Pumping Up: Character III

Now that we have named our character, developed its physical characteristics and learned to smash stereotypes, it’s time to work on its personality and how it interacts with other characters. The following exercises will help show you how different characters react differently to the same event and how to develop character’s thoughts, reactions and feelings.

Character Exercise Five
Objective: To show how different characters react differently to the same event

Three different people experiencing the same event will tell you three different stories. Write a short piece for each for the following three characters: a football star, a thirty-year-old woman with a baby and a newly retired sixty-five-year old man. The situation is the same for each of them: Your character is walking through the park andcomes upon a person being mugged. What happens next?

Here are some questions to consider before you write:

1. Will all these characters have the same reaction to the mugging? Why not?

2. The football star and the retiree may both want to help the victim, but will they both be able to? What might be their motives for going to the victim’s rescue?

3. What is special about the woman’s situation? What might be her motive for trying to help? Her motive for fleeing?

4. Which of these characters is most likely to be hurt? To scare off the mugger? To fetch help? To cower in fear?

5. What different opportunities for stories exist here, based on which character views the mugging? Have any of these characters been mugged before? Have any of them lost a loved one in a crime?

6. Might the economic and/or cultural background of the three characters be of importance to their stories? If so, in what ways?

Character Exercise Six
Objective: To show a character’s thoughts, reactions and feelings

Part 1
This exercise is designed to get you to concentrate on a character’s emotional and mental response to an incident. The character is not permitted to react physically (at least not until Part 2), although her thoughts and emotions may lead to a physiological response (clenching teeth, shaking hands, balling hands into a fist, etc.).

Your character is shopping in a gift store at the local mall. It isn’t very busy. Suddenly she hears a child crying. She turns to find a woman shaking a child and calling the child “stupid.” The woman then slaps the child. The character knows the woman. It is her nice, loving next-door neighbor. The character is startled, and before she can make a decision on whether or not to confront the next-door neighbor, the woman has dragged the child out of the store. What thoughts and emotions run thorough the character’s mind? What does the character imagine she will say or do the next time the character sees the next-door neighbor?

Write this entire scene. Name the characters.

Part 2
Later that same day, your character is working in her garden when the next-door neighbor stops to say hello. How does your character react now? What does the character say, if anything? Have your character’s initial thoughts and feelings changed with the passing of a few hours? If so, how? How are these thoughts and feelings shown to the reader?

Write the scene.

Review Part One
Review Part Two

For more helpful tips and exercises, visit www.sterlinghouse-bookstore.com and check out:
Writing Aerobics I by C. Sterling and M. Davidson

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