Freewriting to character building

Use free writing to build characters.

Make a list of emotions. Each day free write for 15 minutes -- that is write without pausing, push the ideas out -- about what your character thinks about the emotion, what emotions it elicits for him, experiences he's had with it in himself and in others. Anything and everything that flows out nonstop for 15 minutes.

There are several lists of emotions on the internet. The one here is from Basic emotions - list of emotions.

Wikipedia also has a list of Emotions.

And at Burning Void: Passion (though some seem more akin to characteristics).

(From an idea posted by Sesselja on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) forums.

love
compassion
sentimentality
lust
passion
infatuation
longing
joy
satisfaction
ecstasy
enthusiasm
zeal
thrill
contentment
pleasure
pride
triumph
optimism
rapture
relief
amazement
aggravation
frustration
anger
hostility
hate
scorn
vengefulness
resentment
disgust
jealousy
torment
suffering
depression
sadness
grief
disappointment
guilt
shame
remorse
alienation
loneliness
insecurity
embarrassment
humiliation
insult
pity
sympathy
shock
fear
panic
anxiety
dread

Words of the Year

Only three months away from this year's list but I just came across this: Merriam-Webster OnLine posted a list of top searched words of 2005.

(There are links to definitions there. But feel free to make up your own definitions.)

Use them as a 10-15 minute writing prompt (story or poem).

integrity
refugee
contempt
filibuster
insipid
tsunami
pandemic
conclave
levee
inept

Wanted!

Create a Wanted poster for a notorious criminal. Make up an evil person, use your favorite evil character, or write the Wanted poster the bad guys would put up for a pesky good guy they want eliminated.

If you need some inspiration, there are some real wanted posters at FBI's Most Wanted. They are, of course, not nice people being very not nice currently so not for the faint of heart.

There are some Wanted posters from the old west at Outlaws of the American West. Who were also not nice people but at least they're long dead.

One at Wikipedia for John Wilkes Boothe. (A longer version of the picture at right.) There's also a bigger version that you can read the smallest print if you don't mind waiting for it to load.

And some Wanted posters for bugs at Bug Mugs :-)

Dragon Writing sticks

Here's the list of words that I used for the writing prompt -- though more of a game really! -- in the Dragon Writing fun shop at the Live and Learn Conference. (Click on Comments at the bottom of the post for a list of the words.)

For those who weren't there, I had a whole bunch (maybe 300) colored popsicle sticks with words written on both sides. We drew a bunch of sticks and tried to come up with fantasy tabloid headlines.

The only instruction I gave was to choose 2 sticks of each color. That just gives you a good mixture of word types to start working with. You don't need to use them all. You don't need to use each color. You can throw back and redraw any that aren't working and draw whatever color. Whatever helps!

I used two packs of colored popsicle sticks and put words on each side. I can't remember how many were in each pack. (150 maybe?)

Plain - Conjunctions and Prepositions. These are the only ones that have 4 to a stick. Katelyn came up with this idea in the headlines she sent to the list and it seemed to make them more interesting. I went through the newspaper and kept track of the prepositions that were most common. There are multiple copies of each set. Katelyn needed an "on" a couple of times so I made one but it's all by its lonesome at the moment. There's a list of prepositions at Test Magic. Way more than the newspaper headlines ever use! ;-)

Green - Places and Objects. Probably the least useful category but interesting to have.

Red - Verbs. There are more words than I had sticks for so I colored some plain sticks with a red marker.

Blue and Purple - People and Creatures. Probably the most useful category since the nouns can often do double duty as adjectives: vampire astrologist for instance.

Yellow and Orange - Adjectives. If I were doing it again, I would change what adjectives I could to nouns, like "baby" for instance. (Especially since I had extra blue and purple and ran short of yellow and orange so had to make some.)

