I'm going to post daily writing exercises for a few weeks. This is partly just a way for me to catalogue all my exercises and have them in one searchable place.
I teach fiction writing privately, at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, and at the Yale Writers' Workshop, and I usually have a few classes plus one-on-one work going on all at once. Different challenges and issues (including my own) inspire me to come up with exercises, and I find I'm generating a handful every week and then often losing them.
By collecting them here I can record them all and, most important, offer them for free to anyone who might find them useful!
Please feel free to use on your own or in your teaching, with credit to original author. (Sometimes that's me, sometimes I'll pass along someone else's exercise and credit them.)
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Character Exercise: Duos
Do you have a couple of characters who fit (even loosely) into one of these tropes?
Scan the list and see if you can pick up inspiration for ways to enhance/have fun with the dynamics of your characters.
If you want a more guided assignment:
-Set the timer for 15 minutes and scan this list, with no agenda, just openness and curiosity. (If you want to read more, that's fine, but you could easily get lost here and forget to write . . . Don't do that!)
-Now set the timer for 7 minutes and brainstorm (write down every idea that pops into your head, no censoring) about the duo in your own story.
-Next time you sit down to write, note how these ideas are filtering into your story. (They will.)
(There's lots of fun stuff to explore on TVTropes.org . . . more to come.)
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