{"id":13914,"date":"2025-07-23T11:28:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T18:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=13914"},"modified":"2025-07-23T11:28:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T18:28:46","slug":"create-characters-that-feel-like-real-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/create-characters-that-feel-like-real-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Create Characters That Feel Like Real People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"114\" src=\"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Key.skeleton.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3002\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sophiecampbellwriter.com\/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sophie Campbell <\/a>hands us the key to unlock the dilemma of when to \u201cshow\u201d and when to \u201ctell.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn creative writing, we\u2019re often told to&nbsp;<em>show, not tell<\/em>. It\u2019s practically gospel. In essence, it means&nbsp;<em>show<\/em>&nbsp;us how a character is feeling, don\u2019t&nbsp;<em>tell&nbsp;<\/em>us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, \u2018Jane felt a bubble rise in her throat and her chest heaved as she sobbed,\u2019 is more powerful than simply, \u2018Jane was sad and she cried.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the truth is, the most compelling fiction does both showing and telling, and the best copywriting does too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The key isn\u2019t choosing one over the other, it\u2019s knowing when and how to use each of them to create characters that feel like real people and a voice that readers will remember.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Excerpted from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theforeverworkshop.com\/p\/new-to-the-forever-workshop-start\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Forever Workshop,<\/a> <em>Use This Copywriting \u201cGolden Rule\u201d In Your Fiction, Poetry &amp; Essays<strong>, <\/strong>Lesson 3 of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theforeverworkshop.com\/p\/use-this-copywriting-golden-rule?utm_campaign=email-post&amp;r=39jzkh&amp;utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Steal From a Copywriter: Copy Techniques That Translate Into Creative Writing<\/a><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just Write!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sophie Campbell hands us the key to unlock the dilemma of when to \u201cshow\u201d and when to \u201ctell.\u201d \u201cIn creative writing, we\u2019re often told to&nbsp;show, not tell. It\u2019s practically gospel. In essence, it means&nbsp;show&nbsp;us how a character is feeling, don\u2019t&nbsp;tell&nbsp;us. For example, \u2018Jane felt a bubble rise in her throat and her chest heaved as [&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":[126],"tags":[2073,2074,1190],"class_list":["post-13914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-sophie-campbell","tag-the-forever-workshop","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\/p43Dj8-3Cq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914","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=13914"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13919,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914\/revisions\/13919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}