WFMAD Day 6 – Meet Your Character

Busy day here, so I’ll keep things simple.

Ready….

Today’s advice:
This comes from my favorite mystery writer, Elizabeth George. "Writing has to be important to you. A lot of writing is simply showing up and doing the work day after day."

Set…

Today’s prompt: Write a detailed personals ad for your character. It can be a character in your work-in-progress or someone you make up on the spot. Start with the physical description. Use details from the description as jumping off points to explore the history or life of the character. For example, Where did that scar on her calf come from? Is she still angry about it? Has she ever thought of turning it into a tattoo? What would it look like? Who in her life would it scandalize? Etc., etc…..


Scribble…Scribble….Scribble!

11 Replies to “WFMAD Day 6 – Meet Your Character”

  1. I’m definitely going to work on this today. I’ve recently come up with a new character, and until now I’ve been putting off developing her. I suppose today is a sign. No more procrastination.

  2. Hi. I just supported a classroom on DonorsChoose.org that is looking to get copies of “Speak”. I thought maybe I’d comment with the link in case any other fans of yours wanted to give too!

  3. Thanks for the encouragements yesterday. I already did my 15, but am going back for more…….want to write a couple of character studies on a couple of characters who are not revealing very much of themselves in my writing. (Notice how I blame them, not me!)

    Shelley

  4. Thanks, Laurie. This is the prompt I need today, after being on deadline for a paying piece for the last two days. (WFMAD didn’t so much happen yesterday, at least not on the WIP. Although many words made it onto the page for the other purposes.)

  5. Did about 20 or 25 minutes on my WIP but I’m considering doing this prompt, too. I have a character who’s currently up in the tree, but I haven’t quite figured out what rocks to throw at him. I was able to put together a few more pieces during acupuncture today (amazing how much thinking you’re forced to do when you’re lying face down with needles in your back!).

    WFMAD is being fairly good to me, so far!

  6. “The more you write, the more you write.”

    I heard this quote (see subject line) while listening to Lizzie Skurnick on Bob Edwards Weekend talking about her book ‘Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading.’ One example she gave about “the more you write” was that when she was writing some of the Sweet Valley High books, (she was one of several authors) she also wrote a lot of poetry and ended up publishing her first book of poetry. She said writing those novels was great experience for a beginning writer.

    When I heard her say this I thought of WFMAD and what Laurie is encouraging folks to do here. Write, write, and write some more.

    Happy Scribbling!

    -Margaret

    Skurnick “writes the column “Fine Lines” for Jezebel.com, and blogs about books on her website Old Hag.”

  7. Going off on my own

    Thanks for the writing prompts – they’ve been good.

    Today, however, I totally ignored your prompt and kept working on one of my WIP’s. I think I got some good imagery in today. It’s posted here for those who are interested.

    So, another successful WFMAD. Thanks!

  8. Just finished. This one was fun!
    I’m posting all my “results” on my Live Journal page in case any of you are interested. I think it is fun to see how different people “answer” the same prompt. Good night 🙂

  9. Ooh! I *love* doing this with my characters! I often get distracted when doing this and write scenes of dialogue and monologue for them from various points in their lives. It’s dialogue and monologue I’ll never use in the story, but I find it helps me flesh out the character and get to know her/him better!

    I’m at work now, then farmers market after work at 5, then home to write this tonight!

    Great prompt.

    ETA Ok, so I’m a day behind. I’m still going to do this tonight (Friday) Also today’s prompt – I know exactly the scene I want to rewrite from one of my favourite books….

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.