Sorry for the lack of posts recently—things have been crazy! Here’s something that ought to make up for it: in addition to collecting character-inspiring art for you, I’m also collecting art to inspire plots! These might be images of situations,…
Blog Archives
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…
‘The Sleeping Beauty Proposal’
This morning I reviewed Sarah Strohmeyer’s wonderful book The Sleeping Beauty Proposal. One of the nifty things about that book is the way in which Strohmeyer takes the concept of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ tale and applies it to modern-day life:…
Wedding Bells
Imagine that one of your fictional characters is getting married. How would it happen? Write the scene. Alternative #1: Imagine that someone close to one of your fictional characters is getting married. Alternative #2: Imagine that you are getting married!…
Tell their story
Visit this page and, for the moment, simply look at the photograph without reading the text. (Just in case you read this entry sometime months from now and the picture is gone, it’s an old black-and-white photo of young men…
The ultimate niche genre
One thing that fascinates me is discovering that what seems like a simple plot idea has been turned into an entire mini-genre of its own. I’m still agog at the wealth of Scottish Highlands time travel romances out there—who knew…
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…
What your readers feel
This morning I stumbled across Eudaemonia’s post on Bell’s plot & structure book (it’s a great book, and I highly recommend it!). Anyway, Lisa shared two exercises from the book and her results: “Set aside ten minutes of undisturbed writing…
Disappointments
If you’re a non-fiction writer: What’s the biggest disappointment you’ve ever faced? Free-write for 10 minutes. If you’re a fiction writer, pick a character and: What’s the biggest disappointment he or she has ever faced? Free-write for 10 minutes, or…
Bad Dialogue
Today, spend 10 minutes free-writing every stereotypically bad line of dialogue you can think of. These could be genre-inspired (think of the worst examples of the romance, horror, fantasy, or adventure genres, for example), from TV, from novels, from movies……