Exploring Character with the Young Writers
Our most recent Young Writers workshop provided an opportunity for the participants to explore creating believable characters.
We began with an imaginative exercise involving a rubber ball. This particular rubber ball is green and spiky, lending itself to a wide variety of traits for a character.
The writers were invited to create a sketch of the character that they imagined when looking at the ball. They could also add notes to look back on later when developing their characters.
This led into an exercise in pairs where each person had to interview their partner about the character they’d just created.
Perhaps the most important part of creating character is also creating desire. A three-dimensional character wants something, and whether they get it or not is the essence of the story.
We asked the writers to put their characters in a scenario where the ‘want’ was to get to the shops, but the bus was crowded and the driver could only allow the next two passengers in the queue. Your character is third in the queue – what happens?
In the next exercise, I reintroduced Jeffrey McDaniel’s poem The Quiet World.
I asked the participants to come up with a name, and then asked them to consider the first thing this character thinks about in the morning, and the last thing they think of at night.
Then the big question – who or what would they save their words for?
To close this exercise, I asked them to write a 100-word journal entry about what they would most want to say if the ban was lifted.
In the next exercise, we changed perspective and looked at the role of the antagonist.
The writers had to imagine a character who was the complete opposite of their protagonist, and then draw them.
Through the vehicle of a letter from the antagonist to their mother, we found out exactly why the rival was preventing the protagonist from getting what they want.
Then it was time to explore character arcs. In a well-developed story, every character has an arc, even if it’s not fully explained.
Using the classic example of Cinderella, we asked the students to explain Cinderella’s arc and that of her stepmother, before creating a story arc for their own characters.
We are already looking forward to the next Young Writers Group, which will take place at The Writers’ Block on Saturday 8th March between 10:00am and 1:00pm.
