Navigating Prompts: Characters

Who goes there?

It’s possible to tell a story with no characters. Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” comes to mind, although even that sinks to anthropomorphism a bit. (CW: animal death)  The first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House is practically a characterless microstory. But that’s not what we’re talking about this month. In fact, this month we’re examining the exact opposite.

Whether you’re looking at an anthology call that’s something like “Pirates and Persimmons” or you’ve been handed a brief description of a person and told to make something of it, you’re now in possession of a character prompt. And what you make of it? Well. That’s up to you.

Ready, set, go

We’re going to look at character prompts twice over the course of this workshop. This month, we’re talking about character descriptions. Later this year, we’ll take a look at characters you meet via photo prompts, so hang tight if that’s what excites you, keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, and we’ll get there. Besides—what you learn here can also apply there!

Why is it here?

Let’s face it: one of the major reasons we write (and read) is because we’re interested in people, in characters and what they will do in a given situation. Coaxing our characters around the page is a heady experience. We get to control the destinies of the people who populate our worlds. Characters get writers excited, and that’s why they’re a favorite subject for prompted competitions and anthologies. In competitions, a character prompt showcases a writer’s skill and creativity in working within very specific parameters and allows the judges to compare apples to apples; in an anthology, editors might be more interested in developing a particular theme over a broader collection, asking for characters that share one or two—but not all—attributes.

How do you use it?

As always, your first step is to look at the instructions that come with the prompt. The prompt character may need to be the main character in your story—or maybe not. The prompt may also include certain required elements or attributes (more on those below) that can help define the character’s situation or the story’s conflict. If you don’t look at the instructions and rein yourself in where required, you might end up falling in love with a character that only vaguely fits the prompt. Which could still lead you to a great story, but which might not score you a place in that competition or anthology. Know where your limits are before you let your imagination fly.

In general:

Like all prompts, character prompts are designed to pack a lot of information into a small space. Usually you’ll have explicit descriptions to work with, but you can often also imply information from the prompt. Here are some basic questions to help you find the information in a character prompt:

• What attributes are included in the character description?
  • These are the elements that define the character and which you cannot change (unless the rules specify otherwise). They should be integral to the character and—preferably—important to the story. That is, if you replaced (or ignored) an element, your story would necessarily change.
  • Pay attention to the vocabulary used in the character description. As we like to say around here, there is no transitive property of synonyms. Both “widow” and “dowager” refer to a woman whose spouse has died, but “widow” is a broad term, whereas “dowager” implies a widow of an elevated social class, who holds a title, property, or wealth from her deceased spouse. They are not interchangable, which leads us to the next question.
• What does the prompt tell you about the setting (e.g., location or time period)?
  • Again, vocabulary can be key here. “A scullery maid” and “a diner dishwasher” both scrub pots, but the former implies a historical context and the latter implies a more modern setting. Likewise, while “child minder” is a generic term, “babysitter” or “governess” or “amah” will give you quite a bit of information about the age, location, and social class of both the minder and the child.
• What does the prompt tell you about the mood, style, or expected genre?
  • The character description may include certain tropes or archetypes that imply a particular style.
  • Note that prompts are often designed so that you can interpret them broadly: “a ship’s captain” could refer to a sailing ship or a starship, for example, allowing you to shift the genre to play to your own strengths. However, the person must still be in command of the ship, whatever ship means in your story.
• Does the prompt imply a conflict or other action?
  • A more complex character prompt may include some inherent tension or even personal conflict, which can help you find a direction for your story.

On to the specifics…

Let’s break it down

Even though there are at LEAST as many types of character prompts as there are individual people in the world, there are only so many ways to convey that information. So any character prompt you’re looking at is probably going to fall into one (or more, depending on the length of the prompt) of these categories:

• Personal attributes
• Internal and emotional attributes
• Life choices and situations

Unpacking these categories will help you learn about your character, and figure out which blanks you still have left to fill in before they’re a whole person.

Personal attributes

Personal attributes include things like: race, gender, height, hair or eye color, sexual orientation, disability—these are generally attributes you cannot change about yourself. They may be visible and/or external attributes—such as “wheelchair user”—but they may be internal—such as “gay.” Or they could be a combination of these things, like a chronic illness that manifests in observable ways but isn’t associated with visible physical characteristics except during a flareup.

The important thing to know about personal attributes is that they will affect the way your character experiences the world. So if you’ve been given a character with a personal attribute that you don’t share, sit with that before you dive in, especially if it’s a vector for marginalization in the world or society you’re setting your story in. Don’t try to just imagine what might happen—there are human beings out there with those attributes writing about their experience of the world. Read at least a little something or do some basic research.

