The Power of Change

The mapping process starts with the personal and moves to the universal. Mapping yourself will help you look at the Emotional Toolbox process personally and assess its truth and validity. It will also help you examine the universal application of the process and discover how to apply it to all your fictional characters.

All great writing moves from the personal to the universal. Start with yourself. After all, you are a complex, interesting, fully-formed three-dimensional human being. You constantly wrestle with a variety of strong emotions and struggle continually with a whole range of internal conflicts. These are the kinds of characters you should write about.

Map What You Know

Writers are always advised to write what they know. What writers (and all other human beings) know the most about is change. Living, by definition, is to change. Nothing in life is static. Change and transformation are all around you. Both impact you every day. You live in an unsettling and constantly changing world. Your world is full of uncertainty, evolving relationships, personal and professional ups and downs, and conflicting responsibilities, loyalties, commitments, and desires. Your characters should experience their world in exactly the same way.

You know exactly how painful change and transformation can be. You have experienced extreme, dramatic, and sometimes excruciating change. Your life has been full of unexpected reversals, complex dilemmas and difficult growth experiences-and so should the lives of your characters. (And there’s no reason why all this turmoil and pain shouldn’t be hilarious. Great comedians know- “If it don’t hurt, it ain’funny.”

Create Fiction from Truth

So how do you create fictional characters out of all of this? How do you create stories filled with the kinds of emotions and changes you’ve experienced? It helps to have a process to turn your own raw material into fiction. Mapping your own character will help you create fictional characters. By understanding how change and transformation work in your life, you will gain insight into how to use this powerful process to create complex, interesting fully-formed three-dimensional fictional human beings, characters who are emotionally true and who have a life and integrity all their own.

I believe the creative process always starts with your own emotional truth. The only thing that makes your story unique is your personal point of view. Human beings have been telling stories since we were able to speak. There are no new stories. The only thing new is you and the way you see and experience the world. Who are you? What do you believe? What insights do you have to share with the world? What is the truth as you see it?

Six Questions START HERE

“I heard of you and your book through Meg LeFauve (Inside Out, Good Dinosaur). I think it was in her work for the Sundance online platform. She didn’t exaggerate at all. Your book (The Character Map is one of the most helpful I’ve ever read.” Alberto G (Animator)

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