Prompt #554, Character Idiosyncrasies, on The Write Spot Blog, suggests ideas to write about a fictional character, or someone you know. You can do all that for this prompt. Plus, you can fill out the answers for yourself, as if filling out a questionnaire.

Character Sketch . . . fill in the details about your character.

5 positive traits

5 opposite traits

3 least favorite things

3 favorite things

What does this person love?

What is this person looking for?

What is this person afraid of?

What is most important to this person?

What is this person’s secret?

Prompt inspired by Stefanie Freele’s June 2012 Writers Forum talk, “Developing Character.”

Please join us on February 10 and February 18 for Zoom Writers Forum talks about story telling by Kate Farrell, editor of Story Power.

You can use photos to develop ideas for creating characters.

Turn your imaginary characters into believable characters.

Use photos to establish physical characteristics

Look at images in magazines or in photo albums or online.

Choose an image for a character you want to develop.

Write a character sketch, just as an artist would draw with charcoal. Flesh out what your character looks like.

Add details that make your character unique and memorable: body shape, statuesque, angular, plump, scars, tattoos, piercings, lanky, a hulk, petite, piercing violet eyes, honey brown eyes, disarming smile, large ears, moles, hair style.

Craft your character’s personality

Analyze photos to build a personality for this character.

Is your character touching anyone in the photos?

Are they leaning towards anyone?

Note how their looks imply character traits: stoic, friendly, menacing, open-minded, pleasant, formidable, playful, serious.

A furrowed brow might indicate stress. Crow’s feet at the sides of the eyes could indicate someone who laughs often, or is frequently outdoors in the sun.

Expand your analysis

What feelings do you get when you look at your character in the photo?

Does their facial expression match their physical posture?

Imagine what happened right before the picture was taken.

Conjure up what happened right after photo was taken.

Who took the photo?

What is the photographer’s relationship to the person in the photo?

Images in school yearbooks

What do their photos and captions in their yearbooks say about them?

What is revealed in these photos? Is your character in any clubs or active in sports?

On the debate team? The newspaper or yearbook staff?

Bring your character to life

Look into the eyes of the character in the photo. What is the story behind the story?

What do their clothes say about them? Where did they shop for clothes? Did they make their own clothes?

Of course, jobs and hobbies are also important to invent a character.

How do they spend their time?

How do they spend their free days?

If they had a million dollars, how would they spend it?

Speculate

How much schooling did they have?
What did they have for breakfast?

Favorite snack?

Favorite color?

Use these ideas for starting points to produce original characters.

More prompts on character development.

How do writers develop characters? How do writers get to know their characters beyond their looks, their desires, and where they went to school?

For this prompt, you can write about your main character, a supporting character, or you can write about someone you know.

If you are writing about something that really happened, you can use that incident and those involved as your characters. When you write about real people, they become “characters” in your story.

Here’s how it works:

Interview your fictional character as a journalist would, but not at the age they are in your story. If they are older, interview a younger version of your character.

If your character is young, imagine what he or she might be like as an older person.

For your real-life person, have an actual interview, if you can.  If not, imagine what they were like as a child, a pre-teen, a teenager.

Activities

Here’s a trick to really get to know your fictional characters: Write about how they spend their time. Did they undergo training or schooling for their job? Do they go out with friends? How did they meet these friends? What does their family do when they get together?

Write about how your characters spend their time. Do they collect odd items? Did they join clubs in school? What does your character do when she or he is alone?

Give your character an unusual job or hobby. Either something you know about, or something you can research. An internet search reveals thousands of job and hobby possibilities for your characters.

Ideas for jobs and hobbies at Happy DIY Home.

An example of an unusual activity: Parkour.

“Parkour can be defined as an activity involving movement through an area, typically urban in nature, in an efficient and creative way. Those who practice it are known as traceurs (French for ‘trace’) and will jump, climb and vault over obstacles in their path in order to get from A to B as quickly as possible.” — Parkour: The Ultimate Guide For Beginners, Sport Fitness Advisor

Describing an activity is a way to add the sensory detail of kinesthetics to your writing—motion in writing.

Prompt: Interview your fictional characters to discover their idiosyncrasies.

For more about character development and adding sensory detail to writing:

Flesh out your characters. Prompt #131

Character development – discovering characters. Prompt #132

Sensory Details – Kinesthetic, motion in writing.

If you were going to design a graphic t-shirt that explains you, or your fictional character, what would it say and what would the graphic be?

Quotes from The Rainbow Comes and Goes by Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt.

“You don’t grow up missing what you never had, but throughout life there is hovering over you an inescapable longing for something you never had.”  — Susan Sontag

“As a child, you generally aren’t aware that your family is different from any other. You have no frame of reference.”   — Anderson Cooper

Writing Prompts:

Can you miss what you don’t know?

Can you miss what you didn’t have?

What, or who, do you miss?

Write about an inescapable longing.

Imagine you, or your fictional character, are six years old.

It’s time to sit on Santa’s lap. What happens?

Or, what doesn’t happen?

Back in the day we called the December-January school break: Christmas Break.

We called Columbus Day: Columbus Day.

We didn’t care about calories, especially on Thanksgiving and for holiday meals.

We played outside with kids in our neighborhood.

We “scrolled” through comic books.

We danced to music from jukeboxes.

Writing Prompt: Back in the day.