Today’s writing prompt invites you to look back into your characters’ past again.
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The Prompt
Imagine the first (significant) meeting between your protagonist and a secondary character
Tips
- Again, if you’re not a novelist, imagine this scenario for a short story you’ve written in the past, or for one you’re planning.
- If your novel-in-progress’s protagonist has a best friend, that might be the perfect person to choose here. If they have a ‘frenemy’, this story could shed some light on that relationship. You can even do this with a villain, if they have a history that begins before the novel starts.
- Show us this meeting. Set up some of the dynamics we’ll recognize between the two characters later.
- If your work-in-progress doesn’t have a great candidate for this story, invent one. A friend in the protagonist’s past, that we never meet in the later work, could set her expectations for all future friends (good or bad). Examine that.
- If you need help getting to the emotional heart of the matter, take a look at Donald Maass’s newest book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction.
Don’t forget to leave a comment letting us know how you got on, or come on in to the community and do your Victory Dance!
I’d love to help, Julie – especially if you can use help from August on (life is pretty packed already before then)….
And here’s my plotting post for Day Nineteen – only nine days late! I’m getting closer and closer. This prompt led me to a bit of mystery and foreshadowing for both stories.
http://shanjeniahslovelychaos.com/lovely-chaos-blog/2017/5/28/a-secondary-meeting-for-stad-may-day-nineteen
Haven’t written yet, but as soon as I heard this prompt, I knew which character to write about. So, yay!
Also, I’m not sure how I could be helpful to the cause, but I’d like to be if I have a skill that would be useful.
Thanks! And good luck with your own writing too!
Thanks! And I’m glad to prompt spoke to you.
Woo! I’m very happy with what I wrote today. Not that the writing itself is perfect or anything. I’m just happy with what I figured out about the characters.