A Character Development Writing Exercise
Blind Date
Your protagonist meets your villain for the first time - on a blind date. What happens?
Respond to this exercise
Feel inspired? Share your story below.
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.