This exercise helps you practice your scene setting, dialogue and monologue writing skills. It has been designed to challenge the way you write as writers naturally prefer to write mostly using one of the three forms, frequently leaving the other two partially unexplored.
The exercise will take a total of 25 minutes writing and 3-5 minutes reading.
Have fun and do post your writing and thoughts in the comments section. I would love to hear what you thought!
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1. Pick a number from 3 to 100.
2. Pick a country or a city.
3. Pick an object (something real, tangible, not an abstract concept)
Let’s meet your character Alex. They can be anyone and anything. Their age is the number you picked. The place they grew up in is the country/city you chose. And your object of choice represents the character quirk of your Alex.
Now, come up with a profile of your Alex. Write about their physical characteristics, how their quirk affects them and maybe how others perceive them. But use no dialogue, only descriptive speech.
Write without stopping for 5 minutes.
4. Pick any colour.
5. Now pick a famous person or a character.
The colour you picked represents an emotion. Look at the table below and find the meaning of your colour.
Red | Anger | Orange | Optimism |
Yellow | Caution | Light green | Content |
Green blue | Relaxation | Dark green | Jealousy |
Dark blue | Sadness | Light blue | Hope |
Blue purple | Tiredness | Pink purple | Compassion |
Pink | Love | Brown | Comfort |
Grey | Hopelessness | Black | Power |
Other warm colour | Curiosity | Other cold colour | Paranoia |
Your Alex and the famous person you picked are having a conversation somehow related to your Alex’ quirk. The emotion you have is the undertone of the dialogue and has to be present in the way the two characters interact. Write only in direct speech, avoid any descriptive text.
Write without stopping for 5 minutes.
6. Return to the number you picked in the beginning.
If you picked an even number, after the conversation with the celebrity character, your Alex finds out they have a deadly disease. If your number was even, your Alex finds out they won the jackpot from the lottery. How do they react and what happens next? Write an internal monologue about this. Do not use direct speech or descriptive scene setting type of text. Use the first person.
Write without stopping for 5 minutes.
7. Look back at the three pieces of text you wrote.
Try to link them all together into one coherent story. Cut, add, edit freely.
Do this without stopping for 10 minutes.
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This is the end of this exercise. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it sparked some creativity in you and hopefully gave you some ideas for future projects.
I would love to read your story so please leave it down in the comments or link me to your blog.
Feel free to use this exercise in your writing group.
THe title of this page reminds me of “We need to talk about Kevin” lol
Yeah! You got the reference 😉
I love love love this book and movie. I saw it with my cousin and it was so moving! Also Ezra Miller is amazing in it lol