product----1
Pam Williams

Let's Get Real: The Art of Developing Believable Characters | 3-Week Online Writing Workshop

$229.00

To quote Maya Angelou: "...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

The same should be true of your characters. 

As well as writing their beautifully crafted stories, you need to bring the people in your pages to life. Make your readers love, hate, empathize with or be infuriated by them...anything...as long as they’re not indifferent. 

Giving your characters habits, natural behaviors, and body language unique to them can help signify their emotions, give insight into their motivations and personality, and also highlight how they change or grow during the arc of their story. 

Think of someone you know really well. Bet you can tell their mood just by the way they move or speak. The way they rub at their head, fix their clothes, mumble or tug their glasses off; the things you notice but they might not even be aware of doing.

Creating those kinds of tell-tale traits for your characters is what Let's Get Real: The Art of Developing Believable Characters will explore –so that they feel real and relatable. And readers will want to journey alongside them right to the very end. 

Visual prompts and examples from novels such as Tayari Jones’ "An American Marriage" and Charmaine Wilkerson’s "Black Cake," are among the tools that will be used to fire up your creativity and get you writing.  

Whether you’re just starting out or already published, this writing class for Black women writers will get you looking at, thinking about and developing your characters in new ways.

3 class sessions
Tuesdays, March 10-24
7p-8:30p ET
4p-5:30p PT
6p-7:30p CT

All class meetings will be held via Zoom. For more information on how to download or use Zoom, please click here. Please note: At this time, to protect the confidentiality of the space and sharing of students' work, classes are not recorded.

    Course Takeaways

    • How powerful subtle details can be in showing your character’s emotions
    • How adapting your character’s speech (pace, phrasing, dialect) reinforces what they’re feeling and who they are
    • How to use internal thought to convey characters’ true feelings – don’t we all sometimes say one thing when we’re thinking another?
    • How applying these techniques can highlight pivotal moments in your story.

    Course Expectations

    • Show up with an open mind ready to experiment, write and share (if you want to).

    Course Skeleton

    • Week One: Telling Tales
      The ways in which you can convey characters' emotion while reflecting their personality; honing in on intrinsic behaviors, bodily responses to stressors; adapting language and revealing internal thought.
    • Week Two: Write what you see… And what they feel.
      The focus will be on describing subtle actions and physical changes in your characters’ bodies that show their frame of mind, change of mood or how they are impacted by what is happening around or to them.
    • Week Three:It’s not just what they say but the way that they say it.
      The focus will be on language and internal thought. You’ll play with how changes in the way your characters speak can reinforce their mood and personality; and make effective use of internal thought to reveal what they really think and feel.

    For Classes: We offer full refunds for cancellation with written notice up until 7 days before your class start date. From 6 days to more than 24 hours before class begins, we offer a 25% refund. If you drop a class less than 24 hours before the class begins or after it has started, you are ineligible for a refund.

    By signing up for a class, you agree to our refund policy and code of conduct here.

    For Editing packages: Refunds are not offered after your story or manuscript is submitted for review.

    Meet Your Instructor

    Pam Williams

    View Page

    Pam Williams is a Black British author of Grenadian heritage.

    In March 2024, Pam’s debut novel ‘A Trace of Sun’ was published by Legend Press. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

    Writing credits prior to then include publication of work in anthologies ‘City of Stories’ (Spread the Word, 2017) and ‘100 Years Unheard: WW1 and the Afrikan Diasporan Woman’ (Afrikan Heritage Writers, 2018). Pam was selected for writer’s development programme The London Writers Award in 2019 and won the Black Ink Magazine New Writing Prize (2022) with her short story Hibiscus.

    In her early career, Pam worked as a fashion journalist, magazine Fashion Editor and freelance stylist. More recently she taught at a special school in London (having retrained as a teacher in 2017). She retired from teaching last summer (2025) and is currently completing her second novel; facilitating workshops that inspire others to follow their writing dreams; and building a legacy that her two young granddaughters will be proud of.