Judith Clayton Van
English Department
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302
Sample Exercise: School Based Residency or Workshop To illustrate the importance of character to the novel or short story, I developed the following two part exercise for a three hour evening workshop for beginning creative writing students. First, students create a character. Second, they immerse their character in an existing set of circumstances created by another author. First, I asked them to either create a character, or develop a character from a work in progress. Among the tools I offer to help students build character is an actor's checklist. It poses questions for the author to ask about the characters such as: 1)Who are you: Emotionally, Physically, Mentally, Spiritually? Where were you born? Who were/are your parents? In what year were you born? What was your childhood like? Was it happy, unhappy or? What is your religion, the religion of your parents? What kind of education did you have? What kind of food do you like? What do you do for a living, for recreation? What are your political beliefs? Add any other questions the author can devise. The second set of questions concern location. 2) Where are you? Give the precise location, time of day, season of the year. Where have you come from? ( Immediately before this scene). Where are you going immediately after this scene? What is your relationship to the environment? How do you feel about the location of the scene or story, and does it affect your behavior during the scene? 3) What do you want? (Spine or super objective) 4) What do you want or need in this particular scene? (Immediate objective) 5) What obstacles stand in your way? (Physical, psychological, environmental) 6) What actions do you take to achieve your immediate objective? 7) What is your relationship to the other characters in the scene? Working with these questions and any of their own, they create a character. After the class break, I ask them to listen to a story. I read Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." When I've finished reading I say, "Put your character in the car in the place of the Grandmother and tell the class what happens." I ask them to take fifteen or twenty minutes and write a synopsis of the story--their version giving special attention to the end of the story. We read them in class. They are often hilarious, but sometimes the students' versions are even more grim and revealing than the original. The discussions generated by this exercise have been among the best I've ever had in a fiction workshop. We discuss character and how plot often proceeds directly from character. It gives beginning writers an appreciation of the contribution character makes to a well-crafted story. The writing part of the exercise causes students to consider the contribution of character relative to plot and setting, and illustrates how in the best fiction they work together. |