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Crafting Characters Who Drive the Plot of Your Novel: an Interview with Derek Milman
by Writing Workshops Staff
3 hours ago
Today, with three celebrated novels to his name, an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and a flair for captivating plots that spark Hollywood bidding wars, novelist Derek Milman is sharing the mysteries of craft in a new six-week Zoom workshop that promises to peel back the curtain on a crucial yet often elusive element of fiction: character.
From the Inside Out: Crafting Characters Who Drive the Plot of Your Novel is a course engineered for writers at every stage of the process—those grappling with blank pages, polishing works-in-progress, or ironing out the final kinks in a nearly completed draft.
Over the span of six weeks, students will study examples of indelible characters from recent and classic fiction alike, building toward the singular goal of weaving together character and plot in a way that elevates both.
Milman, whose own books have garnered starred reviews from major industry publications, wants participants to glean more than mechanical technique. This class is after the emotional marrow of a character, the driving force that compels readers to turn the page.
With open discussion, guided lectures, and workshop sessions dedicated to each writer’s outline, this program promises to be both intellectually rigorous and refreshingly hands-on.
In the interview that follows, Milman shares how his years on stage, in front of the camera, and behind the keyboard have shaped his approach to storytelling—and how he hopes to spark that same creative fire in his students.
Writing Workshops: You have a background in both writing and acting, from studying at Northwestern and the Yale School of Drama to performing in theater, film, and TV. How do you draw upon your experiences as an actor when it comes to writing vivid, psychologically complex characters?
Derek Milman: Both crafts involve parallel skills; acting gave me a creative template in which to approach my writing. When you learn acting, you’re trained to reveal conflict, to understand the importance of high stakes, and those instincts stayed with me. I know, intrinsically, to look for the central conflict in any given story, individual scenes, and figure out the stakes for all the characters. This creates a movement to the text, because there should be a level of propulsion in a well-crafted novel. I don’t like when prose just hangs there. I’ve learned how to pull plot out of story and avoid stagnancy in the writing. In addition, acting gave me a facility with dialogue, a deeper knowledge of language, a sense of setting, and an understanding of psychological profiles. It’s an interpretive craft, so as an actor, you’re taking a character, and through the text, you’re building a human being with needs around those words. In a way, it’s the reverse of writing! But both crafts require similar directives.
WW: Your novels, like Scream All Night, Swipe Right for Murder, and A Darker Mischief, have garnered critical acclaim for their strong character voices. What’s one technique you employ to ensure each character’s thoughts, desires, and shortcomings come across so compellingly on the page?
DM: You build a solid backstory to the character and understand, on a line-to-line basis, what their motivations are. As a writer, it’s best to know these characters well, before you begin to draft, although a lot can clarify in the drafting phase as well. I advise physicalizing the early stages, moving yourself away from the computer screen. Your brain works differently when you hold a pen and write by hand. It can feel like an embarrassment of riches as your hand struggles to keep up with the onslaught of ideas. Sitting in front of the screen is the opposite—typing is quicker than your brain can process which can lead to lapses in the action of drafting. But if you come prepared, with notes, or an outline, you will feel far less at sea.
WW: You mention that characters shouldn’t simply absorb the world around them; they should influence it. Can you share a time when one of your own characters took on a life of their own and ended up driving the plot in a direction you never initially envisioned?
DM: In my debut novel, Scream All Night, the main character Dario, who’s legally emancipated from his family, has to return home for his father’s funeral. His “home” happens to be a large gothic castle doubling as an infamous B-horror movie studio. Once returned, Dario has to confront his much older brother, Oren, who’s been taking over for their diminished father and running the studio on his own. In crafting Oren, I had to create an individual who’s never seen much of the outside world beyond the castle walls and his world of ghosts and goblins. Oren is an egoist, with nothing to back up his claims of greatness, but the (dark) humor comes from his own personal demons and tragic life story. Since Oren is a wholly bizarre character, highly unpredictable, envious, not always rational, and blithely self-destructive, he definitely wound up driving the plot in directions I didn’t originally envision. And I had to reign him in somewhat. But that’s the joy in having an antagonist whose eccentricities of character and circumstance lead to self-delusions; a character multi-layered enough where it isn’t just blank evil that’s driving him, but his own unfulfilled dreams.
WW: Many aspiring novelists struggle with weaving character arcs into plot. What’s one piece of practical advice you give in your workshop for mapping out a character’s internal growth, so it naturally propels the story forward?
DM: That you don’t get too hung up on the past, but keep the story, and your characters, grounded in the current circumstances. Keep things in the present! Yes readers will need exposition, but even if you’re using flashbacks as a narrative device, they should connect forward to the present, in an active way, like tendrils on a vine. You never want to stray too far away from the vine attached to the spine of your story.
WW: Your suggested course readings, from classics like The Great Gatsby to contemporary works like The Nickel Boys, emphasize flawed, deeply human protagonists. Why do you think flawed characters hook us so powerfully, and how can writers achieve that delicate balance between vulnerability and relatability?
