Today’s writing prompt invites you to look back into your characters’ past again.

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!