Monday Ignition: When the Character Outshines the Plot Prompt
Key Techniques
1. Character Centrality: The narrative’s gravity bends toward a character’s presence, making the plot secondary to their force of personality or moral complexity.
2. Voice and Gesture as Identity: What characters say and how they move defines them more powerfully than exposition.
3. Tension Between Character and World: The friction created when a character’s traits collide with the constraints of their environment creates story.
Prompt (500 words)
Write a scene in which a character overshadows the plot. Begin with a simple situation: a delay at a train station, a queue at a government office, a wedding toast gone wrong, or a late-night phone call. Within this framework, craft a character whose presence dominates the scene so completely that the “plot event” fades into the background. Let the scene reveal who this person is through the cadence of their speech, their gestures, their obsessions, and their contradictions. The scene should not resolve neatly. Instead, the measure of success is whether readers walk away remembering the person more vividly than the circumstances.
Evaluation Criteria
1. Character eclipses circumstance: the reader recalls the person’s traits, not the setup.
2. Distinctive voice or behavior: dialogue, diction, and gestures differentiate the character from a generic figure.
3. Tension emerges: the world resists or reshapes itself around the character’s force.
4. Depth rather than caricature: the character feels layered, not reduced to a single quirk.
Examples of Strong vs. Weak Responses
Strong: A man waiting at the DMV lectures everyone in line about obscure maritime law, revealing both his arrogance and loneliness, until the clerk calls his number and he ignores it, too absorbed in proving a point. The DMV is forgettable; his self-absorbed intensity lingers.
Weak: A woman in a train station complains about delays in generic terms, sighs, checks her watch, and leaves. Nothing in her speech or behavior distinguishes her from any other frustrated traveler. The plot dominates because the character does not compel attention.
Follow-up Questions for Workshopping
1. If you removed the setting, would the character still feel alive?
2. What tension exists between the character’s voice and their circumstances?
3. Where might you deepen contradiction—what does this person reveal vs. conceal?
4. Would readers want to encounter this character again, even in a different story?
Recommended Reading
Lorrie Moore’s short story “You’re Ugly, Too” exemplifies how a character’s sharp wit and abrasive voice dominate the narrative. The events are minimal, yet the protagonist overshadows everything with her presence.
This exercise can be completed in two hours: thirty minutes identifying your character’s dominant trait or contradiction, one hour writing the scene, and thirty minutes rereading with evaluation criteria and follow-up questions in mind. Would you like me to expand this into a step-by-step timed plan to guide the two-hour session?
AI Disclosure Statement:
This writing prompt was created in collaboration with ChatGPT, an AI model by OpenAI, to support creative practice. ChatGPT assisted with idea generation and drafting; the final text was edited by the author. The illustration was created using Google Gemini.
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