Coming up with five adjectives to describe your character barely scratches the surface. In order to make your character figuratively come alive, you'll need to know them better than they know themselves. The exercises in this book will make you think about your characters in ways you never have before.

(Free to read + a paid bonus chapter) In a time when kidnapping is a common occurrence, Nora is about to become her father's science experiment. Nora believes she's starting a new job, working alongside her father, but instead, she's trapped inside of a dream with other humans. Besides for a small group of dreamers called Lucid, no one realizes anything is wrong with their new world. But dreams reveal who someone really is, even the secrets they didn't know, and Nora is not an exception. Charlie's father, Richard Pace, is the lead scientist. As a Lucid, Charlie is ordered by his father time and again to betray his own kind. And Nora is his next missions. But when Charlie discovers just how far his father's plans for Nora go, he'll have to choose between his freedom or his morals. Is it possible to escape when you don't even know you're trapped? Winner of the Candice Coghill award and the Royal Palm Literary award.

These are NOT your typical writing prompts. I find most writing prompts too general or specific to be helpful. The ones in this book are just generic enough to spark your imagination and everyone's response will be completely different. Depending on your story idea, plot, characters and writing style, the response to the following prompts will look vastly different from another writer's. How does this work? Well, when you hit a roadblock in a particular scene, play with one of the prompts and see how your character responds, what comes out of their mouth. Then, let the other characters respond to that line. Here's an example. For the following prompt, I can have a character respond one of many ways (and I literally just came up with these as I'm writing this book summary). SAMPLE PROMPT - Ask someone to leave Now, what's the next line out of your character's mouth? Is it: -- You know what, get the hell out! -- Look, I'm tired. Can we talk about this tomorrow? I'll have Peter drive you home. -- Will you please just leave! I can't do this. I can't talk to you anymore! -- Either he goes or I go. Which will it be? See how all these are very different ways for a character to essentially ask (or try to force) another character to leave? The key is to work with the response that works best for your situation. You should have a sense of what the scene is about and your character's goals, but that's all you really need! I love these prompts. You can insert them any time you hit a wall. They always seem to get my creative juices going. Sometimes I find that I've gone on to write an entire scene and I didn't even end up keeping the lines that the prompts generated! It was enough just to get me unstuck and get my characters interacting again. I hope these prompts can help others too. If folks vote and comment to let me know that they've helped, I'll post 10 prompts per chapter for the next 10 weeks. Cheers! We'll start with a chapter and a bonus one too.

The prettiest, hand-picked names for perfect female characters and/or protagonists. BONUS: Last, Middle and Full Names. Also, name lists by ethnicity.

Mulder is kidnapped by a female serial killer that has made her way into the X-Files. But the problem is, unlike usual, Scully doesn't rush in last minute and save him. She doesn't come and snatch him away from the horror. Nor does she come an hour late. Nor does she come the next day, even. In fact, she doesn't save him until a week later. A week of torture, pain, and constant fear. A week of constantly expecting Scully to kick the door down and save him. A week that destroys Fox Mulder's mind. Mulder thinks that he can handle it, but it soon becomes evident that he can't. And the worst part? Scully isn't quite sure that she can fix it. -Rated PG-13 for •References to torture (no detailed scenes, though) •Self-harm (again, no overly-detailed scenes) •Extreme sadness in relation to Fox Mulder •I should also rate it PG-13 since a serial killer is involved -Extreme feels attacks possible- -Not set to a specific season-