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Hopefully, when you write, you’re trying to make your characters into real, three-dimensional people. If all of your characters talk the same and act the same, then your writing will be stale and boring. Characters are not supposed be filler for your plot. Characters, through their personalities and desires, are supposed to DETERMINE your plot. So here’s an exercise for helping to flesh out your characters a little more.If you have a character who seems to be a little bland, then I want you do to two things. First of all, I want you to sit down with your character and interview him/her. Ask your character what he/she wants most out of life, and then write down the answer. Try to get a feel for your character’s personality. And then–here’s the fun part–find the character trait(s) that you really want to emphasize with that character and then create another character who is the polar opposite of your first character as far as that trait is concerned.For example, if you have a hero who is a little shy and insecure, and if that insecurity is crucial to the development of the plot, then create another character who is confident, who can talk to anyone in any given situation, who feels comfortable around anyone. This second character doesn’t have to be an arrogant jerk (although he could be). He just needs to be confident.When you create a character like this and have him interact with your hero, then your hero’s insecurities (or whatever traits you’re trying to highlight) will naturally be highlighted. Your character will seem more real and more relatable.Give it a shot, and let me know how it turns out!

A little frustrated with your sentence structure? Can’t figure out why your writing just doesn’t seem to have the right ring
to it? Often, this is the result of a lack of variety in sentence structure. If you examine the sentence structure of well-published authors, you’ll see that they tend to use a lot of variety, not only in the structure of their sentences, but also in the length of their sentences. Try out this exercise to help you gain a feel for different kinds of sentence structure.

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Find a passage of prose from your favorite author and copy it down onto paper. As you’re doing so, take note of the way the sentences are put together. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to diagram them — although that wouldn’t be a bad exercise.)

After you’ve copied the passage down, I want you to copy it again. But this time, I want you to change all the words while keeping the sentence structure intact. This might be especially useful if you find a passage of similar length from some of your own writing and then rewrite it using the EXACT same sentence structure as the paragraph you’ve just copied. This means it will have almost the exact same number of words, the exact same punctuation, etc. But it will be a completely different story. Here’s an example of a sentence altered in this way:

Original sentence (from Moby Dick): “Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.”

Exercise sentence: “Now, with rock-bottom interest rates, to invest in the real estate market is as accessible to the novice investor as to participate in an IRA.”

Notice there are some small differences in sentence structure, but the structure of the sentence as a whole remains intact. If you try this technique out with an entire paragraph, you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn!

In the Writer Inside Blog, I just posted about the seemingly invincible Jack Bauer, and it inspired an idea for a new writing exercise. So try this one on for size:

This exercise will work best if you already have a work in progress. What I want you to do is to find a situation in your plot where your character(s) are in a particularly vulnerable situation. Maybe they’ve gotten into trouble, and you can’t figure out how to get them out. You’ve racked your brain, and you can’t find a way of escape that seems reasonable. What do you do?

Make it worse! That’s right. You heard me. Even if this is already the darkest point in the plot, make it worse. If you’re not scared for your character’s life, then your reader won’t be scared. You need to convince your readers that you’re perfectly willing to completely annihilate your character and/or everything that he/she has been working towards.

And then, after you’ve made things worse than you ever thought you would, finish it off. Write a few pages that completely destroys your plot and sends everything into ruin. Give your antagonist complete victory, and then drop your pen and walk away.

Don’t worry. It’s not really the end. Obviously, you’re not going to leave everything like this. After you’ve killed your character of or destroyed everything the character was working towards, walk away and give it some time to sink in. Allow yourself to mourn for the character. Convince yourself that what you’ve written has really happened.

This may seem like a morbid exercise, but if you use it right, it could just the exercise you need in order to infuse your writing with the tension it needs. Your reader at some point needs to believe that there’s no way out, and if you can convince yourself of that, then you will be that much more likely to convince your reader.

Enjoy!

Inspiration comes from everywhere, and the more variety we allow into our lives, the more exposure we have to possible sources of inspiration. Try this exercise on for size.

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Go to a used CD store and pick up a CD you’ve never heard of before–the more obscure the better. Pick one from a genre you never–or hardly ever–listen to. Take the CD home, lock yourself in your room, and listen to it in its entirety, even if it’s the worst music you’ve ever heard.

After you’ve listened to the entire CD, pull out your journal, your notepad, or your computer, and just start writing. You may surprise yourself with the ideas that pop up.

One very effective way of stirring those creative juices is to take something you already know and rip it to shreds. Try this exercise on for size.

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Have you ever stopped to think that even the villains might have reasons for what they’re doing? And has it ever crossed your mind that maybe even the bad might not be motivated purely by greed or lust or even just the desire to be evil?

Some of you may have read alternative fairy tales–fairy tales written from the perspective of the big, bad wolf for example. This type of approach to storytelling is a great way to stimulate those creative juices sloshing around in your head.

Try writing a story that you’ve known all your life from the perspective of the villain in the story. How would the story change (or the reader’s perspective of the story) if we knew everything that was going on inside the villain’s head?

As an extra added bonus, change the ending of the story so that the villain wins. Even if you end up throwing the story away, at least it will be fun!

ENJOY!!