Even something as simple as “red hair” can have effects. For example, is red hair common or uncommon where this character lives? How does that affect their relationships with the people around them. How are they treated? How do they see themselves?

A major caveat:

Don’t make assumptions about the character based on their attributes. Not all Black Americans think or speak alike or come from the South Side of Chicago. Not everyone on the South Side of Chicago has a gun. (See also: using “urban” to mean “Black.”) If you’ve been given a genderqueer character, think about that, and what that really looks like or feels like. When you lapse into lazy tropes, you’re almost certain to hit your story with the Racism (or other-ism) Stick. Don’t do that.

It’s a balancing act: you should lean into what you know about the character from the prompt to inform you about the rest of them as a well-rounded person—definitely—but you also have to examine what you think you know for stereotypes and harmful tropes. And if you’re still not sure, consider getting a trustworthy beta reader or hiring a sensitivity reader who shares the characteristic with that character to make sure your story feels “true” to them. (This is your reminder that people who don’t share a marginalization with your character aren’t going to spot everything you might have done; and that people who do share a marginalization with your character won’t all agree on how it’s experienced in the world. Do your best with the time, money, and energy you have, and be prepared to be flexible if you receive criticism later.)

Internal and emotional attributes

Internal and emotional attributes include things that might change over the course of the story, or drive the story itself, like phobias, desires, emotions, loves, and relationships. For example:

• “is afraid of clowns”
• “wants to be a gymnast”
• “loves horses, and America too”

These attributes drive your character’s motivations, or, at the very least, affect them. If you have been given a character with one or more of these attributes, you must make your character act in ways consistent with those motivations or put things into your story that force them to act in other ways. You can’t just send your gymnast to summer camp for a story about swimming—you need to give her a parent who has other dreams for her, or make her not get into gymnastics camp so that she has to attend swim camp. Because otherwise she’ll try to get into gymnastics camp, given her choice… right? That’s her motivation, it’s what she loves. If she can’t have it, she’ll want it anyway. Similarly, your coulrophobic character is unlikely to voluntarily go to the circus or rodeo, so if you need to set your story there, you have to figure out how to get around that issue.

Life choices and situations

Life choices and situations include jobs, marital status, location, living situation—attributes that are a result of a decision made by (or for) the character. Having roommates is a life choice, for example. (Yes, we see you, San Francisco, and we know it’s expensive there. Technically you could also choose to be homeless and have no roommates. We didn’t say it was a choice between equal opportunities, just that it’s a choice.) Being an optometrist is also a life choice. Where a child lives is a life choice, even though it’s probably not the child’s choice. That’s why we also describe these attributes as “situations” because the choice may not have been conscious or personal—what matters with this category of attributes is that at some point in the character’s history, a choice could have been made that caused the situation to be different.

If an important attribute of a character you’ve been given is the result of a life choice, you should have a sense of why they chose that as opposed to something else. Maybe the answer was “they didn’t have any other palatable options” or maybe it’s “this is something they genuinely prefer,” but you’ve been given a character that’s in a situation, and to keep them in character you’ll need to figure out what it is about them that has them in the situation. Heck, maybe it’s their fear of clowns or their love of gymnastics.

Examples

We could describe prompts all day, but it’s going to be easier on you if we just give you some examples. There are effectively two ways to give you a character prompt: as simply as possible with a minimum of information, or in a complex prompt that might be as long as a paragraph. Let’s look at some prompts!

Simple prompts

• An office worker
• A teacher
• A history professor
• An archaeologist
• A student
• A pirate
• Three raccoons in a trenchcoat
• A rockstar

Complex prompts

• An astronomer who is afraid of the dark
• The unknown younger sibling of a famous politician
• The five time winner of the State Fair pie-eating contest, who is allergic to blueberries
• An astronaut who has been in orbit for three years and does not know there’s been a war
• A clerk at the end of the late shift at a 24-hour convenience store who is trying to make change for three raccoons in a trenchcoat
• A home assistance AI device (like Alexa or Google Home) that has been left on in an empty house for five years with a radio playing
• A firefighter who wants to be a ballet dancer

See how it works? Can you spot the different types of attributes in these prompts?

Filling the gaps

Now you know what you’ve been told about your character. What’s left? Well, everything that makes them a well-rounded person.

