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 off 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!!

It’s hard to believe that two days ago was the one year birthday for my first “Exercises” post on WriterInside.com. With that in mind, let’s do a little time traveling for today’s exercise!

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Find or imagine an object or idea that is peculiar to our time, and then write a couple paragraphs describing this object to someone from a different time and place. Be specific about who you’re describing it to, because this can change the way you describe it. For example, try describing an ATM machine to a medieval peasant or explaining a weblog (or the Internet in general, for that matter) to an Egyptian Pharoah. Be sure to describe it in terms that they would understand.

What exactly does it mean to see the unseen? Try this exercise to broaden your descriptive skills.

In today’s exercise, I want you to find a common household item–or any item for that matter–and I want you to describe that item from the perspective of a blind man. Pick the item up. Hold it in your hands. Turn it over and run your fingers over the surface, looking for imperfections. Feel its weight, its texture, its overall “personality”. Also note its smell, if it has any.

Try to look for aspects of the object that you might not notice upon casual observation. Take note of these observations and write a paragraph or two describing this object in detail. Make the object come alive in your prose.

Repeat this exercise with multiple objects. ENJOY!!

If you’re having trouble with writer’s block, maybe you need to get out of the office and go somewhere public. Try this exercise for a little inspiration.

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Writing fiction is little more than making stuff up, is it not? So, if you’re having trouble creating brand new characters with interesting lives from scratch, why not give your story a head start by writing about real people?

“Wait a second,” you might say. “I thought it was a bad idea to write about real people. What about lawsuits and angry cousins?”

Don’t worry, I’m not telling you to write about people you KNOW! What I want you to do is to go some place public, order a tall cup of coffee, pull out your journal and your trusty pen, and keep your eyes open for interesting patrons.

If you sit there long enough, eventually someone will walk in who is eccentric enough to spark your interest. But even if the restaurant (coffee shop, whatever) is full of regular Joes (no coffee-related pun intended), this exercise can still be useful–not to mention extremely fun!

Once you’ve selected a patron, observe them. Try not to be too obvious about it, but take note of the way they walk, their facial expressions. Are they rude to the employees, or are they overly friendly. Look for weird mannerisms, like shifty eyes, or maybe restless hands that won’t stop picking at imaginary lint. Try to notice every little detail, and then make up a biography about them.

Once you’ve written a short biography, outlining their life and their personality, drop them in an interesting situation, and try to figure out how they would react to it. You never know . . . by the time this exercise is over, you might have yourself an idea for your next (or your first) big novel!

ENJOY!!

When you’re writing your Great American Novel, you’ll invariably come across a character who is absolutely despicable. Perhaps he’s a serial killer or a terrorist. Perhaps he’s a bad father who beats his wife and kids. Or maybe he’s just the guy in the other cubicle who is always picking his nose and wiping it on the wall. Either way, it’s up to you, the writer, to make this character as believable as possible. Very few people are despicable simply because they choose to be despicable. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I’m going to be a total jerk today! Let’s get started!” If there’s anything that most despicable people have in common, it’s that they justify their actions. They have a REASON for acting the way they do. As an author, you must examine that reasoning. If you don’t, then you’ll end up with flat, 2-dimensional villains that nobody really cares to read about. You need to learn to see through the eyes of the despicable. This exercise will help you do that.

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Select a topic you feel very passionately about. Something that either really upsets you or really makes you ecstatic. In order for this exercise to be effective, this has to be a topic that you’re very emotionally invested in. This should be a topic that you feel SO RIGHT about that you can’t even IMAGINE how anybody else could rationally feel any different.

Now I want you to write as much as you can about that topic from the point of view of someone who vehemently disagrees with you. And the real challenge here is to make your argument sound reasonable. People who disagree with you don’t do so just because they like being jerks. They have reasons for it, and in this exercise you’re going to explore those reasons. As you’re writing, strive to make them sound like logical, reasonable people. Try to convince the reader (even though there won’t be a reader this time around) that this opposing point of view is the way to go. It will be tempting just to make this opposing view seem ignorant and poorly thought out, but resist that temptation.

Only when you’ve put yourself in the place of each of your characters will you create characters that are interesting, 3-dimensional, and believable.

ENJOY!!

One of the most common questions asked of writers is where their ideas come from, and the answer is usually pretty consistent. Generally, writers DON’T KNOW where they get their ideas. Every now and then an author will tell you they overheard a conversation that sparked an idea, or maybe they saw something weird happen at a supermarket that prompted them to write their first novel, but many of the ideas for stories just seem to come from nowhere. They coalesce from the darkest corners of a writer’s twisted mind and find their way onto paper. But what if nothing is “coalescing” for you? What if you sit there, staring at an empty page for hours and not a single good idea emerges from the dusty cobwebs in the proverbial corner of your mind? Is there a solution? OF COURSE there is! One of the best ways to come up with ideas is just to START WRITING! Today’s exercise is premised upon a concept upon which many great stories are based. And the concept is this–many good stories are made up of two ideas that really don’t seem like they should go together. Take Indiana Jones, for example. You take an archaeologist/professor and pit him against the Nazis! What a ridiculous idea, right? Well, apparently it wasn’t TOO ridiculous, because they made three great movies out of it . . . although, to my recollection, the second one had very little to do with Nazis.

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Think of two people who are polar opposites of one another. They can be real people, or you can pull them right out of your head. (But be careful when using real people. If you plan to publish your story, you could get sued for slander . . . or is it libel? I can’t remember!) Anyways, try to think of two people who are so incredibly different that it would be weird to see them in a room together. Like maybe Genghis Khan and a punk skater kid.

Once you have your characters, write a short biography about each character. What is he/she passionate about? What does he/she detest more than anything?

Then use these biographies and put your characters in a car. Where are they going? What brought them together? How do their passions and hatreds set them at odds with one another?

Write a short story idea based on this exercise. Will the two characters find a way to live in peace with each other? Or will they drive each other insane? More importantly, whether or not they learn to accept each other, what do they LEARN in the process of their interaction.

ENJOY!!