It’s getting late in the month. Either you’re ticking along with no problems or you’re getting a little desperate by now. Either way, this fill-in-the-blanks prompt should help you come up with a story today.

The Prompt

A [adjective, unlike you] [noun, like you] decides to [action – something reasonable] except [something unreasonable]

Tips

• Here’s my example: a fitness-obsessed 40-something woman decides to train for a marathon except her husband objects.
• I’ll have to drill down into why her husband might object, what kind of woman is she, what she thinks running a marathon will do for her, what she will never do, what she needs to do, what the state of her marriage is now and will be if she ignores his objections, if that matters to each of them. Then I’ll have to decide on her voice, whether she is strident, aggressive, funny, charming, wheedling, whiney, a doormat. I’ll have to decide when to enter this story (when she tells him her plans, when she’s already half way through the race reflecting on how she got there, when she’s in divorce court, retelling the story…)
• You can flip the ‘unlike me’ and ‘like me’ and the ‘reasonable/unreasonable’ tags if that makes the process more fun for you.
• Even the most mundane of ideas can become something wonderful if you think hard enough about pieces and let the characters come alive.
• Don’t over-write this. Think hard, then imply. Remember, if you’re telling a story to your best friend, you don’t give her much backstory, and you certainly don’t give her both sides of the story. Write this story that way.
• This story will work best if you let one voice ring out strongly, with all the whitewashing and self-justification we do without noticing!

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

This is inspired by an idea shared on the Writing Excuses podcast. They did a wonderful series of shows about how to make a character more sympathetic without making them inhumanely good/evil. Check out the first of the shows.  

Conflict can be “Oh no! The world’s about to end! How do we stop it/escape?” or it can be “Oh no, my mother-in-law’s coming for the holidays and she’s insufferable”, or it can be “I need to do something I really don’t want to do because…”

One way to create sympathy for a main character and keep the conflict in the story, is to use the character’s abilities (or lack thereof) to show how they are a good fit, a mediocre fit, or a terrible fit for the challenges they face.

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

Tips

• Your character can be a good fit for the challenges but hindered by circumstances (Superman and his need to keep his true identity hidden).
• Your character can be a poor fit for the challenge he faces, but willing to give it a shot (Bilbo, in The Hobbit. He is certainly not the Burglar Gandalf claims him to be, but he gives his best to the adventure, in spite of being a poor fit for the life).
• Your character is a reluctant hero. He has the skills and the opportunity, but doesn’t particularly want to be a hero (Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element — in fact, Bruce Willis in a lot of roles!). What inner conflict is stopping him from helping resolve the outer conflict? What will change his/her mind?
• What if your character is really, really good at one thing and is suddenly thrust into a world/situation where all their skills mean nothing…at first? Can they adapt? Can they find a way to use their skills? Can they partner up with someone whose skills compliment their own? Can you find a way to let them use their existing skills in the end, so they don’t seem like a pathetic character?
• What if your character is the sweetheart who glues together an otherwise incompatible team of highly skilled, irascible experts?
• Make us root for or against a character by showing how they employ their talents (or fail to).

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.