Scenario Exercise
Okay, this is another exercise that I thought of that might help you with characterisation. Again, it’s up to you to choose your characters, but I’ll come up with a scene that your characters get themselves in and you give me their motivations and 3 bullet points (beginning, middle and end) of what you think would happen as a result.
The rules are as follows:
- Think of a character from your story
- Pick a random scenario from below
- Write what the character would want to achieve in the scene (motivation)
- Write 3 bullet points of how the scene would go down: beginning, middle and end.
Tips:
- Make sure to tailor the scene to the character. Every character would have different motivations in a scene respond to it in different ways. That’s interesting for an audience to see.
- This time, it’s up to you to tell me how the character feels about the situation. Tell us how the character is feeling.
- What makes the character special? This exercise shines when you think about that first and foremost.
- You can do the same scene from as many POVs as you want. If you do, that’s how you can create a whole rounded scene. This is a great planning tool, too! It stops you from treating non-MC characters like objects in a scene.
SCENES
Scene 1
The character is being forced to put on a play, at the cost of their life. If they don’t do the play, they’ll die. The villain is sitting in the crowd.
Scene 2
Uh oh! The character did the most cliche nightmare ever! They forgot to wear pants/trousers when they had to speak in front of the whole school!
Scene 3
Someone they hate is drowning. They have the ability to save the person.
Scene 4
All of the character’s secrets are randomly being broadcast all over their school, university or place of work and they have no clue why! Some of these secrets are really embarrassing!
Scene 5
The character is out with friend, who happens to be very hot. They meet their ex and the ex assumes that the two of them are there as a date.
Scene 6
The character wakes up one morning when camping… only to find that the whole tent is covered in black widow spiders!
Scene 7
There’s an announcement that a meteor is going to crash into Earth, and that everyone in the character’s country should do the one thing they’ve always wanted to do, only to find out that the meteor was a mistake and passed straight past the planet.
Scene 8
The character is given information that a zombie apocalypse is going to happen in 10 days. They’re the only ones who know this.
Scene 9
After a weird curse that was placed on them, the character is now able to speak to ghosts… and demons.
Scene 10
The character finds themselves scouted by a modelling agency. They can solve all of their financial problems… but let’s just say it’s not the most PG kind of modelling.
Scene 11
100 years after the character’s death, they’re brought back alive by some unknown entity for some unknown reason. It seems they have a new chance at life! But everything is so… different now!
Scene 12
The character wakes up one day to find that their sexuality is completely different! Now they have to walk in the shoes of people of another sexuality.
Scene 13
The character finds the Holy Grail! But they are informed that it would destroy humanity if they don’t keep it a secret.
Scene 14
The character wakes up one day and finds that a whole gender has just disappeared!
Scene 15
The character gets into an accident and then can only speak the old classical languages. They can understand English, but they can only reply in Greek, Latin or Sanskrit!
Scene 16
Your character finds out that the world of your favourite book exists. CROSSOVER!
Scene 17
The character is bedbound and doesn’t know why. Everyone is treating them like they’re really ill… but they feel fine! They are fine, aren’t they?
Scene 18
The character finds out that theyre slowly becoming an animal (of your choice). The only way to stop this is to change their most annoying quality.
Good luck! Yes, you can use these as story prompts too (probably not the crossover ones because of copyright), but please credit me if you do!