Breathing Life Into Your Characters: How to Give Your Characters Emotional & Psychological Depth

As a mythologist who works with archetypes, I highly recommend Dr. Rachel Ballon's book, "Breathing Life Into Your Characters". Dr. Ballon's book offers a professional's insight into what makes characters tick. For the writer, director, or actor, this is invaluable information to help shape your story characters. I have attended seminars at the American Film Institute, UCLA, StoryCon, the Writers Store, and many other venues where Rachel leads people through exercises in understanding characters. I have listened afterwards to their comments. "Amazing, I didn't know I had that in me." "I was afraid at first, but it really opened up a wellspring of emotion." "The free-flow helped me free my ideas." "There was something my character was hiding and I couldn't get past it. Dr. Ballon's exercise helped me dig deeper and find the real motivation." These are the sorts of comments her work elicits. The layout of the book makes it easy to locate certain character types and flaws and then goes into clear detail about how to use these flaws to create believable story characters. Buy this book, read it through for a better understanding of human psychology, then come back to it again and again to fine-tune your characters.

Dr. Rachel Ballon has provided writers with an invaluable resource with this book: the tools they need to develop wonderful characters, characters that people will care about deeply. Good characters are the heart and soul of every work of narrative. No matter how clever your plot, not matter how masterfully you have built your structure, your work will fail to reach its full potential without dynamic, believable, dimensional characters. As a writer of both screenplays and works of interactive media, I have found the process of creating characters to be the most pleasurable parts of writing and also the most frustrating. Sometimes a character just refuses to come to life -- he or she just sits there, propped up like a stuffed ragdoll, kind of cute perhaps, but totally soulless. Yes, I can put words in its mouth, but why do those words sound so flat and unreal? Dr. Ballon understands why this happens, and mercifully helps writers uncover the blocks they didn't even realize they had, releasing a flood of creativity. This book gives writers a powerful insight into the characters they are working with and shows them how to transform their stuffed ragdolls into unique, vibrant, fully dimensional individuals. Furthermore, through the exercises she offers in the book, readers may also gain surprising insight into one of the characters they thought they knew best -- themselves.

There are countless writing books in and out of print, but few of genuine worth. This one is invaluable. If you are a writer of fiction who wants to move your audience with authentic and believable characters, this book offers some unexpected gems on how to get there. Dr. Ballon draws upon her experience as both a writing teacher and psychotherapist to put forth interesting ways of thinking about your characters. This book provides tools for penetrating the psyche of your characters to make them more motivated, complex, and believable. If more writers were to take Dr. Ballon's advice, there'd be less snickering in theaters at the endless parade of hollow characters and empty dialogue that plagues Hollywood today.

I thought Dr. Ballon's book was excellent. So many writing books emphasize plot structure and gimmicks toward creating a best seller. What Ballon illuminates is that the key to a great story is in the strength and depth of the characters. She leads writers through creative excercises to access parts of their own pysche so they may create truly interesting, conflicted and authentic characters. Drawing from her work in psychology and teaching writing, I think she hit on some very valuable insights into what works and what doesn't with characters that either fall flat or jump off the page. Bravo.

Found this to be an invaluable resource, not only for screenwriters, but for fiction writers as well. With an emphasis on providing "insight" into characterization & story instead of on craft alone, Ballon has given writers an experienced & helpful perspective at what makes people "tick". It is clear that this is not meant to be a one-book stop for writers in terms of creating & molding everything about their characters -- instead, it's a helpful primer that gives writers a full menu of choices, guidelines and professional insight, which allows the writer to use his/her own creativity & talent to provide the detailed layering of compelling and believable personality traits, quirks, habits & motives which will "individualize" their characters & bring them to life. BREATHING LIFE INTO YOUR CHARACTERS will be a welcome addition to any serious writer's library!