I had a breakthrough today.  A long overdue one, but late is better than never (at least that's what I've always been told).

I never realized how hard it is to write a good character.

That is, I never realized how much work actually goes into learning about your character. And not just memorizing their eye color, weight and favorite food but actually learning their habits, their motivations. What's their favorite memory? Why do they behave the way they do? One thing I've always struggled with is getting inside the heads of my characters, learning their motivations and driving forces. I'll scratch the surface but not dig deep, and digging deep is what you have to do if you want a strong story that resonates with a reader.  This is really what this book is about, I think - learning to dig deep.  I get lazy, and want to stop at the statistics.  Because we are so much more than our weight and eye color, aren't we?

I've been mostly working on my outline today, getting down the history of each of the main characters as well as some secondary ones (that's where this whole spiel came from!).  I feel like I've hit my wall and broken though it - woohoo!

I'm not really sure what's going on here.  If you figure it out, let me know. O__O