prompt

03
Jun
2020
Create a Character in 5 Minutes

Create a Character in 5 Minutes

For writers after some inspiration, give this 5 minute exercise a go.

Look around the room you are in right now and pick an object. Pick anything, it doesn’t really matter, but it works best with something that is always there, like a piece of furniture.

Got your object? – Don’t cheat and read ahead, thinking you’ll choose something once you know what the exercise is. (I suspect I would be guilty of this myself and, the problem is, I would then spend so long agonising over which object to pick that I’d never get writing!)

Here’s the exercise: Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write something, even if it’s just a single sentence, from the point of view of your chosen object, as though it were a person in the room.

Hints and Help

Writing in the first person will make it easier to jump into your object’s point of view.

Write about how your object feels or what it thinks. Is it a well-used, well-loved item? When was the last time it was touched or picked up? Does it feel neglected or is it broken?

Write about what the object ‘saw’ today. Maybe they were watching you doing something? Or did they witness something funny? Tragic? Exciting? Scandalous?

Don’t worry about creating a fully plotted story though. If a complete story emerges, brilliant, but this is not the aim. The aim is to use your imagination to access a viewpoint you might not normally utilise.

Here’s mine:

Object: Wool blanket on the sofa next to me.

“I don’t mind telling you, today’s been really boring. Seems like years since I went outside. Yes, I know, it was only on Sunday for the BBQ dinner. But the point is it feels like ages. I’ve scarcely been glanced at, let alone picked up or wrapped around her. And being piled up on top of you is straining my fibres something chronic. I can practically see the stretch marks. Hideous.”

This was written in five minutes, and I seem to have created a rather vain and attention-seeking character. In an effort to appease my blanket, I have featured them in the picture for this article, and hope that will cheer them up.

In all seriousness, though, in just five minutes I have a character voice, which I could develop and use in a longer piece. When I next need to conjure up a character like this, I have one ready and waiting.

What will you come up with? Let me know what your object is and post your piece, or a link to it, in the comments.

Happy writing.

Posted by Rachel in Blog, 2 comments
04
May
2020
An Easy Conscience

An Easy Conscience

This short piece was a writing exercise at a Royston Writers Circle meeting. The exercise was to open a book at random and use the first full sentence as a prompt.

I wrote in response to this quote:

‘God, if he believed in him, and his conscience, if he had one, were the only judges to whom he might look.’

Jules Verne, ‘20000 Leagues Under the Sea’

Since he was furnished with neither a belief in a deity, of any kind you understand, he was not prejudiced against any religion in particular; nor had committed any act his conscience deemed worthy of note, Stuart had simply floated through his formative years unencumbered by such fetters. It was at the tender age of fourteen and a half that he was first troubled by either one of these concepts. In truth, it turned out to be a combination of both. 

The priests at Stuart’s school had all attempted to instil in the children an unholy fear of the consequences of misbehaviour which, unfortunately for Stuart, appeared to include his burgeoning feelings of being rather more interested in boys than in girls. As he grew up, indeed, it was to his best friend, Jack, that his attentions turned.

Jack was a good, god-fearing boy, so Stuart’s mother told him, and an example Stuart would apparently do well to follow more closely. Stuart was happy to heed his mother’s advice, though perhaps she had not intended him to interpret her words in quite the way he did. It was safe to say that she was surprised when she walked in on the two of them sharing a kiss after school one afternoon. She demanded that Stuart examine his conscience as a result of his actions. However, having done so, he could only conclude that, like god, his conscience did not appear to exist. 

Posted by Rachel in Flash Fiction, 0 comments