Using colored sticks isn't important. It's just less annoying. My daughter and I have another set of just plain sticks with random words on it originally intended to generate manga-ish story ideas. They've expanded beyond that (a recent one had something to do with a local radio personality and sparkly pants ;-) But since they're all the same color, it's annoyingly easy to pull out a whole series of nouns as you search for a verb.

I don't know if it makes a difference but, as I was writing them, I had the words printed in two columns (4 columns for the adjectives) and chose the word for one side of a stick from column A and the other side of the stick from column B so all the "a"s, for instance, weren't clustered onto the same sticks. As I said I'm not sure if it makes a difference but it seemed to make sense at the time!

Killing ways

Write 35 (or more!) *ways* for a character to murder another. Again, push it even if they start sounding wacky. Try doing one or more for each letter of the alphabet. It might knock some more ideas loose!

Aliens ate my antenna

Write an alliterative (tabloid if you wish) headline for each letter of the alphabet.

Hack your way out of writer's block

Hack Your Way Out of Writer's Block

by Merlin Mann
I recently had occasion to do some…errr…research on writer’s block. Yeah, research. That’s what I was doing. Like a scientist.

I found lots of great ideas to get unstuck and wrote the best ones on index cards to create an Oblique Strategies-like deck. Swipe, share, and add you own in comments.

• Talk to a monkey - Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.
  
  [Joyce: This is a variation of the classic "What Am I Really Trying To Say?" Sometimes we get so lost in the details of the trees that we can't see the forest we're trying to write about. You can also try explaining your story to a friend in an email. (You don't need to send it.)]
  
  
• Do something important that’s very easy - Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?
  
  [Joyce: In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont suggests looking at a project one piece at a time. "Bird by bird" as her father suggested to her brother when he had to write a report about birds. A novel can be intimidating but you've "assigned" yourself just to write a description of the main character, that seems more doable.]
  
  
• Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?
  
  
• Take a walk - Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.
  
  
• Take a shower; change clothes - Give yourself a truly clean start.
  
  
• Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.
  
  
• Get away from the computer; Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Shut down the computer. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.
  
  
• Quit beating yourself up - You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.
  
  
• Stretch - Maybe try vacuuming your lungs too.
  
  
• Add one ritual behavior - Get a glass of water exactly every 20 minutes. Do pushups. Eat a Tootsie Roll every paragraph. Add physical structure.
  
  
• Listen to new music - Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat, then stop fiddling with iTunes until your draft is done.
  
  
• Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.
  
  [Joyce: Pretty much the idea behind National Novel Writing Month. When the goal is to write 2000 words a day then what you write becomes less important than just getting words down on the page. And it's amazing the stuff that comes out when the inner editor is on vacation.]
  
  
• Unplug the router - Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.
  
  
• Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.
  
  [Joyce: Another idea is to write something outside of the story: background of a character, a letter from one character to another.]
  
  
• Do one chore - Sweep the floor or take out the recycling. Try something lightly physical to remind you that you know how to do things.
  
  
• Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.
  
  
• Work on the title - Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?
  
  
• Write five words - Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.

Time to kill

Write 35 motives for why a character would want to murder another. Push it even if they start sounding wacky.

If you want, take the third-last item you wrote and use that as a writing prompt for 10-15 minute.

From the writing prompts at OnceWritten.com.

The Famous Wombat Specter

Choose a hero and a villain. Set the timer for 10-15 minutes and write their latest encounter.

THE SUPER HEROES

The famous Wombat Specter
Power(s): Dark generation/control, Precognition
Source of powers: Solar
Weapon: Light Derringer
Transportation: Meteor Ornithopter

The fearless Cyberfly
Power(s): Insect control, Super intelligence
Source of powers: Abnormal brain function
Weapon: Ether Throwing Stars
Transportation: Ring Portal

The lucky Dragon Princess
Power(s): Sharp shooting
Source of powers: Electrocution
Weapon: Force Missiles
Transportation: Vibro Forklift

The wondrous Tiger Light
Power(s): Dark generation/control, Prehensile tail
Source of powers: Raised by animals
Weapon: Kryptonite Sword
Transportation: Tomorrow Tractor

