One of my favorite resources for fleshing out a character (for both writing & roleplaying) is the vast wealth of portraiture found online. I created a DeviantArt account largely so that I could start collecting DA character portraiture in a…
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Character Portraiture
Posted in Gaming, Writing Tagged with: art, books, Books & Writing, Characters, Gaming, photos, portraits
Character Art Collection
One of my favorite resources for fleshing out a character is the vast wealth of portraiture found online. Art, photos… There are multiple ways to use such items to help you with a character. The two major ones are art…
Posted in Writing Tagged with: Characters, creativity, Images, photographs, portraits, writers, writing
Mountain Men
Today, create a side character (someone who will appear in a story but isn’t meant to be the main character). Base the overall image on a stereotype, but then give the person a quirk that’s completely unlike that stereotype. When…
Birth of a character
Write up a scene depicting your character’s birth or arrival in her parents’ arms or home. You’ll probably find this says a lot about your character’s family and parents, but by extension this can also give you insight into the…
The Power of Ritual
Writers of all people tend to be familiar with the power of ritual in one’s life. After all—that’s one of the reasons behind engaging in writer’s prompts. The familiarity of ritual can help to put one in a particular mindset,…
Posted in Writing Tagged with: Characters, creativity, Journaling, prompts, ritual, writers, writing
The Fall Guy
It’s been a while since I gave you an image-based prompt, and I came across a piece of artwork recently that I simply must share. I particularly love images of people for the kind of intensity and personality they can…
The Disappearing Gold
My grandfather, who moved to the United States from Holland when my mother was just a child, had some interesting habits. One of them, apparently, was to keep several gold bars which he buried somewhere on his property. Now and…
Author Ownership?
Since J.K. Rowling made her controversial announcement that Dumbledore is gay, many people have been arguing over what ‘right’ an author has to determine the facts of his or her world beyond what’s written in their books. I was over…
Posted in Writing Tagged with: Characters, Dumbledore, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, Journaling, suspension of disbelief, writers' exercises, writing
Reading Comprehension FTW
One of the more popular things on this site has been the pdf “365 Character Questions for Writers and Roleplayers,”. Every now and then when I look through our stats I find that someone new has linked to it, usually…
Helplessness
Perhaps you’ve heard about today’s crop of helpless youngsters. Free-write for five to fifteen minutes exploring a character based on a prototypical member of this group. Then, drop him or her into a dangerous situation, and see how he or…
Posted in Writing Tagged with: characterization, Characters, fiction, free-writing, Journaling, prompts, writers, writing