12 Writing Exercises to help develop your character and their voice.
Editors note - There's a lot of boring writers drivel. So, to spare you from the headache if you're not interested, your characters individual voices and personalities are important for engaging stories and interesting plots. You can skip down to the end for the exercises.
Think about the people you know, the people you love. What's one thing they have in common, besides the obvious? They're all uniquely different. Everyone in the world is different in some way, even in media. Books and movies all have unique sounding characters that are different from each other. In Harry Potter, for example, All of the characters have their own voice, even the Weasley twins are different in their own ways.
Complex and unique characters that sound different, interact and speak differently, make for engaging books and dynamics.
I don't know anybody who would want to read a 50,000 word novel about two boring characters, who're exactly alike, and talk in the same monotonous tone. You can have a character who is "boring." who speaks monotonously and still have an interesting novel that people would read.
Having different characters who come together to create funny, interesting, or weird dynamics makes for a readable piece. Take your monotonous character, by themselves, they're kind of boring. They're not engaging to follow. But, introducing different characters to come and interact with your "boring" character, creates funny and memorable dynamics.
Think the anime Saiki K, or Veronica Sawyer from Heathers. If you took only those two characters, and stripped away all of the background characters, they wouldn't make for very interesting stories. Saiki would be happy, living his days in peace and quiet. Veronica would just be a normal edgy high school girl. But if you bring the side characters back, you bring the story and their conflicts back. Saiki goes back to being annoyed by his weird and goofy friends, wishing for peace and quiet. Veronica goes back to being tormented by JD and the group dynamic in the Heathers clique.
These stories utilize background characters to create conflict in their main characters' lives, and makes fun and interesting stories and dynamics with them.
Without further ado, here are 12 exercises to help you develop your characters, and get you thinking.
Ask your character what they want, and have them monologue about it.
Think about who, in your life, does your character remind you of.
Ask yourself, What does my character want, and what does my character need? How do they conflict with each other, and how does this affect my story?
A good exercise to help you write characters interacting, and practice dialogue is to do the ABCD exercise.
The ABCD exercise is writing a full page, or 500 words, of dialogue between two characters, character a and character b, talking about what they think character c thinks of character d. Then, write another page depicting how character c actually interacts with character d.
Write journal entries from the pov of your character.
Think about your character's habits, nervous tics, or tells, and write out a page where they do those things.
Think about something your character holds dear to them, and give the item a backstory.
Think about how your character interacts with other characters, and write a page for each interaction.
Think about a belief or opinion your character has, and write a page of dialogue, where your character is explaining their belief, and why they believe in it, to another character.
Write a page about your character reminiscing, or talking, about a cherished memory from their past, or childhood.
Write a page of dialogue about character a telling character c about character b, whom c has never met before, what kind of things do they say? What do they think of b? Then write another page from character c’s point of view, what are they thinking? How do their thoughts of b change? What do they think of character a? How do they imagine character a and b’s relationship?
Write a page about a character being forced into a situation with their greatest fear. Then, if you want to go a step further, write a page of the same thing, but introduce another character that the first holds dear to them, or wants to protect.
The advice I've given before is to write every scene you think of, no matter if it gets used or not. Its always a great idea to go back every once and a while and edit these scenes, or revise them.
Never force inspiration or a scene. If it isn't coming naturally, take a break and come back later or the next day. it's important to give yourself time to think. use your break to day dream about your story and what could come next. if your brain is happy, this should be relatively simple. If your brain isn't happy, then you need to take a longer break, stop writing for the day all together, or write something else.
if you're a pantser, like me, and it's hard to plot. You can practice reverse plotting, and plot your story as you go. make notes of things that happen in your story, changes in a character, changes in the plot, changes in the setting, dates for events, timelines, important information that's been revealed, anything you deem important to your story.
always reread what you've already written. don't try to edit it. turn off your editor brain and reread your story so far before you resume writing, so you can get into the voice and tone that you've already established.
