Planting in the Compost: A Character Development Exercise

““Life is compost.”

I blinked.

“You think that a strange thing to say, but it’s true. All my life and all my experience, the events that have befallen me, the people I have known, all my memories, dreams, fantasies, everything I have ever read, all of that has been chucked onto the compost heap, where over time it has rotted down to a dark, rich, organic mulch. The process of cellular breakdown makes it unrecognizable. Other people call it the imagination. I think of it as a compost heap. Every so often I take an idea, plant it in the compost, and wait. It feeds on that black stuff that used to be a life, takes its energy for its own. It germinates. Takes root. Produces shoots. And so on and so forth, until one fine day I have a story, or a novel.”” (Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale)

Planting in the Compost: A Character Development Exercise

Key Writing Practice Techniques Illustrated by the Quotation:

1. Organic Character Generation: Creating characters from the decayed, transformed material of lived experience rather than invention from scratch.

2. Emotional Transmutation: Repurposing memories, dreams, and losses into character motivations, flaws, or obsessions—altered but emotionally resonant.

3. Image-Driven Internal Landscape: Using metaphor (compost, rot, mulch) to ground abstract internal processes in vivid, sensory terms.

500-Word Prompt: “The Compost He Keeps in the Cellar”

Write a scene in which a character visits a place from their past—a childhood home, a forgotten garden, an abandoned school—and encounters an object that triggers a deeply buried memory. The memory is not shown directly but should alter the character’s behavior, perception, or dialogue. Let this memory work like compost: decomposed, transformed, but feeding something alive in the present moment. The character must make a small but telling decision by the end of the scene that reveals how this buried emotional material still shapes them.

Rules:

• Do not use flashback or exposition to describe the memory.

• Let imagery, gesture, or tension do the heavy lifting.

• Avoid tidy resolution; instead, lean into ambiguity and emotional residue.

Evaluation Criteria for Success:

Strong Responses:

• Ground the scene in a rich sensory setting that feels alive with metaphorical resonance.

• Reveal the memory’s emotional influence through subtle shifts in behavior, tone, or dialogue, rather than explanation.

• Create a character who feels inhabited by unseen layers—what is present implies what is buried.

• Use specific, fresh imagery that echoes the compost metaphor (decay, transformation, root systems, layered time).

Weak Responses:

• Rely on clichés or overexplain the emotional backstory.

• Insert obvious flashbacks instead of letting emotional influence emerge through present action.

• Make the character’s decision too neat, moralizing, or dramatic.

• Use abstract or generic language that doesn’t engage the senses or evoke transformation.

Follow-Up Workshopping/Revision Questions:

• What emotional compost is this character growing from, and did it shape the scene organically?

• Where does the language do too much telling or not enough suggesting?

• What metaphoric textures might better reflect this character’s internal state?

• Did the character’s decision feel earned and emotionally charged, or was it mechanical or unmotivated?

Recommended Reading:

Excerpt from “The Love of a Good Woman” by Alice Munro

Munro masterfully reveals buried emotional histories without exposition. Her characters are defined by what remains unsaid, by the artifacts they carry and the silences they navigate. The opening pages—where a group of boys discovers a car in the river—offer a perfect example of emotional residue shaping present consciousness without overt backstory.

Example of Strong Response (Excerpt):

He reached into the rusted tin and pulled out the marble. Green with a swirl of brown, like algae clinging to something long sunk. He turned it in his palm. Didn’t put it in his pocket. Just held it until his hand warmed and it clouded over with sweat. When Clara asked if he was ready, he said yes, but didn’t move. He was waiting for something to rise from the soil, even if it never would.

Example of Weak Response (Excerpt):

He saw the marble and immediately remembered his brother. All the times they’d played outside. How they fought over marbles. He felt a rush of sadness. That’s why he couldn’t leave the garden—because it reminded him of his brother’s death.

The weak version explains what the strong one implies. It strips the moment of mystery, metaphor, and emotional charge.

This exercise assumes you’ve been composting your own experiences for years. Now plant something in it. Let it root.