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Do a bit of character development by contemplating what your character would think if they were to receive an anonymous Valentine’s Day card. Who would they think sent it? Why would they think it was that person? Would they have sent it to themselves to make someone else notice?

Imagine your character wanted to really impress their loved one for Valentine’s Day, they cook a very nice romantic dinner, but something happens.

What might happen? Someone else shows up? The loved one is planning to break up with the one making the dinner?

Valentine’s Day approaches, so today I was thinking a good prompt might be to develop characters a little by thinking about what they might do to show their valentine that they want them to be their valentine.

Lets take a look at our characters today in the guise of a little writing exercise. Select at least two, preferably three or four of the characters from your current work and imagine they each see a scene from your story.

Now, the exercise is to take each character in turn and write how that character would see the scene. What would stand out for them? What might be important to them that would not be important to anyone else in the scene? This exercise is not only to help practice writing, but to help you get to know your characters and what each one’s unique point of view adds to the story.

Pay attention to details that say a child might notice that an adult would not think about. Scents that might mean something to one character and nothing to others. Specific memories that events might trigger for a character that might give them some kind of insight on the current scene.

Yes, I am in the ranks of Team Conan. Mind you, I prefer Letterman, but come on, Conan O’Brien is being royally screwed by NBC because they screwed up. And I even LIKE NBC.

What got me was in Conan’s letter to the people he states:

The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show.

And he’s right! At 12:05 you have the Morning Show, not the Tonight Show. So, my challenge to my fellow writers is to write a debate between two characters on how something happening at a set time should be referred to.

Rules:

• there should be something that will happen just after midnight
• the writer is neutral in their opinion on the matter
• one character should take each of the following stances:

1. after midnight is still “tonight”
2. after midnight would be the next day

For example, there is to be a raid at 12:01 a.m., one character tells the other including “tonight” in the description of the time, which sets the second character off on something like “but that would be tomorrow morning.”