People want a method to the form. Mine is the unmethod method. Get a little quiet. Ask the story what it is. “I’m boring,” the story says. Then give yourself permission to be entertaining.
—George Saunders
Bad choices make good stories
—Some T-shirt
We can sometimes be overcautious with our main characters because we want readers to like them, or because we fear their extreme behavior could somehow reflect badly on us. What if you freed yourself of that?
For your next scene: don't write what your character would do. Write what your character's evil twin would do.
When I give this exercise, the "evil twin" scenes often start out as just an experiment but end up in the actual story. . . because it turns out they're entertaining.
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