Exercise 2 -- Focus on Fiction

Exercise 2

All writers should periodically take a good look inside themselves. How long since you've taken a survey on your opinions and attitudes? Before developing your next plot, writers should take some time to consider the following questions. These questions ask you to ask questions about yourself. Who knows you better?

This will create for you what is known as a "personality filter" through which you'll be able to generate original plots full of interesting characters, acknowledging where you are coming from. The perspective you have, you bring to each character in each plot of every story you ever write. This exercise gives you an opportunity for self-thought before you commit to any responses. If you consider that any of these questions have answers you'd rather not share, write them for yourself in an item you rate to keep for "your eyes only".


What do you care most about in the world?

If you were to write your own obituary, how would it read?

What is your physical appearance? How do you fell about it? How does it affect you?

What do you fear most?

What are your major strengths of character?

What are your major flaws?

What are you good at? What do you wish you were good at?

If you could do one thing, and you know it would be sucessful, what would it be?

What are three events from your childhood that helped shape you into the person you are today?

What are some of your annoying habits?

What secret in your life do you hope you never have to reveal?

What is your philosophy on life?


Answering these questions will open a door into your own writer's soul. From that viewpoint, you can better evaluate plots. Does the story you're writing hit a nerve inside you? If not, it should.


Select the questions you want to answer, and collect them in a new static item called "Exercise 2 -- (whatever you want to call it)". If you don't answer in a complete sentence, you'll need to copy the question. Otherwise, later you'll have a good nswer to a question you may have forgotten. You may skip any answers you consider too personal, or write them in an item that you can classify as {b]private.

As you think about your answers to these questions, do you see how these feeling and actions could fit into the story you're writing right now? Do you have friends or associates that come to mind when you think about these questions. This wouldn't be your personal filter, but making notes about other people may allow you to create your own unique list of character traits to add to your future characters.

Please send an e-mail to [e-mail] with a link to your static article, in the form of a bitem so that I can resd what you've written.. I'll return pop-up feedback before next Wednesday's lesson.

Thanks, Patrice