Exercises Category
The Little Things
Posted on January 27, 2017 Leave a Comment
Ask some simple questions about your character. These may not seem important, but they help you get to know your character and can be a good reference later on (I love knowing that for a hot drink, my MC prefers tea with lemon. I’ve used that several times.) How does your character respond to hello? […]
Character Room
Posted on January 23, 2017 Leave a Comment
Describe the character’s bedroom. What sorts of decorations are on the wall? What kind of furniture does she have? What sorts of collectable items are displayed? Is it messy or clean? If she shares a room, what does her roommate’s side look like? What contrasts are there? If she shares a room, does she have […]
Family Background
Posted on January 20, 2017 Leave a Comment
Pick one of the character’s family members. In this instance, I chose a sibling. What comes to mind when that sibling thinks of the character? I got this idea from a free writing prompt: What scared you? I’m not sure how I decided to write from the POV of the sibling of a secondary character, […]
Point of View Switch
Posted on January 13, 2017 Leave a Comment
Even if your story has only one POV character, try writing a scene from a different character’s point of view. Experiencing the world through a different character can actually help you realize things about your POV character. When I added a secondary POV character to my story, I learned a lot about my primary POV […]
Describing Your Character
Posted on January 9, 2017 Leave a Comment
Describe your characters from the POV of multiple other characters. Knowing how others see your character can help you as a writer in defining him. Describe your character without mentioning her hair or eyes. Think like Sherlock Holmes. What would Holmes know about your character just from looking at her? What about her appearance gives […]
Getting to Know Your Characters Series
Posted on January 6, 2017 Leave a Comment
The way I come up with stories is by asking “What if?” questions. The few times I’ve thought up cool characters, I haven’t been able to milk a story out of them yet. I find it interesting then that the most consistent compliment I get on my writing is that I have solid characters, and […]
Exercise
Posted on November 23, 2013 Leave a Comment
I don’t like to be mean. I really don’t like to be mean. Sometimes, I just feel so awful about the things that happen to my characters. The first section is about military training, and my goodness! I started to feel tired as I wrote about my MC’s exhaustion! Hopefully that means I’m doing something […]
Crap Gave Way to Something Beautiful
Posted on November 8, 2013 Leave a Comment
So, as soon as I decided I was totally going for NaNoWriMo, life got busy! I’ve written only 19 pages so (what????). That’s like, a page a day. 😦 At least my handwriting has gotten smaller, so I’m getting almost 300 words a page. I’m doing exercises every morning for my wrists and switching back […]
Summer Fun Character Trading
Posted on August 9, 2013 Leave a Comment
More on characters. A good exercise for learning to write different characters is one my friends and I did in high school. We had a sort of character-trading club (the idea was started by my best friend). We each came up with a plot-line. We then sent the plot summary along with a biographical questionnaire […]
Write Someone Other than Yourself
Posted on August 2, 2013 2 Comments
So many of my main characters are the same. Most of the characters in books I read are the same, too. I’m talking about personality. Maybe I’m drawn toward books whose protagonists are similar in personality to me, but maybe most authors are similar in personality. I’m challenging myself to write a story whose main […]
A. W. Downer 