Welcome to my writing pages! The main focus of this website is to offer writing tips, prompts, and inspiration to writers, no matter what their genre or skill level. You’ll also find information on my published works and the ones in progress. My schedule for posting is:

Monday Sparks: Writing prompts to fan your creative flame.

Thursdays – Writing tips based on a monthly theme

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First Impression: Protagonist or Antagonist?

I often start building a character by seeing a face that captures my attention. I try to pay attention to my first impression. When I see that character, what do I think first? Major villain? Kindly grandmother? A hero? Or the hero’s best friend. So when you look at this portrait, what’s your first impression: protagonist or antagonist?

I won’t prejudice you by giving my first impression; I’ll put my initial reaction in the comments.

Here are more tips and prompts for writing characters.

February 16, 2026 0

Dig Deeper to Write a Compelling Protagonist

Last week, I gave advice on beginning the creation of the main character or protagonist of your novel, developing their physical appearance, basic personality, and some backstory. This week, I want to dig deeper to write a compelling protagonist, delving into goals, lies and fears. All three elements can be uncovered with one question.

The Power of Asking Why

Sometimes, the genre dictates the goal of your protagonist. I write mysteries for teens. So the goal of my teen sleuth Rae Riley is to solve the mystery. But I have to go deeper with my why questions: why does Rae have to solve this mystery? Since I write a series, her goal can change for each novel. In the short story that started the series, “A Rose from the Ashes”, Rae is looking for the father she’s never known and trying to figure out if he attempted to murder her late mother when she was pregnant with Rae.

She wants to solve this mystery for personal reasons. But why? That might sound silly–everyone wants to know who their father is, but I need to find out why Rae does. Well, she was raised by her mother, who had no family. Now that her mom has died of cancer, Rae is alone. So loneliness and the innate desire for family are driving Rae to uncover a possible killer.

In later stories, the goal is still to solve the mystery but for different reasons. No matter what the reasons, they still have to fit with Rae’s basic character, which is she’s observant, curious, and likes to help people in trouble. Nothing angers a reader more than for a series character to suddenly acquire deep motivations that have never even been hinted at before because the author needed those motivations for this particular novel.

Does Your Protagonist Have to Believe a Lie?

Many tips on developing your protagonist say he must believe a lie, and through the course of the story, learns it is a lie and grows from this new knowledge. This approach works well for protagonists in stand alone novels. But if I have the same series character believe a lie in every novel, she will eventually come across as a nitwit.

Another way to create growth for a character is doubt, which works for both a stand alone and a series characters. In fact, I even put doubt in one of my titles, A Storm of Doubts. In that novel, Rae wrestles with the doubt that Mal, the man her late mother said had to be her father, actually is. Because Rae and Mal thought they didn’t need a DNA test, Rae worries that her con man uncle’s insinuations that he is her father might be true.

I like working with Rae’s doubts rather than her belief in a lie because it gives me more room to explore her experience and keep readers guessing about what will happen next. When a character believes a lie, most readers can pick it out easily and know right away that the story will be about the character learning it is a lie. I want to surprise my readers, and a protagonist with doubts lets me do that.

What is Your Character’s Greatest Fear?

In a stand alone novel, your protagonist’s greatest fear should be the most serious threat he faces as he works toward his goal. The hero of a fantasy novel fears letting down his father the king, once again, and the whole kingdom as well, if he doesn’t recover the item that will rescue it from the forces of evil on his quest.

Keep asking why questions to uncover your protagonist’s greatest fear. In A Storm of Doubts, why does Rae care about her uncle’s hints, especially when she knows he’s a con man? Because she loves Mal and the family that’s accepted her. His hints stoke her greatest fear, losing her dad and her family.

Since I write a series, I can’t invoke this fear in every novel–too repetitive. But Rae has other fears that mix with her doubts and are tied to the mysteries she solves.

What techniques do you use for digging deeper to write a compelling protagonist?

February 12, 2026 0

Where Do You Find Characters for Your Novels?

I’m always interested in how other writers, and even other artists, work and find and develop inspiration. So where do you find characters for your novels? Do you pull mostly from people you know? Are you inspired by characters in books or movies? Do you scroll online for inspiration?

Inspiration for my characters fall into two broad categories–inspiration for their physical features and inspiration for their personalities. When I see a face that catches my attention, whether I see it in person or online, it usually suggests a personality to me. For me, the face and personality have to work well together or the character will fail. If I decide this character will be a major one, I explore their personality based on my experience of human nature. So while the character’s physical appearance is inspired by a 1940’s movies star, her personality is based on a mom I know from my kids’ school.

