Salter Clark asked Jennifer A. Nielsen:

I'm learning to become an author. I look up to you, so could you maybe give me some tips on how to make characters and plots like yours?

Jennifer A. Nielsen Thank you. The way I create characters is much the way an actor would build their character before going onto stage. So their history and basic info is just that - basic. From there, it's about the way they physically carry themselves, the way they react to troubles and threats; would they demand to be center stage or are they more comfortable in the background, etc? They become real to me in this way which helps them to feel more real to you.

For plots, think of a basic plot line as a long rope, with one event causing another which causes another as the plot moves forward. I take that rope and create loops and knots in it, so that something early in the plot that doesn't seem significant loops around to something highly significant later in the plot. That may not make a lot of sense, but this response box is a hard way to explain my process. I'll try to do a blog post on it soon.

Thanks for asking and good luck in your writing!

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