Rebeca Schiller

Joe Wallace, author of Diamond Ruby, posted a couple of weeks ago on his Facebook update an interesting writing exercise. He’s actually doing this for publication, but he’s working on a Diamond Ruby side story from her niece Amanda’s point of view, and he’s discovering new things about Ruby from this young girl’s perspective.

When I read that I knew I had to try something similar. Craig–a former boyfriend of Corinne’s–leans more on the reactionary side. So I thought it would be a good exercise to flesh out Corinne from Craig who is attracted to her, but at the same time ideologically and intellectually repelled by her political beliefs and lifestyle.

While getting more insight about Corinne, I think the exercise will also help flesh out Craig. My goal is to have a split audience to either sympathize with him, and another group to be completely put off by his motives.

Becky Levine has an interesting post on tension, and she writes of setting goals for the characters. She says:

We make it clear what they want, or–at the very least–what they’ve assumed will happen. And we create obstacles. Big obstacles that arc over the scene, and mini-obstacles that hit the characters like scatter-shot, all through the scene. Some of those obstacles come from other characters, some from the environment, and some from the character actually going for the goal. An obstacle can be challenging, painful, irritating or laugh-out loud funny.

One of the main criticisms, apart from not making one of the characters as well-developed as the MC, is that it lacks tension. Most of the tension comes with the MC struggling with her doubts, but how do I extend that so it creates more head-knocking with the other characters? This week’s exercise is to

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