Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #3

Here is the next installment of the fiction writing exercises – ideas for writing fiction #3.

3. The Untidy Professor

Think of a character with a particularly strong character trait, e.g. absent-minded, lazy, domineering. Place your character in circumstances which conflict with this trait. Immediately you have two of the essential ingredients for fiction: characters and conflict. To create a story, all you need to do is build the conflict to a crisis, and show what change results.

Strong character traits also help drive plot and narrative as they help create 3-dimensional people who have distinct wants and needs, desires and dislikes, characters that readers will care about and want to read about, characters that can ‘walk off the pages’. Without enough defining traits, characters become interchangeable and don’t inspire people to want to know more, to keep them reading.

However, beware of adding characteristics just for the sake of adding traits. You want memorable, not laughable or unbelievable. (Unless of course, you’re intentionally creating a parody or comedy…)

(These fiction writing exercises are based on the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His audio book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )