Writing prompt #74: COMPLICATING CHARACTERS

Hi Everyone,

Too often we tend to over control our perceptions and descriptions of individual characters. Perhaps your story is told in a first-person narrative, locking readers into one sensibility throughout? Or there’s an unsettling consensus about what a particular character is like—belaboring the same two or three ‘established’ traits?

Try the following as an antidote …

YOUR PROMPT: Describe one character by writing what others have to say about them. Choose three different people in the character’s world and have them offer their ‘take’ on your protagonist. Give them each at least a page or two to argue their case. Make their perspectives as radically different and contradictory as you can. Complexity amplifies character.

Have fun! Feel free to post anything unexpected that comes up.

Abrazos,

Cristina