Writing Your Characters Using the APET Model

J. Timothy King — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:57:47 +0000

Some of the most profound fiction-writing insights come from psychology, because the characters in fiction are whom you sympathize with, pulling you into the story and making you part of the story experience, more than just an observer. So when you understand the psychology of your character, you automatically write better fiction.

One of the more recent—and to me, interesting—psychological models is the APET model, introduced by UK psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell. Their goal was to help improve upon cognitive psychotherapy by overcoming its limitations. But from a writer’s perspective, the APET model reflects much of the wisdom regarding human nature that storytellers have known for ages. And it builds on this wisdom with the latest discoveries from the fields of psychology and neurophysiology. This lets us writers see a more complete picture of what’s going on inside the heads of our characters, and therefore we can write them better.

APET - Tag - In a past life…

Writing Your Characters Using the APET Model