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

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.

You can find the show notes to this episode with links to Rob’s website and a link to the Amazon page for Casting the Bones over at writewithimpact.com/episode28. 

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