A Character Development Writing Exercise
A Day in the Life
Write about the hero of your story going on the most mundane errand you can think of. Rely solely on the character to make the story interesting.
Respond to this exercise
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Similar exercises
Get your creative juices flowing with these similar writing prompts.
Wanderlust
Transplant your character into an entirely new location. It could be a new country, city, or continent. How do they react to the new surroundings?
What A Character
Memorable characters are ones that mirror real people: their feelings, experiences, needs, and goals. Challenge yourself to get real with your character by first getting real with yourself. Grab a notebook and answer the following questions as they pertain to you:
- What emotion do you struggle with because you feel it so deeply?
- What type of situation makes you feel vulnerable or inadequate?
- What past mistake causes you the most regret?
- What core moral belief is so ingrained that you live it every day?
A Day in the Life
Write about the hero of your story going on the most mundane errand you can think of. Rely solely on the character to make the story interesting.
Put Yourself In Someone Else's Shoes
Choose a character and think of ways they'd react to things that happened during your (the writer's) day. Use your experiences, think how you reacted, and then how your character would have reacted. Possible events: cut off in traffic, caught in the rain, missed an important meeting, lost a valuable item.
Go The Other Way
Choose a random occupation, a random personality trait, and the trait's opposite. Now, outline a train of events that explains how a person of your chosen occupation changes from having the random trait to having its opposite. Let's take, for example: "martial arts teacher," "shy," and "confident." What would make a shy martial arts teacher change into a confident one?Care for a double challenge? Try plotting the opposite path, too: a confident martial arts teacher turns into a shy person. What would cause that? Experiment with unusual occupations and traits to challenge yourself. Find a collection of traits for download at the end of this article.