DM: Humanity is itself deeply flawed, and flaws lead to conflict. We’re all flawed, in our own way, so reading about flawed characters ultimately leads to relatability. Readers relate to any kind of universal truth in a story, someone we all know, something we’ve all experienced. There are no perfect people in this world, so readers relate to characters whose flaws both guide and inhibit them. When we recognize this in others, we see it in ourselves, or loved ones, or we recognize some of the troubled relationships that populate our own life. When we see characters, despite their glaring faults, still trying to achieve their goals in the face of conflict, that push-pull creates that balance between vulnerability and relatability.
WW: Students in your workshop will produce a final outline of their novel, focusing on character arcs. In your experience, why is developing a character arc outline essential before diving into the meat of writing a manuscript, and how does it make the writing process less daunting?
DM: Because you’ll have beats to look to. I always see them as strings of lighthouses in the fog. E.L. Doctorow said his process of writing was like car headlights paving the way in a heavy rainstorm. He knew where he was ultimately going but could only see so far in any given moment. The idea is to remove the blank screen, the blinking cursor, and come to the drafting phase of things as fully prepared and inspired as you can be. Once you know the first line, the second line is right there, waiting for its chance! Sometimes it’s about breaking it down into smaller pieces, so you’re not staring down the barrel of a whole unwritten novel (which can be stressful) but all its component parts. Or, to go back to the earlier metaphor here, you’re seeing the roving beams of lighthouses, not drowning in the blanket of fog!
WW: How do you balance moments of levity and humor with heavier themes, and how might that interplay of tone benefit the complex characters your students aim to create?
DM: The best stories balance humor and pathos. When I had to give the eulogy for a close friend, I realized how much the people in the audience, her parents, her grandparents, needed to laugh. That was personal experience. We have to remember and record the major things that have happened to us, because those are the experiences that make for great fiction. Have you been to a funeral? People make more jokes than they shake their fists at the sky. And big events—weddings, funerals, lavish parties, make for great literary happenings. It is human nature to laugh, to always look for the humor in the darkness and angst, otherwise the pointlessness of our existence could subsume us. That’s why we need escapism, and stories, to begin with. This kind of balancing act, between humor and heavier themes, takes experience, but it’s always good to clock humor in unexpected places and times, as we bring our life experience to everything we write. And as writers we are the world’s greatest observers and detectives. Any interplay of tone takes things out of the expected and into the unexpected, a realm readers enjoy being in the most.
WW: During your rigorous training at Yale, you likely had to confront your fears and vulnerabilities to inhabit complex roles on stage. Can you share a particular moment or insight from that period—whether it was a breakthrough in scene work, feedback from a mentor, or an emotional roadblock—that profoundly shaped how you approach character creation today, and how does that moment continue to inform the way you guide your students to craft characters from the inside out?
DM: During our second year we gave what’s called a Verse Performance. We had to take a character from the Shakespeare canon and create a one-person performance around that character’s text and perform the piece for the whole school. I chose Mercutio. I played him as a bombed-out hedonistic club kid. You have to defend your piece to the faculty first, so I explained what I was envisioning to these scholars—and they agreed with my objectives, because, as one Professor noted, Mercutio “dies for Romeo.” I interwove Mercutio’s text, so he was standing outside Romeo’s window while Romeo was standing outside Juliet’s. It played out as a sort of queer Waiting for Godot. Romeo never comes to the window, as Mercutio lays his soul bare, and he sort of spins himself out into suicide while waiting for his one true love. It was both tragic and funny. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the first time I actually (without realizing it) wrote a novel. Or began to learn the skills necessary to structure one. I learned how important it was to take risks, that story can be pulled from character and from a character’s desires. In any situation, especially one involving emotion, if you look at it from the right angle, there’s a story there waiting to be told. I allowed myself to see one—because I had to—that was our assignment!
WW: What piece of wisdom do you hope participants walk away with that you wish you’d known earlier in your writing journey, especially in terms of building powerful, plot-driving characters?
DM: Inspiration can come from anywhere and every writer should trust their own instincts instead of someone else’s. Take every risk you can in your writing, especially early on in the process. Always ask yourself at any narrative impasse well, what’s the more interesting choice here? Is Ferdinand, the bitter, viscount, in love with the icy Marquise, engaged to marry his sworn enemy, or are they really just social acquaintances? Well....What makes for a more vivid story?
Don't miss out! Sign up now for Derek's class, From the Inside Out: Crafting Characters Who Drive the Plot of Your Novel 6-Week Zoom Workshop. Space is limited. Join us!
Derek Milman studied writing and acting at Northwestern University. His first play was produced in NYC in the first year after his graduation. He received an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama and subsequently performed on stages across the country, appeared in numerous TV shows, commercials, and films, and worked with two Academy-Award winning film directors. Derek’s debut novel, SCREAM ALL NIGHT (HarperCollins), received a star from Publishers Weekly and has since become a Halloween cult favorite. It was also the subject of a Hollywood bidding war and was optioned by UTV/Hazy Mills. Derek’s second novel, SWIPE RIGHT FOR MURDER (Little, Brown), received a star from Booklist, was named one of the best YA books of the year by Seventeen Magazine, and was cited by EW and Buzzfeed as one of the best books of the season. It earned out its advance, selling 20,000 copies in its first year of release. A DARKER MISCHIEF, Derek’s third novel, was recently released by Scholastic. It was named one of the best YA books of the year by Cosmopolitan. School Library Journal declared it a "First Purchase" for high school libraries and it received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus.
