Writing Mistakes You're Making

Characters: Section Exercise

Section Exercise

Having trouble developing just who your character is? Well, it might help to first get good at creating unique and complex characters in the first place (and then focus more in on what type of character you want for your story). Here are a few exercises for developing your character-creation skills: 

1. Go to Google Images and search blanket terms, like “man,” “woman,” “girl,” “boy,” “couple,” etc. Choose a few photos and try and come up with a short backstory (aim for around 200 words) for each. You can also try to write a short scene which describes the event for which they are being photographed if you'd like. 

2.Be a little kid again and play mad-libs with a friend or family member. Have them give you:

a number (the character's age)

a gender (the character's gender)

an activity (the character's hobby)

a book/movie (the character's favorite book/movie)

a city (the character's hometown) 

anything else you can think of

And then try to compile all of these elements into a realistic person (meaning everything must make sense –– if their hobby is ice skating but they live in Egypt you need to find a logical reason for this.)

3. Pick your five favorite characters (or your least favorite, funniest, most dramatic, or any other category you can come up with) from books or movies. Now imagine what a person who had traits from all five of these people would be like (the traits can be based on looks or personality or environment). Again, the goal of this is to create someone that is unique but plausible! (It does no good to develop wacky characters that aren't plausible to the reader. If you want to give them the ability to speak fifty languages, remember you need a reason for why they can do this.)

4. List all of the traits about yourself that you can think of. Spend at least ten minutes on this, and just make sure you keep going and don't stop. When you're done, use all that you've come up with as inspiration for the types of qualities you can assign to your characters. 

5. If you're ready to tackle your own character now, try to fill up a paper (on your word processor or a simple sheet of looseleaf) with all that you know about them. If you can do it (better yet, if you don't want to stop at the end of the page because you have more to say) then it's clear you have a well-thought out character!