Fiction Writing – Character Elimination Exercise

A Prompt That Will Help Keep a Short Story Creative and Moving

May 27, 2009

Connecting with a set of characters is healthy, but not if they get stale. With the Character Elimination Exercise, a writer can keep her characters and story in motion.

Not just a lesson in creativity, this exercise teaches a writer that nothing she writes is permanent. Just because something is written, doesn’t mean it can’t be revised and changed later. With the chaos this exercise will cause, revision is a must.

Start With Five Characters and Move to Four

The story must start with five characters: two males, two females, and an animal. It can be siblings in any combination with a cat, lovers of any sexual preference with a dog, or any sort of relationship of any kind with any animal, bonded by blood, domestication, or otherwise. A writer should give herself fifteen-to-twenty minutes to free-write the beginning of a story in which one pair of people wants something from the other pair. The role of the animal is up to the writer.

Once time is up, the writer will have to eliminate one of the characters as soon as possible. He or she can die, be kidnapped, walk away, or anything else that gets him/her gone, but that character must to be removed in a timely and (somewhat) reasonable manner. Within another fifteen to twenty minutes, that character must be physically out of the story.

From Four Characters to Three (and So Forth)

The process of removing characters should continue until no characters remain (including the animal). With the final allotment of time, the writer should describe the final, character-less scene. To “beat the clock” in this exercise, a writer is going to need to think fast and write even faster. Using this stream-of-consciousness flow to her advantage, a writer can tap into previously untouched areas of creativity.

Eliminating characters works to propel the action because instead of getting bogged down with how a character feels or details of the scenery, the writer is constantly not just thinking of how she is going to get rid of a character, but working towards getting rid of the character. Description is important, but too much of it can make for a convoluted pathway through the story.

A Time-Based Prompt for Imagination and Revision

While time-based prompts make for prolific writing, they don’t always make for the best writing, and upon finishing there’s a good chance the writer will have new ideas for what had just been written. This exercise forces revision, and reinforces the truth that nothing written is permanent. While it may be frustrating to race time and get rid of characters, such unusual situations are exactly where unusual, imaginative stories come from.

If a writer feels like putting a character back in after the exercise is done, she most certainly should. As with all exercises, the impetus should be thoroughly disguised by craft and a solid story by the time a piece is ready to be revealed to the world. Though the first few drafts may be ridiculous and difficult to work through, this exercise can help a writer of any age or skill level create some of the most satisfying and creative stories in their portfolio.

The copyright of the article Fiction Writing – Character Elimination Exercise in Writing Fiction is owned by Ryan Werner. Permission to republish Fiction Writing – Character Elimination Exercise in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

May 29, 2009 10:19 AM

Jennifer Jensen :

This sounds like a great idea for a writing group! Imaginative, and different. Thanks!