You, The Character

Characters are hard. They are hard because when you write them well and you dedicate yourself to their journey, which is really your journey too, then you begin to truly feel for them. To write a character is to open up a part of yourself that you didn’t always know was there and go exploring through the intricate canyons of being a human.

Why do bad things happen to good characters? Why must they in a story? - This is a always a question that is asked at some point.

The answer is always the same, because it is only the furnace of life that we become who we are. It is there we show our stripes and evolve. Stories are about the way in which a character evolves or is changed because of an event. Even the simplest story, at it’s core, this is true. I believe. I say stories but, it can mean novels, essays, experimental works. I think this exercise is helpful for any writer.

Exercise:

Take a character you have in a piece you are working or have finished or haven’t even started. If you are writing nonfiction, you can take a character as well and imagine their reaction to the following circumstances. How might they react, and what does this tell you about how you know them, and the role they play in your writing? So, take your character real or imagined and write for five minutes into the following scenarios, choose 3 or 4 that speak to you.

This work likely will not end up in your piece (thought it very well could or spark an idea for something else) - one of the gifts of exercises is that it is relieved of the pressure of the piece itself. It exists outside and on it’s own. Try changing up the point of view in different circumstances and see how the emotion or reaction might be different in the relative closeness.

The first time they fell out of love.

The first time they saw a dead body.

A hard truth they learned about the world.

A time they truly failed at something.

A moment in which they saw their parents clearly for who they are.

A time they were hit.

A time they truly betrayed themselves.

A time they cried alone in their car.

Please DM us on Instagram with any questions you have - happy writing.