Book II: Character, Chapters 1 - 3 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 1: The Bone Structure

This chapter is a guide on how writers must, literally, know their characters. It is about the importance of knowing why they do the good or bad things that they do, and not just how they do them. The author realizes the first step to fleshing-out these characters is to focus on three different dimensions special to humans, and elaborates on what these are and the basic way to use them to make characters more real; he uses what he calls a "bone structure." The author believes this will make writing characters easier, now that the writer can figure out why they are so motivated.

After taking a look at each character quirk, that the author emphasizes must be built, in all three dimensions, he follows up with another...