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About Reedsy Terms PrivacyA Character Development Writing Exercise
Blind Date
Your protagonist meets your villain for the first time - on a blind date. What happens?
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Similar exercises
Get your creative juices flowing with these similar writing prompts.
The Name Game
Here is your challenge: for the next week, collect fun names. I've collected them for years in a little notebook - from obituaries, news stories, random lists, and spam. Spam is great for funny names.Then go through your notebook, choose a name, and write a short character sketch based off that name. It's amazing how the names make the characters come to life and start moving the story in fun directions you never expected.
#TBT
Create a timeline of the significant moments of your character's life. Like many authors, you can use post-it notes or a big whiteboard to visualize your character's life. You can easily move or add events until you feel your character has a well-developed history. After you've finished the timeline, distill it into the top 5-10 moments that have shaped your character. For instance, if loss is a thematically important part of your book, perhaps a significant part of your character's past is when they lost a grandparent as a child.
A Whole Week
Describe each day of the week as if it were a person. Give each one personality traits, a job, and a goal. Write a short story about them.
A Tall, Dark Stranger
Write a scene where your character is speaking to a complete stranger. Immediately after, write a scene where your character is speaking to a loved one. Notice how their behavior changes.
Newsworthy
Your protagonist has just made it into a New York Times headline. What does the headline say? Write down the reaction of your protagonist to hearing the news that day.
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