A creative writing hack on creating new characters, taken from Lucy van Smit's A Writers' Journal Workbook.
Invent three new characters. It sounds a lot, right?
Look up. What do you see?
People. The secret is to take several people you know and mash them up into one character.
Example: Your boss’ bad temper, your little sister’s pale skin/red hair, and your courageous mother’s drinking.
The character might be a red-haired alcoholic, courageous and bad-tempered, who plays with dolls.
In seconds, you can create a unique, complex character with inner turmoil. Have a go. Give yourself only fifteen minutes or you will dither.
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Writing Exercise: List Three People
What is distinctive about them?
Mash them up.
List three more people.
What is distinctive about them? Mash them up.
List three more people. What is distinctive about them? Mash them up.
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Lucy van Smit is an award-winning author, a screenwriter, and an artist who regrets selling off most of her paintings to pay the rent. After boy trouble, Lucy dropped out of Art School for a year, ran away to New York and dared herself to sell encyclopaedias door-to-door in America. She got her BA Hons in Fine Art, blagged a job in TV, travelled worldwide for NBC News, flew on Air Force One with President Reagan, got surrounded by tanks at Manila airport during a coup, before she chilled and made documentaries for Canadian TV on writers like John Le Carre and Ian McEwan. Lucy is dyslexic with a Distinction in MA Creative Writing. Her debut YA novel The Hurting (Chicken House) won the inaugural Bath Children’s Novel Award. One of six siblings, Lucy lives in London.
I like this kind of games