“This odd anti-balance of knowledge and ignorance is clear in the construction of a novel. We write characters, they come from our minds, and yet they are not us—not at all.” (Walter Mosley, Elements of Fiction)
Writing Exercise: Prompting the Stranger Within
Key Techniques Illustrated by the Quotation
Creating character consciousness distinct from the author’s: Writers must develop characters with interior lives, histories, and motivations that do not mirror the writer’s own worldview. Balancing knowledge and ignorance: Writers must know certain truths about their characters—core wounds, desires, fears—while allowing some aspects to remain undiscovered until the character’s behavior reveals them. Accessing emotional truth through contradiction: Characters emerge most vividly when they behave in surprising but psychologically consistent ways.
500-Word Writing Prompt
Write a scene between two characters who are estranged siblings reuniting after the death of a parent. One sibling (your POV character) has been cut off from the family for at least ten years. The scene takes place in a confined location (e.g., a car, a hospital waiting room, a motel hallway), lasts no more than twenty minutes in story time, and should not include flashbacks or exposition. The POV character must make a choice or take an action that reveals something about them they themselves did not know before this moment. Allow your character to behave in a way that surprises you. Let them speak words you don’t agree with. Let them want something small and strange. Give them an emotional contradiction.
Evaluation Criteria for a Successful Response
The POV character acts and speaks in a way that feels autonomous from the writer’s perspective or ideology. The emotional tension escalates within the space and time constraints. The surprise in the character’s behavior feels earned—not random, but emerging from a credible emotional or psychological logic. Dialogue and subtext reveal more than internal monologue. The scene ends with a change in the character’s self-perception or understanding of the other sibling.
Strong Response Example
The brother, who thought he’d come to the hospital to offer forgiveness, ends up stealing their mother’s ring from his sister’s coat pocket in the waiting room—realizing only in the moment that he never wanted closure, just proof he hadn’t been replaced. His dialogue is clipped, not self-aware, and the action is both petty and devastating. His justification doesn’t match what the reader sees in the scene, revealing a deeper emotional truth he hasn’t caught up to.
Weak Response Example
The sister calmly explains her ten-year absence in monologue form, and the brother offers closure. Their conversation is logical, resolved, and full of exposition. The characters act as mouthpieces for thematic ideas about family and grief rather than individual people with fraught, personal stakes. No tension arises, and no change occurs.
Workshopping and Revision Questions
Where does the character behave in a way the writer did not anticipate? What is the character blind to that the reader can see? What does the sibling know that they are refusing to say? Where can subtext replace explanation? What would the character never do—and what if they did it?
Recommended Reading
Excerpt from Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson — “Emergency”
This story exemplifies characters acting out of emotional logic that is opaque, instinctual, and estranged from the writer’s conscious voice. The characters are recognizable and strange at once. They behave badly and surprisingly, but with clear interior coherence.
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