: Re: Beyond letters and diaries—exercises to explore characters' personalities and motivation For a few of my imaginary worlds, my characters write letters to each other. These letters are never intended

@Sims2267584

Vote Up Vote Down

I feel as though I'm out of options for exploring these characters in a more intimate fashion. It's not feasible to me that any of them would keep a diary or write letters. I don't want to write a train-of-thought for any of them as an exercise; because, that's essentially what the main body of work is already doing.

I like Arek's suggestion about singing, even if it might be difficult to compose song lyrics each time. Yet there is another method of oral transmission widely used to tell stories - and that's just talking aloud.
So, write dialog. If you can imagine your characters going home after a long day of work, and finally being able to rest their bones in front of the fireplace or with an alcoholic beverage in their hands, and if they have someone to talk to, make them talk.

This would be different from the main story, since you would be writing mostly lines of dialog - much like a script, rather than a novel. No train of though involved. Also, you don't need to make them talk to any other estabilished character in your novel. They may be talking with their close or distant relatives, with unnamed friends, with strangers or even with themselves.

This will be both a good exercise of character development, and a good exercise in writing dialogs as well.

(0)

Login to post a comment!