Creating Behavior Through Backstory

• Which characters captivate readers, building enthusiasm and anticipation with every book?
• Why do readers love—or love to hate—some characters, but easily forget many?
• How do Secrets and Contradictions help writers create realistic character complexity?
• Why is it critical to let the characters’ behavior “show” what really drives them?
• Learn how moments of helplessness or unconscious reaction in the character’s past can create illuminative behavior.
• Exploring backstory creates the “deep story”—the tale your characters tell themselves to justify their attitude toward the world and others, explain away their failures, and identify their allies and enemies.

Don’t miss David Corbett, the Anthony, Edgar, and Barry Award nominee and internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday (“The Best In Contemporary Crime Fiction—or, in Contemporary Fiction, Period.” The Washington Post); The Devil’s Redhead, Blood of Paradise, and many more.

His outstanding non-fiction includes The Art of Character (selected by Barnes & Noble as “one of the five craft guides every writer must have”), and the critically lauded, The Compass of Character: Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV. The guides are widely used (and praised) by both aspiring and established authors.

David’s short fiction has twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories, and a collaborative novel for which he contributed a chapter—Culprits—was adapted for TV by the producers of Killing Eve and appeared in the U.S. on Hulu in December 2023.  He is also a monthly contributor to Writer Unboxed, an award-winning blog dedicated to the craft and business of fiction.

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