from Teachers Write
Exercise 1: Visualization
Picture your character walking through a door that is far away. All you can see is the shape of their body because there is a bright light behind them. When they step through the door, describe what they are wearing. (Write all you can in 2 mins.)
As they move further into the room, describe the objects that you can see around them. (Write all you can in 2 mins.)
As they stand in the middle of the room, people begin walking toward them. Describe who these people are and what their relationship is to your character. (Write all you can in 4 mins.)
Exercise 2: Becoming Your Character
Put yourself in your character’s shoes and answer the following interview questions as if you are them. What do you love the most? What do you hate the most? Who are you jealous of? If you could do anything right now, what would it be? What is your biggest secret?
Exercise 3: Flip the Switch
Imagine that a bad guy with an opposite-ray dropped into your book from hyperspace. The opposite-ray hits your character full in the face and now they are the complete antithesis of the person they were before. Now answer the same questions above again. What do you love the most? What do you hate the most? Who are you jealous of? If you could do anything right now, what would it be? (I don’t include the secret question because presumably will be the same.)
Exercise 4: Conversion
Take any scene from your current WIP that includes the character you’ve been working on. Strip away all of the setting information, the emotional tag lines and write it as a play with only the characters’ words and any stage directions that move your character into a spot that helps your plot to continue, such as: Moves to door. Door swings open and hits them in the face. Now see how the words your character uses without any props conveys their emotions, or DOESN’T convey their emotions.
Exercise 1:
A small boy walks into the room. His blond hair is short all around, spiked up a little in the front. There are freckles across his nose, onto his cheeks. He wears rectangular glasses, tinted with orange on the arms of the frame. He wears a bright yellow neon shirt and dark blue athletic pants. You can tell that he slid his feet into his shoes to save the time of untying and retying them.
His classroom is dark and empty, a little light coming in from the hallway and the outside windows on the opposite wall. The desks are arranged in groups with the chairs stacked separately around the room. Most desks have books sitting on top, some in small neat stacks, some in tall, lopsided towers. The whiteboard has the date and morning work listed for the day. Picture frames with photos of students and their families line the tops of the cabinets.