Get to Know Your Fictional Characters
This is a fun exercise from my book The One Week Writing Workshop that you can do when you want to get to know your fictional characters a bit better. You’re going to visit your character’s bedroom. Writing character histories, biographies and backstories are useful, but this is a more playful approach. You can certainly do it with a notebook, but it works equally well as you stroll around the block daydreaming, or you lay down to let your mind wander!
So, let’s go there. Picture your character’s bedroom or “main dwelling area” if the term bedroom doesn’t apply. Gather a first impression: Messy? Chaotic but welcoming? Hospital-corner neat but cold? Ordered and calm?
Step inside and look more closely.
Note the dominant colors and textures of the room and its furnishings. And what about those furnishings? Are we talking matching sets or worn hand me downs)? Are there items on the walls (certificates, old school posters, nothing?).
Now let’s get really nosey. (It’s okay – they won’t be back for a while.) Go ahead and open drawers and rifle through the contents. Pick books off the shelves and read the inscriptions, or wonder about the lack of books and diversions. Look under the bed and in the back of closets.
Stay there as long as you like and go as deep as you want.
This space is an expression of your character. Presumably the items within it and the way they’re kept are a reflection of who your character is and the life they lead.
Or maybe the room is designed and decorated in a way that is completely out of your character’s control – that tells a different story. In such a room, is there one hidden item, one hidden word scrawled in code near the baseboard, one locked box containing a little thing that says everything about the individual aching to be seen?
This imagined room need never appear in your story. But having been there, you will know your character more intimately, and can write him or her with greater authenticity.
There’s no need to skip the deeper written character backstories if that’s how you roll when you write. Consider a side trip to snoop through the bedroom and see what you find!
Karin 🙂
