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.
🗡️ Stab it: Write 23 words (or 23 sentences if you're playing on hard)
🗡️Settle a debt: Finish an old unfinished work
🗡️Become a dictator: Outline a version of your narrative world where your protagonist has complete control. What would they want the world to look like?
🗡️Kill Caesar: Outline a version of your story where the main character dies. What would all the supporting characters do?
Write a scene that clearly centres on a powerful emotion, but never use the word that names it. Instead, rely on actions, physical sensations, internal monologue, and dialogue to convey that emotion.
This exercise helps you focus on showing, not telling, by using body language, metaphor, and sensory detail to create clarity.
I'm wondering. Would anyone benefit from writing exercises? I definitely would!
If you'd like writing exercises, comment or message me what you'd like to work on. Tell me if you'd prefer daily, weekly, or monthly challenges.
Some things I'd like to work on:
Eliminating filler words, unnecessary sentences. I've noticed that my writing is redundant or over clarifying. To change this, I need to make sure each word serves a purpose, that each sentence achieves the overall goal and conveys exactly what the reader needs to know without saying it directly. This will kind of go into 'showing not telling' which we've all heard before.
Dual Action Plotting. I JUST LEARNED THIS FROM A FELLOW TUMBLR USER! Basically, two things are going on in one scene. I want to practice this and make the most of every major scene in my stories.
Self Editing. I edit my work to death. To the point it's not even changing important details, I'm exchanging words that are synonymous with each other--saying the same thing a different way. The problem with his is that I'm still int he first draft phase. I shouldn't be editing so heavily without a complete first draft. A touch up makes sense, but heavy editing doesn't. To keep it brief. The first draft is for me to get to know my story. The second is to make it understandable for the reader/editor. I want to change this.
Writer's Block. Enough said.
There are also small things--dialogue, descriptions of scenery and people--that I'd like to practice. If this would be beneficial to anyone aside from me, I'll start making regular posts or an Ellipsus folder/document to share work and get feedback.
Something that @notyourmamasdeerbat started but I also saw @woundedsoul12 do, and it looked like fun so I had to do it too. I had some downtime while the kids were at a youth event, so here's my effort. :)
cool thing if anybody wants to try- write your Rook and your Inquisitor describing each other!
Inquisitor Lavellan was short.
Okay, sure, just about everyone was short to Saadrah, even most other Qunari (if only a little bit). But even Lucanis had an inch or two on Her Supposed Holiness and that was saying something. Varric hadn’t mentioned that. Saadrah supposed when most people tended to have the advantage of height over you, it wasn’t something you would consider worth noting.
She also didn’t look like a holy figure. Holy figures were supposed to have golden halos and fancy robes and walk around with their noses in the air so they could look down on you even when you were taller than them, or so she’d gathered from all the murals she’d seen both in Tevinter—where the holy figures tended to have dragon motifs and throw lightning bolts—and the south—where they were more inclined to be feminine but still haughty, and all their lightning-throwing looked to be of the incidental variety. Varric had tried twice to explain the symbolism of southern iconography before he caught on that Saadrah was being obtuse on purpose. Harding took three tries longer.
But the Inquisitor? Someone must have coached her in how to look like an elven liberati, and it almost worked. Probably did work on most of the populace. Just the right amount of cowed, while still moving as though she didn’t expect a whip at the wrong moment. Nondescript clothing on her narrow frame, equally nondescript cloak carefully arranged to look casual rather than concealing, though it didn’t quite cover the weight she carried around her stomach and hips, not quite in her prime anymore. Or...but surely not, not without more of an escort than one quiet man in a large hat who kept to the corner nearest the door.
She’d pulled her silver-pale hair up in a fairly simple peasant bun with a spray of side-swept and windblown bangs, and the only concession to fanciness was a pair of thin braids on one side, pulled up with the rest, and woven through with a couple burgundy threads and more in shades of blue and green. Her violet eyes—overlarge as most elven eyes were, and framed by plentiful smile wrinkles—took in her surroundings, careful not to linger too long on any one thing lest she be accused of staring. She lacked vallaslin, but the way the light hit her face, Saadrah suspected cosmetics were involved. All the better; even with an active—if denied—slave trade, Dalish weren’t too common in Minrathous.
And half-hidden under the drape of her cloak, a gloved left hand that took Saadrah longer than she cared to admit to realize was too stiff. Entirely unmoving, like it wasn’t even real. Sure, the glove helped hide that detail, but this was something Saadrah prided herself on, her ability to notice things, and she’d missed that on first glance. The Inquisitor was clearly used to it, though; as Saadrah continued to observe, the elven woman rapped on the bar with her good hand—real hand? only hand? —accepted her drink with her good hand, pulled out her chair with her good hand (after setting her drink down on the table).
