Scene Starter/Character Builder Hybrid #2

In any workshop, you hear facilitators demand about "stakes". They want to know what's important to your character, and why it should be important to us. Sometimes, though, determining that can be a little difficult. Here's a jumping off point. 

Think of something that happens in your story and reverse the outcome. If your character got what he or she wanted, take it away. If he or she was denied, surprise them. 

This can be entirely revealing. If your character wants to run his own bakery, works for it harder than anything in his life, and then it catches fire, what does he do? How does he react? Does he hang up his puffy hat for good and become an angry busker, or does he rebuild and come back stronger than before? Your character may dream of going to a good school, but not have the finances. She may count it as a lost cause. How does it feel then when she's offered a full ride to an Ivy League? What if she's already structured her life around the concept of not going?  

This exercise is particularly interesting in the later portion of a draft. If you're anything like me, you plan exactly where this book/story/screenplay is headed. Throwing a monkey wrench into that often produces interesting results and can shake me out of that most dreaded writer's block. Even if you don't end up keeping the revision to the game plan, you will likely still use the information you gain about your character, and you've taken a lovely little foray into the land of what-if. 

All prompts on this blog are free for personal and instructional use, but may not be republished without the permission of the author.