The simple prompts above are flexible and loose, but they make you do a lot of work to fill in the blanks. The complex prompts give you some insight into the character and may even set up your major plot device or conflict, but they’re more limiting in terms of what you can fill in.

What do you need to know about your character for them to be well-rounded? Not everything on this list but enough that if a situation comes up you can fill that blank in easily rather than having to take hours to figure it out.

• How old are they?
• What do they look like?
• What’s their gender?
• If their sexuality is going to be relevant to the story, what is it? 
• What’s their family situation (both their family of origin and their current family)?
• What do they do for work?
• What do they do for fun?
• One or two likes and dislikes?
• What do they want most in the world?
• What do they avoid?

Some of these questions, of course, will be answered by the prompt. Others won’t, but the prompt will eliminate some possible answers. Once you get a rough idea of your character… CHECK THE INSTRUCTIONS AGAIN. Make sure that the character you’re thinking of is permitted by those instructions! If the instructions specifically say that your pirate can’t be a copyright pirate, then they can’t, and it doesn’t matter how cool of an idea you had to subvert that simple prompt and write a codepunk story. Start over.

Stay in character

This may sound pretty basic, but it’s also where a lot of writers run into trouble. The most important thing about a character is that they stay in character. That is, now that you know all about them, the  character should not act in ways that are inconsistent with what you know (unless there’s a reason, like 13 dwarves and a wizard showing up to kidnap them).

Once you have a well-rounded character—or at least a sense of who your character is—you need to write their actions in a way that lets them stay in character. That means, if your character has to take a specific action based on the plot you have in mind, figure out why they’re doing it, and whether that reason is consistent with what you know about them. If you can’t make the why line up with the who, then you’ve got three basic choices: either have another character who wants to take that action do it, figure out a way to motivate this character to take the action, or make your plot not revolve around that particular action.

Tricks prompt-setters like to play

We call these tricks, but really, they’re also opportunities to create interesting, dynamic characters. Here are a couple of examples of things you might run into:

• Giving characters inconsistent life choices and emotional attributes. So: “a professional tightrope walker who is afraid of clowns.”
• Giving characters with specific personal attributes a difficult situation to navigate. So: “a monolingual English speaker lost in rural Chile”

Save yourself some trouble: don’t make these common mistakes

• We touched on this in the settings workshop: Don’t forget to describe the character. You don’t have to put every freckle and facial expression in (and in fact you shouldn’t) but editors and judges will need to be able to tell which character in your story is the one from the prompt. That means putting in enough information about them that they’re recognizable. While you’re at it, don’t use lazy shortcuts to describe your character, because honestly why risk it when so many of those are racist? Don’t tell us your character is from the Bronx if what you mean is they’re Latinx. Or even that they’re undocumented immigrants if you mean they’re from a Central American indigenous background—there are plenty of undocumented immigrants from Ukraine. Take the time to describe your character, using the words your character would find appropriate. And if this sounds like a lot, remember there are tons of resources out there for you!
• The character may or may not need to be your story’s main character (check the prompt rules!), but they need to be recognizable. If a person reads your story, their description of the character ought to line up with the description in the prompt in the relevant particulars (like occupation or physical characteristics orrrrr….).
• Remember that a story is more than a static description. The prompt may suggest or imply a conflict or objective, but it might not. Give your character something to do—an obstacle to overcome, a choice to make, a way to grow as a person.
• Don’t fall back on lazy tropes and stereotypes. Do your research. Use a sensitivity reader, if necessary. Did we say this already? Not quite. We said don’t build your character with lazy tropes and stereotypes. Now it’s up to you to not put them in a story full of lazy tropes and stereotypes. Did you know that gay people do like, five thousand things with their lives that are not “coming out of the closet” or “discovering their sexuality” or “having their first kiss?” And that POC don’t exist to prop up the white characters in your story? (Stephen King, I love you so much but you have such a problem with this.)

Your turn!

Check out our weekly prompt posts and try to tell a story using the character prompts given each week. Don’t forget to ask for help in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord if you’ve got questions—you can post a link to your draft or even a snippet of your story or essay (up to 250 words) for immediate feedback. Don’t forget to use content warnings where they’re merited, so that you can get the best and most engaged readers for the words you like to write.

What’s next?

Wondering what the year has in store? Here’s a handy roadmap!

Get out your map

Here's the general flow of this year's workshop series. You don't have to follow them in order, but you may find that one builds on the next.

September: Retellings

October: Style over Substance

November: Combination Prompts

December: Roundup

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me

About the author: