Characters are slippery creatures–just when you think you have a grip on them, they often wriggle away. So how do we keep them in our net while building believable, likable/hatable, three-dimensional characters? In this seminar, we’ll examine the importance of dialogue to character building and the consequences of getting it wrong, the need to keep a character’s voice consistent and relevant, and the way to avoid rote recitations of height/eye color/hair/yadda/yadda in describing your characters. We’ll also talk about rejecting the deadly sin of stereotypes, navigating the very delicate task of writing diverse characters with purpose, and dealing with real-world characters in fiction.