One of Varric’s stories came to mind. Of Dorian stumbling through an eluvian with the Inquisitor unconscious in his arms, the mark that had made her a holy figure in the first place gone and most of her forearm with it.
The cloak shifted. Saadrah caught the barest glimpse of some kind of focus crystal on the bad arm, half obscured by a sleeve and linen bandages. A magical prosthetic, then. Still experimental in Tevinter, but not entirely unheard of. And Varric had mentioned the Inquisitor was a mage. Traveling without an obvious staff, but then, even in Tevinter, elven mages held a lower social status than human ones. Especially among the liberati.
This close, the wrinkles around her eyes, around her mouth, were more visible, as well as the faint impression of a scar over her left eye that the cosmetics also concealed. She looked like she smiled easily, despite the weight on her shoulders. Moved with the grace of one comfortable in her own skin, but also ready to act if needed. There was a presence to her that she clearly kept reined in, that demanded attention once it was focused on her. She may not have been born to command, but command had called her regardless.
Saadrah could see why the disguise and the training were necessary.
“Rook, I take it?” Her voice was warm, measured, with a distinctly Dalish lilt to it that she almost certainly didn’t have the time to learn how to cover just for a visit to Minrathous. A bit like Solas, actually, but broader, more musical. A lot less condescending. If this woman wasn’t a mother, she certainly sounded like one.
Saadrah held out her hand to shake. “The very same.”
Dorian had forgotten to mention that Rook was a Qunari. Tyria was going to have to give him a good Mom Glare later, the kind that convinced her children to behave and which Bull said actually gave the man pause.
For now, though, she hid her surprise by glancing away, looking around the tavern like a freshly freed slave like Lorelei had shown her, and surreptitiously sized Rook up on her way to the bar. Literally, for that matter; Rook’s legs may have been tucked under the table but Tyria still saw just enough to realize this woman was quite tall, even for a Qunari. Her hair looked almost as pale as Tyria’s own, but her skin was darker even than Bull’s, like a rich basalt or maybe obsidian, and her horns swept in a graceful curve back and out rather than straight to the side like Bull’s. She’d wrapped them in bands of paragon’s luster stamped with patterns, and a few strings of trinkets hung from them and jingled against each other when she moved her head.
Dorian had said Rook was Tevinter-raised, if not born, by some soldier family named Mercar. Her white leathers certainly looked Tevinter, with the subtle snake motifs and the angular cut to them, as did her bow, but her swords—one at each hip—looked closer to the Qunari weapons Tyria had become all too familiar with after dealing with the Viddasala and her followers, and the rest of the few knives Tyria could see seemed to cover a whole spread of styles.
Definitely a rogue. Tyria had spent too much time around Cole to not recognize what that many visible knives meant. Or that there were probably more she couldn’t see. She also sat with the ease of someone who knew they were the most dangerous person in the room, and hid it under nonchalance. Tyria had seen that attitude plenty of times, in different forms, among the Inner Circle. And maybe a whole heap of irreverence on top of that. It reminded Tyria of Sera. Young. Impulsive. A firecracker people wouldn’t see coming, despite the size.
Tyria ordered a drink and carried it over to Rook’s table, setting it down before pulling out her chair, and glancing up as she did so. Rook’s vitaar looked like wings—no help identifying her nationality there—as did her facial tattoos. Probably playing off of the bird association in her nickname. Her eyes were a silvery color and piercing enough to give Tyria the impression of a particularly intent cat, but her lips curved in a smile as she caught Tyria looking.
Sharp as a shard of glass, if Varric’s last letter was anything to go by. She’d probably learned just as much about Tyria, if not more, in the same few moments. She didn’t look calculating, though. Perceptive, clever, shrewd even, but probably not a threat to Tyria.
“Rook, I take it?” Tyria asked, and it was by virtue of her time spent as Inquisitor that her voice didn’t snag, didn’t shake, simply came across as confident.
“The very same.” Rook held out a hand; Tyria took it in a firm grip. Fingerless glove, no protection against her bowstring. Left-handed archer then. Like Tyria’s cousin. Her voice was low, as Tyria expected of someone her size, kind of flat-sounding like most Qunari Tyria had met but with a softness to the consonants that sounded a bit Antivan, and a slant to the vowels that was definitely Tevinter in origin, and faint enough to be recent.
Tyria didn’t even try to hide her smirk at catching that. Not Tevinter-raised, certainly not by a soldier family, not with that accent.
What had Varric gotten her into this time?
Thanks for reading this thing that turned out longer than planned!
