A brilliantly talented composer friend of mine (currently working on a website of her own) helped me get unstuck today on several projects all at once. The sticking point she discovered? Characters I don't care enough about.

It's not a matter of liking or disliking the characters, per se. But I have to like writing them. When I don't connect well enough with a character--and I mean any character with more than two or three lines--the entire story grinds to a halt. But as long as I enjoy writing the characters, the stories write themselves.

This has always been true about my writing, but I have never been so starkly conscious of the fact until today.

Good guys or bad guys, or too complex to call, I still have to like them. Sometimes the villains have redeeming qualities, so I like them for their potential. Sometimes they don't, and I enjoy giving them what for--not to mention making fun of them as I go. Either way, the writing is a breeze.

It's like spending an afternoon with good friends, hearing about their day. If it happens to be a day spent trapped in a dungeon or lost at sea or settling a frontier planet, all the better. But when push comes to shove, it's not the action that keeps me writing. It's the characters.

So getting unstuck becomes a simple matter of rewriting any character I'm not connecting to. Sometimes this requires a tangible change--maybe lightening up an angry streak or giving an insensitive lout just a little more compassion. And sometimes it's a matter of exploring motivations--explaining why they're so angry or insensitive in a way that makes their faults forgivable.

Whoever they are, I have to get caught up in them. I have to care what happens to them. And that's a very good thing, because in my opinion, it's also the one thing that makes a story worth reading.