{"id":13906,"date":"2025-07-07T10:26:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=13906"},"modified":"2025-07-19T10:44:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T17:44:15","slug":"wanted-real-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wanted-real-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanted: Real Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"410\" src=\"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Pinocchio.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13907\" style=\"width:146px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Pinocchio.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Pinocchio-220x300.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c . . . there\u2019s nothing more glorious than when a fictional character feels completely&nbsp;<em>real<\/em>. And nothing more meh than when a fictional character feels like a cardboard cut-out.\u201d \u2014 Excerpt from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theforeverworkshop.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Forever Workshop<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>From Marlene: <\/strong>I agree! I love to immerse myself in writing that takes me into another world. I\u2019m not interested in reading what a character looks like and haven\u2019t been able to articulate why until I read this by Jo Gatford:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I usually don&#8217;t give much of a crap what a character looks like, unless there&#8217;s a particular physical attribute, gesture, or way they move that helps show who they are. So dive deep and look for a line that gives us a guts-first impression of your fictional person.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theforeverworkshop.com\/p\/workshop-your-wip-introduce-your\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> <strong>Workshop Your WIP \u2014 Introduce Your Protagonist with ONE Line,<\/strong><\/a><strong> <\/strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jogatford.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jo Gatford<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c . . . there\u2019s nothing more glorious than when a fictional character feels completely&nbsp;real. And nothing more meh than when a fictional character feels like a cardboard cut-out.\u201d \u2014 Excerpt from Forever Workshop From Marlene: I agree! I love to immerse myself in writing that takes me into another world. I\u2019m not interested in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2072,2071,1190],"class_list":["post-13906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotes-of-inspiration","tag-forever-workshop","tag-jo-gatford","tag-writing-freely-just-write-writing-prompts-the-write-spot-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-3Ci","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13913,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906\/revisions\/13913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}