2023 Character-Building Challenge: Guidelines
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.
One of my goals for 2023 is to offer more writing challenges throughout the year, because they're fun and a great way to recharge my creative juices. In January, we had the Get Started Right Writing Challenge, followed by the February Flash Fiction Challenge (still happening!), and March will usher in the first ever Character-Building Challenge.
It's a 10-day challenge that will be focused on completing small tasks each day that will hopefully produce some interesting characters for future stories.
What Is the 2023 Character-Building Challenge?
The 2023 Character-Building Challenge is a 10-day writing challenge from March 1 to March 10, 2023. Each day, I will provide a task (a task that I will also be completing), and it will be up to writers to finish that task before they take on the next one.
I will try to make them easy enough to accomplish, but they may still present a bit of a challenge to participants (hence, the name). Each task will be created with the goal of helping writers create compelling characters.
It should be a fun way to kick off March!
Why Should I Participate in the 2023 Character-Building Challenge?
The top intrinsic benefit is that it should be a fun way to create characters that may or may not eventually end up in your stories. If this is like challenges of yore, it'll also be an opportunity to virtually meet other writers and build some excitement with like-minded scribes (even if they write in completely different genres).
But I'm also offering an extrinsic benefit for everyone who completes all the tasks: I will collect one character profile from each participant and share the best in a post on the site. Details for what goes in the character profile will be shared in the Next Steps post after the 10-day challenge completes.
So the question isn't why should you participate, it's why wouldn't you participate?
How Do I Participate in the 2023 Character-Building Challenge?
The first rule for any of my challenges is to have fun, but here are some others (and since this is the first time we've done this particular challenge, they're subject to small tweaks):
- On March 1, 2023, I'll begin to post a task for each day for the first 10 days of March. Participants will complete each task and share in the comments.
- The challenge will run through March 11, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA, time), because of time zones and stuff. (Note: The last task will be shared on the morning of March 10, 2023, Atlanta time. So I'm giving everyone an extra day to get everything done.)
- Find each day's post either on the WritersDigest.com home page or at the 2023 Character-Building Challenge page.
- Everyone will be the winner of the intrinsic benefit of participating, but they will need to jump through a few hoops.
- I will share more details on how participants can submit their character profile in a Next Steps post (likely on March 11, 2023). That post will include an estimate of when you can expect to an eventual Results post.
- Have fun, which is actually the first and last rule of this challenge. This is a free challenge with an intrinsic benefit of creating some compelling characters and an extrinsic benefit of possibly being featured on the site. So my hope is that this will be both fun and helpful!
What If I Have Questions?
The best place to put questions is in the comments of this post (below). And I've included some advice on commenting below.
If you're unable to do that, you can send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com, but be aware that my inbox is a busy place. So again, if you're able, commenting on each post is the best strategy (in most cases).
Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away. It's free, easy, and the comments (for the most part) don't require manual approval (but I'll be checking every so often, just in case).
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.