One of my favorite places to find faces is old movies. Eighty years ago, producers cast roles differently from the way they do now, so you’ll see actors who can look different from the ones working now.

Let me know in the comment where you find characters for your novels.

Here are more tips for creating characters.

February 9, 2026 4

Creating the Main Character of Your Novel

Creating the main character (MC) of your novel is the most critical task you face when starting to write. You have to get him or her right. There are myriad ways to do this. Below are just a few suggestions that might work for you and they are ones I think give you the best chance to create a realistic MC.

Create a main character you want to spend time with

This is so important. A rookie writer will probably take a couple years to finish a novel. Do you want to spend all that time in the company of a MC you don’t really want to be friends with? And if you don’t, how will readers?

In an interview with CBS Sunday morning, author Louise Penny said she based the MC of her mystery series, Inspector Gamache, on her husband because she realized she might be spending a ton of time with this character.

Create a main character based on yourself

Only God, and possibly your mother, knows you better than you do, so basing a character on aspects of yourself will cut down on your research and raise the realism of your MC. Since there’s only one you, drawing from your own history, personality, and beliefs should go a long way toward making your MC unique. That doesn’t mean your MC is simply a reproduction of you. Feel free to add and change elements that are alien to your experience or personality. But if your MC has several things in common with you, that gives you a familiarity and comfort with the character when you start to write.

The MC of YA mystery series is Rae Riley. She’s nineteen going on twenty. She has a similar personality to mine, but not exactly. She’s much braver than I am and doesn’t deal with depression and anxiety. We also have similar interests and beliefs. I’m working on my fourth novel with Rae and she’s a character I love to sit down and work with.

Create main character based on someone you know well

If you’re not comfortable creating a character based on yourself, then let someone you know well inspire you. Again, your MC doesn’t have to be a clone of that person. Just sample a few characteristics so you can build a MC you would like to know.

Once you have the basic ingredients of your MC–physical appearance, core personality, and some backstory–you need to get to know your MC. Your MC is the one character you should understand as well as yourself or your kids. How? There are tons of tips in this area of writing.

Interview your MC. Prepare an interview for your MC. It can be like a job interview — “So you want to be the main character of my novel. What are your qualifications?” Or an interview with a therapist. Or pretend you’ve met a few times at work or school and you’ve decided to have coffee to get to know each other better.
Take a personality test. Some authors swear by this approach for most of their characters, not just the MC. You can use any personality test that makes sense to you, whether its enneagram or 16 personalities (I’ve take this one).
Write a detailed backstory. You write their biography. The fun thing about this approach is you don’t have to write well. No one will see this bio. It’s only to help you get to know your MC. Just write down the facts as they come to you, and you don’t have worry about style or even grammar.

You can also keep your MC in the back of your mind as you go through your day and ask yourself how your MC would react to what’s happening in your life. I like this approach because you can work on getting to know your character in real world situations while still doing your life.

What’s her attitude toward grocery shopping? What would she buy?
How would she handle that difficult co-worker?
How does he spend his time during his lunch break?
How does he react to picking up kids at the elementary school?
What does she usually fix for dinner?
What’s her bedtime routine?

Most of these attitudes and incidents won’t appear in the novel, but they help you see your MC as a real person. And that’s the goal of fiction–to create a world with characters that seem real.

But what about MC’s goals, lies and fears?

Many writers give the advice that you have to understand what your MC’s goal is in the story, what lie she believes at the beginning of the story and how learning it is a lie will change her, and what her greatest fears are. I think this comes after you get to know your MC, and I’ll dive deeper into the MC’s development next week.

What advice to you have for creating the main character for your novel? I love to learn from other writers!

Here are more tips on creating characters.

February 5, 2026 0

How Do You Start Writing Your Novel?

Last month, I discussed ways to get ready to write a novel. This month’s posts are about starting the writing process by creating characters–this is how I often start my novels. But the most common way for me to begin is for the climax to pop into my head and then I write a novel to meet it. But telling rookie writers to start their writing process with inventing a climax is too confusing. So I’ll focus on characters, my favorite aspect of writing. But before we dive into characters, I want to ask other writers–how do you start writing your novel?

There’s no wrong way to begin. Does a specific plot twist inspire you? Or an intriguing setting? Maybe it’s a genre or subgenre. I’m curious to get other writers’ opinions because there are as many approaches as there are writers.

Here are my posts on getting ready to write a novel if you missed them from last month.

February 2, 2026 0

JPC Allen Writes