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Someone asked me a #pubtip question I was very excited to answer: “How do you edit character-driven MG to keep it from being too slow?” It hit me that many people don’t really know what “character-driven” means—
It does not mean a book that is all internal within a character’s head; it does not mean a story without a lot of plot. It means that rather than story happening to and around a character (“we were walking down the street and stumbled across a unicorn!”) —
It’s happening because of choices that character makes: (“I couldn’t go home that night and face my family after what I’d done that day, so I went to a neighborhood where no one knew me and that’s where I met...” Even more, it’s—
Choices that only that character would make because of their specific history/needs/fears/wishes/background. This as true in fantasy novels as in contemporary realistic stories.
