Breaking Bad is a crime drama set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, about a high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who’s diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He and his wife, Skyler, have a second child on the way, and their teenage son, Walter, Jr., suffers from cerebral palsy. In order to secure his family’s future, White begins cooking and selling crystal meth with his former student, Jesse Pinkman. The series follows White venturing further and further into the criminal world, while seeing his family life deteriorate, and attempting to avoid detection by his brother-in-law, Hank Schrader, a member of the Drug Enforcement Agency. See More . . . 

What are Literary Devices

By David Corbett

The source and exact nature of the curious phenomena we refer to as characters remains something of a mystery, but the craft of characterization is not.

Although it’s clearly a cause for celebration—or at least relief—when a character appears in the mind’s eye fully formed, the reality is that for most of us, this is a rare occurrence. Certain techniques are required to will our characters to life. We need to draw on the unconscious, memory, the imagination and the Muse until our characters quicken, assume clear form and, with hope, begin to act of their own accord.

Can this process—so inherent to the success of any novel—really be condensed into a single method? In my experience as both writer and writing instructor, the answer is, to some extent, yes. The key is first to understand what your characters require from you in order to come to life, and then to determine how you can draw on your best available resources to give them what they need. See More . . .