Robert Gregory Browne Shows You How to Create Characters that Jump Off the Page

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Robert Gregory Browne is a novelist who heads his own publishing firm, Braun Haus Media. Rob has been writing fiction for 30 years and has 19 novels under his belt, many of which were published by some of the biggest names in the business: St. Martin’s Press, Penguin/Dutton, and Harlequin.

Before he started writing novels, Rob worked in the movie industry as a screenwriter. His thriller, Kiss Her Goodbye was produced for television by Sony/CBS.

Several years ago he won the Nicholl Fellowship for screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. The Nicholl Fellowship is a prestigious international screenwriting competition to identify and encourage talented new screenwriters.

In our conversation, Rob explains why he decided to make the leap from traditional publishing to indie publishing several years ago, and the blow-out success he had with his first indie title, Trial Junkies.

We then dive deep into one of the chapters in his new book, his first nonfiction title: Casting the Bones: An Indie Author’s Guide to the Craft of Fiction. The chapter we pick apart: Creating Characters that Jump Off the Page. For Rob, creating great characters is of paramount importance to the success of any novel, and in our conversation he shares the techniques he uses to write characters that feel real and keep the story moving quickly.

He also discusses how he balances showing with telling, his sparse use of dialogue tags, his general aversion to creating detailed outlines, and other approaches he has developed over the course of his career.

As some of you may know, National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo as it’s known by its acronym — is coming up in November. Every November, aspiring novelists around the world take up the challenge of writing a complete draft of a novel within 30 days.

With so much chatter about NaNoWriMo in the air, I thought this would be a good time to talk about some of the elements that make for a great novel. If you’re planning on joining NaNoWriMo, or you’re already well on your way to writing your first novel, then I think you’ll get some great tips from Rob.

If you have absolutely no interest in writing a novel, then have a listen anyway, because you might find some tips and tricks that could help your nonfiction writing. In fact, near the end of our conversation Rob explains what nonfiction writers can learn from the craft of fiction. This is a theme I’m very much interested in and will continue to pursue in future episodes of this podcast.