if you're finding it difficult to start writing or keep writing. try turning off your internal editor and free write. it's good practice to be able to write down your unfiltered thoughts or daydreams without having to stop and edit while you're writing. it helps with your writing flow, getting the scene down onto the page, and increases your writing intuition.
before you write, always take time to daydream or think about your story beforehand. it helps things go much smoother in the long run.
if you've been working on something for a long time, don't pressure yourself into confinement. if you want to work on something new but you're worried about what you've been working on, don't. stop worrying and write what you want. forcing yourself to keep writing something when you don't want to is just going to make you burn out faster.
don't be afraid to create visuals or playlists that help you with what you're writing. It's an enviable talent to be able to write something off a photo you saw on pinterest, or a song you really like.
if you find yourself in a mood where you want to write really badly, but you have no idea what you want to write, and none of the prompts you find are appealing enough. find an activity you use to destress, whether its listening to music, listening to asmr, doom scrolling on social media, or browsing pinterest. go do that. chances are, you'll find something that will inspire you what to write when you're not looking for it.
Literary analysis and how it can help you become a better writer
For those of you who don't know what literary analysis is, it's the examination and evaluation of a literary work. This can include things like, novels, poems, kids books, and even fanfiction.
How does this help me become a better writer?
To analyze a text, you need to have an argument against what is written, whether it's a technical analysis, or a personal comparison, or you have a theory about the story or characters and you need evidence to prove it.
This dissection of texts goes above and beyond just reading something and absorbing it. It helps you, as both a reader and an author to decipher the text on a whole new level and uncover hidden messages or meanings within the authors writing, or within their characters.
When you can do this, it helps you absorb an authors style and connect with their writing much easier, instead of just reading or doing copywork.
As you're doing this, you should analyze your own work as well. Go back and analyze how you wrote characters, Do i portray them exactly how i want? analyze your use of description and dialogue, Do i give too many descriptions? Is it too long?
Compare your work to another that is similar and view the structural differences and how they are similar, or how they contrast.
What is Copywork?
Copywork is the act of copying a paragraph or passage from a novel you like. Isn't that just plagiarism? No, while you are copying what another author wrote, copywork isn't for the purpose of publishing. It's an exercise for improving your understanding of sentence structure, grammar, vocabulary, metaphor usage, and more, while helping you sound like the author you admire.
Who uses Copywork?
Originally, copywork was invented by scribes to help preserve knowledge. These scribes would hand write every detail of whatever important texts they wanted to save. But it became more popular by writers like, Scott Fitzgerald who wrote The Great Gatsby, and James Patterson who wrote Along Came a Spider.
Why should I practice Copywork?
While it's good for all great writers to read a lot. Reading can only get you so far. If I were to ask you, What author inspires you to write better? Who would you say? Why does this author inspire you? Whatever the case is, I know that for every writer out there, there is always at least one author you've wanted to write like. For me, I really love how Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, writes his books. And at one point in my life, I really wanted to write like he does. So, I sat down and scoured the internet, looking for anything that would help me write like Frank Herbert, but I couldn't find anything. If you've ever been in a situation like this, Copywork is your best friend. Instead of reading article after article or scouring Reddit for anything and only coming up with: this is how they structure their sentences. Or, you can't write like so and so, you should have your own style. Use Copywork.
The Big Question: How Can I Copywork?
If you have your own Frank Herbert, an author whose writing style you love, pick one of their books and find a passage or page that speaks to you the most.
If you don't have an author like that, ask yourself: What about my writing do I want to improve? When you find your answer, look for an author who does the thing you want to work on in a way that you like.
Once you have your passage, get a pen and paper. This is going to help you absorb the information so much better than just typing it out.
Step 1. Set time aside every day, at least 20 minutes, to practice.
Step 2. Copy down the scene you picked out.
Step 3. Go back to the start and break each sentence down into its base structure of, Noun, Verb, Adjective.
Step 4. Rewrite the scene, using the sentence structure and formatting, with your own characters, setting details, and dialogue.
