So, here we are, on to NaNo Exercise #2! I promise, this one won't make you want to stab yourself in the eyes. Okay, I can't guarantee that. But I can guarantee it'll be less painful. Before we begin, I need you to gather up a few items for me, though. Go raid a Monopoly set, or a Risk box; you're going to need a six-sided die. While you're on your feet, grab a pen or pencil and some paper. Coffee is optional here, as this is a relatively quick exercise that you can do multiple times. It actually gets pretty fun once you get the hang of it. So, open up a word processor so you can save your results and let's get to work.
First, pick six professions. They don't have to be terribly complex, just any six. Write them down in a column and number them. Next, you're going to pick any six nervous habits, and then you're going to do the same thing with those. Got it? Great. Now, the six words you use the most that are not essential components of the English language. (So, you know, don't write down "a", "the", "and", etc...). Number 'em. And here we go. Roll the die, come up with your character's profession, nervous tic, and the one word you're not allowed to use for this exercise. Okay, all set? You're going to write a whole paragraph introducing this character, without going over 500 words. Feel free to post your results in the comments section. We can always workshop these together. I'll be putting mine up, too. Hopefully this time I'll have a little more success since this exercise doesn't inherently make me want to find tall buildings to throw my computer off of.
If you want to go for an extra challenge, try to go through the whole paragraph without using any direct characterization; i.e. don't tell us that his left eye twitches when he's around skim milk, have someone put skim milk in front of him and show us what happens. Little touches like that help bring characters to life, even if that life is a comically ridiculous one.
This is Rosenbloom, signing off.
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