Clever plots are fine, but it's the characters that bring a story to life. It's the characters that we get emotionally involved with, and which we are likely to remember most when the story's over. So ...

How to create a character. Every good story needs strong characters. You could write about characters you already know, from books, films or television, but it’s much more fun to start with a blank ...

Firstly describe the character physically: give us the age and some distinctive features. Freud starts his Ratman case history, for example, with the sentence “A youngish man with a university ...