Fiona Ford: Creating Characters Who Feel Real

What makes a character feel genuinely alive on the page?

In this practical, interactive workshop, novelist and writing coach Fiona Ford will explore how writers can create memorable, believable characters with emotional depth. We’ll look at motivation, contradiction, relationships, subtext and the small details that reveal who a character really is, as well as the way character shapes voice and point of view.

We’ll also broaden the idea of character beyond people, exploring how places, settings and even the style or voice of a piece can take on a personality of their own and become an important part of the emotional world of a story.

Through discussion, examples and short writing exercises, we’ll explore ways to deepen the characters and worlds in your own work, help readers connect with them more strongly, and make your fiction feel more vivid and immersive.

The session will cover areas including what characters want and need, contradiction and complexity, revealing character through behaviour and dialogue, relationships and subtext, point of view, and how setting and style can function almost like characters in their own right.

Fiona Ford is a novelist and journalist, with many titles including her bestselling wartime Liberty Girls series (Penguin Random House), The Good Time Girls (Embla), and contemporary fiction (writing as Hannah Treave), The Notekeeper (Canelo) and The Holder of Hope (Canelo). Fiona is represented by Kate Burke at Blake Friedmann.

Alongside Fiona’s fiction work, she also writes for individuals, organisations and brands, helping them tell their stories through press releases, web copy, ghostwritten blogs and more. With several years’ experience as a journalist and commissioning editor, Fiona knows how to shape words that connect with readers and audiences alike.

PWA/P/20261124/WS/1