Give your characters a trial by fire
“Don’t tell us that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” — Mark Twain
Writer’s Digest shared these words of wisdom to introduce a character-development exercise (no, we’re not talking about walking to school uphill both ways in the snow).
Contributor Aaron Bauer suggests plopping a character into an entirely unfamiliar action and writing a scene about how he or she reacts to it.
The more personality — good or bad — you can endow a character with, the more readers will be drawn to him or her.
Bauer explains a bit more and offers more resources in his post on Writer’s Digest.