Strange Character Writing Advice from a College Professor 👩🏫
A student was recently taking English Composition. The professor knew the student and knew they were writing a novel. One day, the professor stopped the student and gave them some weird advice.
She said to make your readers P.E.A.
“Huh? PEA their pants??!”
“Um-no. Ew.” (Couldn’t resist a little potty humor 😂 if you didn’t know already, I’m actually 12.)
No, P.E.A. Stands for a quick easy to remember acronym that adults (and 12-year-olds) will have an easy time remembering and putting into practice for writing characters.
Pity
Make your readers pity your character. Give them tragedy that makes your readers pity them in their tragic events.
The more tragedy they run into the more the reader is intrigued to see if it will be resolved and furthermore they feel bad for the victim, your main character instead of the antagonist who may be even causing your main character unfair injustice.
Envy
Give the character extraordinary experiences and make them very good at something.
Make them an expert at one or two things.
It could be,
- Genius
- Sport
- Spy
- Skydiving
- Scuba
- Historian
- Thieving
It could be anything really, but by giving them extraordinary moments and making them extremely good at one thing it makes the reader “want to be them” just a little bit.
Therefore they want to read more to experience and live vicariously through them.
Adore
By making the character competent, and highly skilled at something, it has the added effect of making the reader adore them a little.
When they envy and adore them you can put the character through tragedy and danger of loss and the reader will automatically feel pity for them.
You can see how in this way P.E.A. is a circular thought and they each play into each other and help one another. If you have too much of just any one it may not work out as well.
Final Thoughts
Another easy way to remember this is to “make them competent, make them fail.”
Readers love a character that is really spoiled at some things but goes through hard and uncertain times trying to accomplish their goals.
Remember, you don’t want them to be perfect. We need to see them struggle. And P.E.A. is a good reminder of that.
It’s a weird way to say it, but P.E.A. is a good thing to remind yourself of while writing your next character.
It helps bring those truths about character development into a neat little acronym that’s not easily forgotten.
If you can get your readers to P.E.A. it’ll be hard for them to put down your book and forget your characters or what happens to them.
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Strange Character Writing Advice from a College Professor
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That’s all for now.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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Strange Character Writing Advice from a College Professor
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