An Experiment in Writing – Part 93: Squeezing Your Characters’ Oranges, Part Deux
Joseph Carrabis -
July 22, 2026
CharactersExperiments in WritingFor AuthorsPlotStoryCraftingStoryTelling

I first wrote about squeezing your characters’ oranges in An Experiment in Writing – Part 86: Squeezing Your Characters’ Oranges. There I shared how putting your characters under stress, under strain, is a powerful method for revealing them to the reader, of developing them, and in some cases learning about them yourself.

Here we’re going to go deeper because people asked me to.

How do you squeeze them oranges?

Again, I suggest you consider yourself as a model for your characters; What motivates you to act? Doesn’t matter if it’s well thought out or spontaneous, doesn’t matter if your actions are beneficial or detrimental, all we’re concerned with here is what gets you to act, and what forms does that action take?

Enjoy.

 

The Augmented Man
The Inheritors
The Book of The Wounded Healers
Tag
Empty Sky
The Shaman
Search: The First John Chance Mystery

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Experiments in Writing
1 – This is How It Begins
2 – Openings
3 – More on Openings, Closings
4 – More on Closings
5 – More on Openings – Establishing Voice, Atmosphere, Setting, and Narrator
6 – Authenticity
7 – Inciting Incidents
8 – Worthy Antagonists
9 – Final Conflicts Worth Reading
10 – Action Scenes (finally)
11 – Language and Word Choice
12 – Overwriting, Toing and Froing
13 – Exposition via Dialogue
14 – Exposition via Character Revelation via Deep POV
15 – Character Voice, Author Voice Part 1 – Character Voice
16 – Character Voice, Author Voice Part 2 – Author as Character
17 – Character Voice, Author Voice Part 3 – Author IS Character
18 – Character Voice, Author Voice Part 4 – Author Voice
19 – Plotlines, Timeslines, Throughlines
20 – Plotting, Pantzing, and Procrastinating – The 3Ps Every Author Should Know and Love
21 – More on Exposition via Dialogue – Holmeses&Watsons
22 – More on Plotlines, Timelines, and Throughlines
23 – Into the Mythic
24 – A Little More Into The Mythic, and The Rule of Three
25 – Accidental POV Shifts
26 – World-Building via 1stPPOV
27 – How to read as an author
28 – Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone Teaches Writing
29 – Character via Exposition
30 – What Happens Next?
31 – Who Haven’t I Written About Lately?
32 – Let the Characters Do the Work
33 – Writer’s Block versus Writer Stuck
34 – Editing
35 – Write Moments and Feelings
36 – Timeline and Plotline Convergence (an Example)
37 – Time Manglement
38 – Subjectively Objective and Objectively Subjective
39 – The First Word
40 – Blurbs, Pitches, and But-Then-Except
41 – An Example of “The First Word”
42 – Technique versus Craft
43 – A Humbling Experience – Robin Wilkey Gregory’s Killing Time
44 – What’s a ‘Flaknoc’? (revealing anything through character interactions)
45 – Drinking the Sand
46 – Atrribution via Action (and a little bit more)
47 – Overwhelmedness
48 – An Experiment in Writing – Part 48: Eating My Own Dogfood (more on reading like an editor, critiquing your own work)
49 – An Experiment in Writing – Part 49: Write/Be/Do What Interests You
50 – Match Narrative Voice to Character Voice
51 – Marketing is a Four-Letter Word
52 – Subtlety
53 – An Example of Poor Story Crafting
54 – You’re not Stephen King, Nora Roberts, JK Rowling, Dan Brown, … so get over it
55 – Backcover copy and Blurbs (again)
56 – Creating Tension, Building Tension
57 – More on Character Voice (Showing Change through Tone, Language, Behavior)
58 – Interesting to Whom? (keeping it interesting for author and reader)
59 – Unreliable Witnesses
60 – HELP! (I need somebody)
61 – Pitching Events (or Marketing, again)
62 – Man From Earth, MindWalk (Conflict Without Conflict)
63 – Eating My Own Dogfood (more on reading like an editor, critiquing your own work)
64 – Recognizing My Worth
65 – Genre Schmenre
66 – Surprise!
67 – Creativity Exercises (Building those Muse Muscles)
68 – Finding the Path
69 – Sensitivity Readers…NOT!
70 – Edit Someone Else’s Work to Improve Your Own
71 – Previously on…(more on backcover copy)
72 – Relatability = Believability = Engagement = Sales
73 – Call Response
74 – The Radical Rewrite
75 – Protagonists, Antagonists, and Weak Endings
76 – Character Interactions (Levels of Interest, Observing, Being Aware of What Others Miss)
77 – Meh! Part 1 (False Tension, Part 1)
78 – Meh! Part 2 (False Tension, Part 2)
79 – The Waiting Game
80 – If All You Have Is a Hammer, It’s Time to Get a New Toolbox!
81 – Marketing (because I’m no good at it)
82 – Convincing the Reader to Go for a Ride
83 – Genre v Literary
84 – Distractions
85 – I’ve Got Rhythm
86 – Squeezing Your Characters’ Oranges
87 – Less Is More
88 – Setting as Character – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Inheritor v John Brunner’s Times Without Number
89 – Central Conflict, Crisis, Resolution
90 – Power Struggles (more on Central and Main Conflict)
91 – Power Struggle Examples (from my own work because I know it so well)
92 – Abstract to Distinct (the devil’s in the details. so’s your story)
93 – Squeezing Your Characters’ Oranges, Part Deux
94 – Weave WorldBuilding Into the Narrative
95 – Reflections
96 – When to Be Typical (No, not NeuroTypical, but Universal, Typical, and Individual)
97 – The Formula (Giving the Reader Predictable Outcomes)
98 – Towards and AwayFrom (Neuroscience meets StoryCrafting)
99 – Creation Myths, Transformation Myths
100 – This Isn’t How It Ends