Those of you who follow Tim-Tips on Facebook and on Twitter may have seen a recent post about a lesson plan I found online. I thought the idea in the lesson was great and learned a new way to consider character development. I thought I would expand on that idea today to give us some new ideas for developing characters.
The lesson plan suggested having students create social media profiles for characters that they are developing—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. The challenge is to answer questions such as, “Whom might this character follow?” or “What business contacts would she have?” or “What is his favorite quote? movie? book? TV show?” It allows the writer to consider everything from religion to political affiliation to the people with whom the character may be friends—or the people the character may have blocked.
I thought some other fun and innovative “forms” to fill out for a character might be an online personality assessment (take it as if you are the character), a medical history form, a job application, a driver’s license, or even a bio the character might write were he to star in a play. Doing something like this will challenge you to think of your character in new ways and elicit some details that may never be relevant to the story but that may help you come to know the character more fully.
Try it out!
Tim-Tips for Creative Writing 