A 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.
Letter to My Younger Self
Your protagonist sits down at a desk and begins penning a letter to his or her younger self. What would they tell their past selves? What regrets do they voice? What lessons have they learned? How have they changed? Write this imagined note yourself, in your protagonist's voice.
The Funny Drive Prompt
"Patience is something you admire in the driver behind, but not in one ahead" _ Bill McGlashen. Your protagonist is one or the other. Pick one, and roll with it. Go!
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.
Musicals
Your character's story has been Disney-fied. At what point in the arc does your protagonist break out into song - and what is that song about?
"You"
Second-person point of view is an intimate way of looking at a character's thoughts. As an exercise, take a scene from the book you're writing. Choose a character, and then re-write the scene entirely from a second-person POV, noticing what details shift because of this perspective change.