Create a memorable character in 10 minutes
What makes a memorable character? Many things: specificity, quirks, emotion, mystery. Barbara Benedict put all those things into this vivid New York scene, prompted by a photo of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Random prompts are brilliant tools for adding something unexpected to a scene and a character. (See also June Kinoshita’s pieces, in the blog posts titled “Life’s thread fraying” and “The early bird gets the worm” - and stay tuned for next week’s blog post, which is a virtuoso exercise in dialogue.)
If you’d like to explore using random prompts to create a memorable character, join us any Saturday for our Prompt of the Week gathering; the Zoom link is on our homepage: click here.
There’s a lady in red all dressed up in Strawberry Field today.
She walks the circle of Imagine, sits on a bench, listening to Thing One, brother of Mad Mollusk, neither of which were like the other children.
One, the Thing, whispers to a nearby toadstool, not a poisonous mushroom, thankfully at that. He whispers loudly:
“Wasaabiiii!”
just because, if for no other reason, his brother had just said the same thing.
They fight back and forth, shouting random words, a symmetry of insults.
“Octopus!”
“Alien!”
“Tentacles!”
They both giggle at that one.
The woman, the one in red, lifts her dotted parasol against the heat of a New York afternoon. Shading her age, camouflaging her scowl, her eyes swim circles around the scene:
The Regulars, the ones who keep the candles alive, the Tourists, all dressed up in their too-pressed pants, socks in Birkenstocks, and still the fanny packs linger.
Just outside the Park, a bus roars by, leaving its stench in the aftermath.
Let the Imaginative Storm inspire you! You can find an archive of great writing prompts on the Imaginative Storm Circle and on our YouTube channel, as well as daily prompts on Instagram @imaginativestorm).
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