This month, we’ve learned about creating sympathetic characters—giving them strength and struggles, balancing each of those elements, and specific techniques for making our readers identify with even unlovable characters.

If you want to read more on creating sympathetic characters, here are the absolute best, most useful resources I’ve found:

• Sympathy without Saintliness, an online article by author/editor Alicia Rasley. Alicia takes us through some of the most beloved characters in literature capture our sympathies, as well as dispelling some common authorial misconceptions about how we can make our readers like our characters.
• How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II by James N. Frey, specifically chapter one, which shows internal and external techniques to create deeper and deeper sympathy in your readers (which we’ve discussed here briefly).
• The Unlovable Character, a blog post on Writing on the Wall Blog by Julie Wright with an exhaustive list of techniques and characteristics to make readers love even unlovable characters (which she graciously expanded with more examples for us here).

[Update: here's a great quick overview on techniques that do and don't work for character sympathy.]

By request, in July we’re going to celebrate summer by taking a plunge in the deep end of POV. (Don’t you just love the clichés?) This is a great way to follow up a series on characters, since we have to know our characters well to get into deep point-of-view, and since we’ve been working all June to help our readers lose themselves within our characters.

What resources have you found that helped you improve your characters? What would you like to read about in deep POV?

Image credit: Svilen Mushkatov

Over at Write Bravely, Stephanie, whom I was very happy to meet at the LDStorymakers conference in April, gave me a blog award!

Of course, as with every Bloggy Award, there are A Few Rules. They are, forthwith:

Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

I’m going to cheat just a little. Over the weekend, I had six people give feedback on my query. Many thanks to:
Heather Justesen
Nichole Giles
Ronda Gibb Hinrichsen
Rebekah Olsen
Christine Bryant and
Josh Perkey

Thanks so much, Stephanie! And of course, thanks to Heather, Nichole, Ronda, Rebekah, Christine and Josh for your input on my query letter!

The wonderful Annette Lyon is out to give me a heart attack. First, she goes and in the middle of celebrating the release of her new grammar book, There, Their, They’re, she up and links to me and goes on and on about my Word Nerdiness (and yes, that’s a compliment). And then last week, she does it again, this time passing along an award to boot.

And before I get off on that tangent, I pull up her blog this week and see a freaking huge picture of ME on the top post. If ever you want to know how and why we became friends (and/or are secretly separated at birth), Annette lays it all out there. Plus, she wrote a wonderful guest post this week on verbs in dialogue tags—the exact topic I was just about to suggest to her when she told me that was what she was thinking of writing about. Yep, separated at birth.

So, anyway, she gave me an award, too. As if the whole “This is your life” game wasn’t enough .

Here’s the purpose and instructions for the NENO’S Award:

Thank you, Annette! I’m flattered . (Despite the repeated attempts on my life. How come you save Tristi but try to kill me??)

Why I love blogging
There are a lot of things I love about blogging. At my work blog, Marketing Pilgrim, I like the opportunity to analyze the Internet marketing industry from time to time, as well as the chance to keep my editing skills sharp. At my blog about fulfillment in motherhood, MamaBlogga, I love building friendships with other moms, and taking the time to pause and appreciate being a mother, but most of all I love it when someone tells me I’ve made a difference for them that day.

Here on my writing blog, I like developing friendships with other writers and the chance to air my thoughts instead of sitting here fuming over yet another book/website/blog post that claims any use of “was [verb]ing” is passive voice. I’m looking forward to being able to discuss mechanics and technique and books and hearing your insightful comments.

Sharing the love
Kaye Dacus, whose blog was one of the first writing craft blogs I’d ever come across—and I love it as much today as I did then.

My Romance with Romance by my critique partner, Marnee, who (no matter what she may modestly claim) has taught me so much about writing romance. Just look how great Marnee is!

Tristi Pinkston, whom I got to meet last weekend at the launch for her newest book, Agent in Old Lace (read my review), and who is just the kindest, most inspiring mother, writer and mother-writer. Plus she has the best book promo/blog scavenger hunt ever.

Traci Hunter Abramson, who was awesome and really encouraging to me. Plus, I’ve read all of her books (though Lockdown is still waiting for me on my counter).

Thanks again, Annette!