THE SUPER VILLAINS

The deadly Ghost Whatsit
Power(s): Super strength, Juggling, Extra-dimensional travel
Source of powers: Radiation
Weapon: Omnithrowing stars
Transportation: Insect Skates

The socio-pathic Fire Warrior
Power(s): Matter consumption, Radiation generation/control
Source of powers: Evolved artificially
Weapon: Silver Bazooka
Transportation: Cosmic Rhino

The maniacal Phantom Weirdo
Power(s): Illusion casting
Source of powers: Soul sold to Devil
Weapon: Foam Tentacles
Transportation: Ant Warhorse

The abhorrent Android Rage
Power(s): Autonomic function control, Super-human weight-guessing accuracy
Source of powers: Demonic
Weapon: Slime Sling
Transportation: Wingwing

These were randomly generated super heroes and super villains at Lee's (Useless) Superhero Generator.

Harvest Moon

It's the harvest moon and she's agreed to pose for a portrait. Who is she?

(Click the image to open a larger one in a new window from Amy Brown's website. Or here if she's moved her pictures again and the link doesn't work.)

Include this sentence

Write a story that contains one of these sentences.

To get started, try writing the sentence down on your page and continuing from it. Then if you find you need to build up to the sentence for the story to make sense, add sentences before it.

• Winds seem horrible even though they are absent.
  
• Families look dim despite the fact that they are old.
  
• Brains will be content wherever anger arises.
  
• Friends appear important as long as they are determined.
  
• Skies could be inefficient until they find contentment.
  
• Enthusiasts feel incompetent when they are doing what must be done.

Sentences generated at Writing Fix's First Sentence Creator: Deep Thoughts.

"To me the greatest pleasure"

100 sentences

I'm going to collect some "writer's block" tips. I don't like the term writer's block. It sounds like a disease that will stay with you until find a cure. Which only turns it into something worse than it is.

Stuck. Stalled. The point is to get moving again, often by doing something different, or off in a different direction rather than sitting there spinning your tires.

This is an idea from 3AM Epiphany, a book of writing exercises by Brian Kiteley.

He suggests writing 100 sentences about a character you're stuck on. Or a place. Or a setting. Or an Idea. Don't lift your fingers from the keyboard through the whole exercise. Let it sit for a day and then revise.

100 *short* -- he lists the exercise as 800 words total -- sentences. (Though 200 or 500 sentences he thinks would be even better but 100 is enough to be useful.) They shouldn't connect. He says just relax and let your mind flow free to find new material. "It is unnerving to have to write so many sentences in a row, and after a certain point the pressure of creating character details overcomes the pressure to tell a story."

Top 10 tabloid headlines for September 2006

From The City Newsstand's (a newsstand/bookstore in Chicago) monthly MAGBAG -- Top 10 Tabloid Headlines. (Mostly from Weekly World News (WWN) and the SUN.) 

1. JACK THE RIPPER WAS A WOMAN! — SUN
   
2. STUDIO BUYS MOVIE SCRIPT FROM A CHIMP! — WWN
   
3. RESEARCHER CALCULATES A SNOWBALL'S CHANCE IN HELL TO BE .000000000134% — WWN
   
4. Michael Jackson wants to live with leprechauns — SUN
   
5. MICROSCOPIC SPACE ALIENS INFESTING CARPETS — WWN
   
6. UFO ALIENS ABDUCTED MY CAT! Now frisky Felix is home safe — and has a gift of ESP, says amazed owner — SUN
   
7. BARBER BLEEDS RED & WHITE STRIPED BLOOD! — WWN
   
8. SPEND IT WHILE YOU CAN! U.S. currency accidentally printed with disappearing ink! — WWN
   
9. ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS PLANET MADE ENTIRELY OF NOODLES — WWN
   
10. CREDIT CARD EXPLODES WHEN GAL GOES OVER LIMIT! — WWN