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A Character Development Writing Exercise
#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.
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Similar exercises
Get your creative juices flowing with these similar writing prompts.
The Best Day Ever
Take your main character and describe the best day he/she has ever had. This is a prompt that will generate questions like, "Why did the character think that was their best day?"
Undisclosed Desires
What does your character want most? Now consider what he needs most. Is what he wants preventing him from gaining what he needs? Or will he have to find what he wants before he can achieve what he needs?
The Truth Shall Set Your Characters Free
In order to dive deeper into your character's emotional depths, ask a round of questions - both probing and seemingly innocuous alike. (Hey, you never know when your character's favorite choice of ice cream topping might come in handy!) While we encourage you to build and refine your own set of questions, these questionnaires will provide solid inspiration for now: Arthur Aron's 36 Questions That Lead to Love, and The Proust Questionnaire.
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It's All About Your Point of View
Write a pivotal scene in your novel from a different character's POV. For instance: at a funeral, you may have written the grieving widow's thoughts and feelings. Write about that funeral from the deceased husband's POV, the eldest son's, or the step-sister's.
Put Your Characters Through The Wringer
Develop your characters by placing them in a situation where they are faced with a challenge. For conflict inspiration, look no further than these classic moral dilemmas (and, of course, analyze them from the perspective of your character). For an example of a moral dilemma, search "The Trolly Problem."
