fake dear abby letters for character development

Hello Daily Creators -

Last week, in our Creativity Ladies group, we wrote fake Dear Abby letters that turned out to be quite helpful in quickly discovering a great deal about a new character and their six month dramatic arc.

I'd like to pass this exercise on - which we did in fun only to find out, it was a fast and extremely productive way of finding out a lot of backstory and projecting an ending.

DAILY CREATIVE EXERCISE:

Brainstorm a list of 10 "problems" - keep them to one sentence and write them in the first person. Write them on slips of paper.

If you're working in a group, have everyone come up with 2 problems each and do the same thing.

An example of a problem might be:

My boyfriend left me for his ex-wife.
My cat hates me.
I can't seem to get out of bed in the mornings.
My mother-in-law judges my cooking.
My sister and I haven't spoken in four years.

Keep it very simple. Fold the slips of paper so you can't see the writing and put them in a basket or a hat. Shake them up and pull out one slip.

Give yourself ten minutes to quickly write a Dear Abby letter based on that problem. Make sure to write in the first person and come up with a catchy name at the end to sign off like: Dumped in Detroit or Sad About Sister.

Try to be very specific about how the problem effects your life - who else is involved and why you need help. Don't worry about keeping it "newspaper short" - write for the full ten minutes. Tell how the problem first started, what you do to try to fix it and why Abby is the only person you can talk to about it - have you tried talking to anyone else? Who and what happened?

When you're done with the letter - fold it over, address it to Dear Abby and put it away for the day.

If you're writing with a group - give the letter to someone else in the group.

CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR PART TWO OF THIS EXERCISE.