Exercise of the day: July 23 — Proust Questionnaire

Character Exercise: Proust Questionnaire


You may be familiar with the Proust Questionnaire from Vanity Fair magazine, which uses it to interview celebrities. It has its origins in late-19th and early-twentieth-century British querist's albums and books of drawing room confessions, conversation-starting guest books you'd keep in the parlor. Marcel Proust's version has remained popular.

There are many character-building exercises that ask you to imagine details about your character's life: her childhood, her morning commute,  her favorite breakfast, etc. I like this one because it's detailed enough to bring up interesting things you may not have asked your character about before, but sticks to questions that are pithy and revealing.

It's especially interesting to do this with your main character. It's interesting how we can live with someone day after day and assume we know them  well . . . and yet there's often much we don't know. (This goes for real people and fictional characters.)

-  THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE  -

There are a few ways to use this.

-Answer for your main character

-Answer for any character you want to understand

-Answer for two or more to see their differences (really interesting)

-Answer for yourself, and then your main character, to explore the ways in which your main character is not you (also very interesting)

-If you don't want your writing time to be hijacked by this, set the timer for fifteen minutes and answer as many questions as you can in that time

Querist's albums in a British catalogue, 1906