of writing classes.  For more information contact her website:  booklaurie@yahoo.com or at a website known as Writer’s University with an email address of.  WriterU4@yahoogroups.com .  She has a newsletter and has been a tremendous help.                               

She has developed this amazing month long class entitled:  The Heroine’s Journey.  In the class you discover there are 13 steps to use to grow your heroine and effect change.  I wrote each of these steps on separate/small white squares, backed them on black poster board, laminated then posted them on a yellow strip of poster board, starting at the bottom of the board with #1 and finishing at the top of the board with #13.   Once again, each time my heroine completes a step, I staple a check mark over it.  

Next Week I will discuss Part 4- Character Flaws