2023 Character-Building Challenge: Day 1
Make the most of March by participating in the first ever Character-Building Challenge. Writer’s Digest provides free daily tasks for the first 10 days of March to help writers unlock compelling new characters. For Day 1, we play the name game.
Happy first day of March! And welcome to the first day of the 10-day Character-Building Challenge! I'm excited to dive into the process of character creation and can't wait to see what we devise in our creative laboratories.
For the first day, make a list of 10 character names. I would say that these should be first, middle, and last names, but there's a chance your characters have more names...or less. For this exercise, don't worry about characteristics of your characters yet. Just get some names down (like you're taking their order at a restaurant).
If you want a little inspiration, check out "The 7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters," by Elizabeth Sims.
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Here's my list of character names:
- Mortimer Chase Conover (or MC Over)
- Bo Jackson Roberts Jr.
- Gloria Angel Thompson
- Abraham Clyde Houser
- Jennifer Jace Alexander (or JJ)
- Happy Birth Day
- Claudius Maximus Kuroff (or Max)
- Stephen Thomas Snyder (or Killer)
- Jojo Jenkins
- Link Ash Sky Walker
I admit that took me about a minute per name, but I may be overthinking this exercise.
What are your names?
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
