Here’s another round of a few questions you can ask of one of your fictional characters to help you flesh him or her out a bit more. The number you decide to answer will probably depend on how much detail you go into—the more inspiration you find in a single question, the fewer you need to explore on the whole.

• Bravery: How does your character define bravery? Does he see himself as brave?
• Brat: Who’s the most bratty person your character knows, and what’s her relationship with him?
• Baffle: Write a list of things that confuse and baffle your character.
• Bulldoze: If someone tried to run roughshod over your character, figuratively bulldozing him out of her way, what would he do? Write about a scenario in which this happens.

As I’ve noted before, I like having a wide variety of questions to choose from simply because you probably want to answer different questions for each character you explore, and you might find one question inspiring but not another. However, I don’t recommend trying to answer a huge number of questions for a single character—you can end up burning yourself out on the character before you get to your actual writing! Just pick a few highlights and use those. Even one or two good questions can teach you a lot about a character.

If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, always feel free to ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.

Here’s another round of a few questions you can ask of one of your fictional characters to help you flesh him or her out a bit more. The number you decide to answer will probably depend on how much detail you go into—the more inspiration you find in a single question, the fewer you need to explore on the whole.

• Altars: What are the most private and personal day-to-day expressions of religion or spirituality in your character’s life?
• Alterations: What changes would your character most like to make to his or her daily life?
• Acids: What has the greatest ability to eat away at your character’s strength or resolve?
• Application: What motivation best serves to convince your character to apply him- or herself most fully to a task?

  Any evocative word can serve as a starting point for such explorations; you can always open a dictionary to a random page in order to look for more. I like having a wide variety of questions to choose from simply because you probably want to answer different questions for each character you explore, and you might find one question inspiring but not another. However, I don’t recommend trying to answer a huge number of questions for a single character—you can end up burning yourself out on the character before you get to your actual writing! Just pick a few highlights and use those. Even one or two good questions can teach you a lot about a character.

  If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, always feel free to ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.

I love creating characters from interesting photos and pieces of art that I come across. Today I happened upon this photo by oleg dou; click through for the full version:

Fantasy queen? High priestess? Evil witch? The lead performer in an opera or stage play? Mystic? What do you imagine this woman as?

Sometimes I post images here, something to inspire your thoughts with visual stimulation. For the most part I like to link to photographs of people, because they can become the most interesting characters when you stop to imagine who they might be. They contain all the little details of everyday life like wrinkles, laugh lines, moles, birthmarks, smeared makeup, etc. that many artists might leave out. Normally I prefer to link to photos because I think they stretch our imaginations and bring a character to life in ways that other pieces of artwork might not. Sometimes, however, something different is in order. Today, use the following beautiful portrait piece to inspire a character word-portrait:

Sephiroth: Into the Lifestream by =ramy on deviantART

Imagine who this person might be and what they’re up to. If you don’t want to write in a genre that directly suits the imagery, then imagine that this piece of artwork is a real person’s idealized self-image, and speculate on the sort of person who would imagine themselves this way!

I’ve been playing “City of Heroes” and “City of Villains” lately, so my brain is steeped in the superhero genre at the moment. Therefore, for today’s exercise: If you could be a super-villain or super-hero, which would you choose? Answer the following questions depending on your choice—or create one villain and one hero and answer them for each.

• What would your hero or villain name be?
• What’s the mysterious origin of your powers? Do you use gadgets like Batman? Are you an alien like Superman? Are you a mutant, or the result of a strange accident like Spiderman? Have you been altered by technology like the Bionic Woman?
• What would your costume look like? Go into as much detail as you like. If you’re an artist, draw/sketch/paint/whatever it for bonus points.
• What would your goal or motivation be? What drives you to go out into the world and right wrongs?
• How do the authorities and populace view you? Are you a savior, a dangerous vigilante, a mysterious and largely misunderstood figure?

Enjoy your heroism or villainy!

Death is a good reminder
of the need for situational awareness

I admit it–sometimes I enjoy those little internet meme quizzes. For example, recently I took one meant to determine which character from “Heroes” you’re most like. I prefer these quizzes when they’re long enough and the questions are interesting enough that you can’t necessarily see what your result will be just from glancing at the quiz, and this one was decent. After I finished I got a result telling me that I’d had a tie between two characters: Hiro and Sylar, the most innocent character and the most viciously psychotic. Now if that isn’t a result to make you blink a few times in confusion, I don’t know what is. It got me to thinking, though–while archetypal characters are interesting, it’s also interesting to explore characters that embody things that you think wouldn’t go together.

Today, make a list of some things you’d normally think of as opposites or as mutually exclusive; these can be–but don’t have to be–personality traits. For example:

• kind, selfish
• precise, scattered
• loud, quiet

Alternatively, you can include pairs of characters from television or books that you think of as particularly different; preferably pick characters from the same show or book. For example:

• Hiro and Sylar from “Heroes”
• Teal’c and Hathor from “Stargate SG-1″
• Drs. House and Wilson from “House”

In this latter case, list out a few personality traits that make these characters so different from each other.

Finally, explore a character that embodies one of these pairs of opposites in some way. Obviously he wouldn’t have all of the traits of, say, Hiro and Sylar, but he’d have a few here and there. You can write about this character directly or write a story about him.

Take a look at the gorgeous photograph “Eyes of Youth” by ayse yalcin (click through for the full version):

Its young subject has such dark, haunting eyes. She isn’t smiling in the usual manner of posed photographs; her expression is complex and fascinating. The black-and-white coloration only serves to highlight the strength of her eyes in this image, and her nose and hair aren’t what you’d expect from a “typical” model–yet she’s quite beautiful in her own unique way.

Today, tell her story.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Apply this Emerson quote to the main character of your current story or novel–how does your character’s opinion of the world reveal his character? What might it reveal that he doesn’t want revealed, or that he would deny if it was brought to his attention? How can you use this to subtly explore him within your writing without having to spell everything out for the reader?

You could also journal about how this quote applies to you. How do you see the world? What might this reveal about you? Try to find at least one difficult truth about yourself in Emerson’s quote.

“I don’t tell my characters what to do. I just take dictation!”
Shirts, mugs, more

While we haven’t yet had a chance to put in redirects from the old blogs since we still have one to go, I might as well start posting new exercises here so there’s something for folks to play with when they get directed here. In the meantime, if you see any rough edges do let me know–we haven’t quite finished up yet and might have missed something.

I’m currently reading Michael Michalko’s second edition of Thinkertoys (review), and found a quote that I think could inspire some interesting writing:

A lion has to be a lion all its life; a dog has to be a dog. But a human being can play with and bring about one of a huge number of different identities; the one he finally chooses will be determined by neither reason nor common sense, but by imagination.

There are many different ways to use this quote in an exercise. Journal about it. Free-write based on it. Create a character from it. Use it as the basis of a story. Pick something and go!

If you’re like many fiction writers, you might have invested a great deal of time, effort and energy into one or two particular characters you enjoy working with. However, many fiction writers report feeling they have little control over some or all of the events that occur in their fiction. So, today, imagine that you’re writing a story about your favorite character when you suddenly find you’ve written his death–and you can’t bring yourself to undo it. What would you do to continue your story and your fiction work?